general
Slaughtering a chicken
Slaughtering a Chicken in 3 easy Steps
Once you’ve killed the chicken, you are left with a feathery ball with legs on it. The problem now is how to slaughter the chicken without leaving too much of a mess. For slaughtering a chicken you need the following utensils.
- A bucket
- A large pan/bucket with hot water
- working gloves/rubber gloves
- a scalpel or a sharp knife
- preferably a garden, cause things will get messy
Slaughter chicken step one
Take the chicken by the legs and dip it in the hot water long enough to loosen up the feathers. Start plucking at one of the legs and upwards until you’re left with only skin and fine hairs.Put all the feathers in the bucket. (try to keep it clean!)
To get rid of the hairs there is a trick. Take a gas torch and burn them away. Or just ignore the hairs, they’ll burn off in the oven anyway.
Step two: the intestines
This is where it gets a bit messy. Take your scalpel or sharp knife and make an incision around the anus of the chicken. Open up the cavity until you can see the intestines. Press out the last poo and put your fingers inside. Try to make the opening larger until your whole hand fits in.
Now pull out the intestines. Carefully at first, don’t rupture the bowls. Mostly eggs will come out too . Empty the chicken out until your fingers reach the top of the chicken’s breast. Push your fingers down on the Spine and scrape the last of the intestines out. Put everything in the bucket.
You can clean it all out with a water hose.
Slaughtering a chicken step three: Make it look nice
Cut the head off. 
Break the joints of the chicken’s legs and cut off the feet at the achilles heel.
Pack the skin at the back end together into the cavity.
Now you have successfully slaughtered the chicken and made it ready for roasting!
Building DIY Chicken Runs
The Benefits of Happy Chickens
Keeping Chickens is just like keeping any other pet. They need attention , clean living space and enough (healthy) food and water. So if you decide to start raising chickens, be sure to invest a couple of minutes daily to check on them, collect eggs, feed them and clean the chicken run and pen from time to time.
It’s not a lot of work, but what seems to be hard for people is integrating these tasks in the daily chores. It will take some getting used to, but it pays of!
Tasty eggs
To achieve this, pick the right design for your coop. A logical layout so to say. It must be comfortable enough for your chickens and they will need enough space for strolling and picking. This will prevent stress (they are very susseptible to stress) and therefore increase egg production and quality.
Egg Yolks
The egg yolks color varies, depending on the food the chickens get. Generally, the darker yellow to orange the yolk is, the healthier. 
The yellow color comes from a natural pigment called xanthophyll that is found in yellow corn and green plants (source: Gail Damerow).
Free range chickens that ‘graze’ pastures produce darker yellow egg yolks that are less fat and have a vitamin A and D level that is way above the standard. So it’s always a good thing to feed your chickens lawn mowings, left over salad leaves and the occasional worm.
A happy chicken will lay about 250 eggs a year. Eggs that will truly enrich your daily diet because of its protiens (energy), vitamines A and D and caroten. And they taste a whole lot better than battery eggs.
Also, the chicken meat is of a superior quality than that what is offered in supermarkets or even at your local poultry specialist.
Fertilizer
Chicken droppings contain a lot of nitrogen and salpeter and that makes it a good fertilizer. When mixed in your compost heap it creates a great plant food. Mix in your used egg shells to spice up the compost mix with some calcium to create a powerful fertilizer.
