Pets or Meat

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I worried I was scarring my children for life, letting them hold baby rabbits we’d later stew with potatoes. Little did I know, young children who never know any different accept these realities readily. Labels form quickly in their heads: Bunnies – cute, cuddly … and yummy!

Older children and adults, meanwhile, do not learn this so easily. Past a certain point, you can’t convince a youngster that a cute bunny is also a great meal.

My 12-year-old stepson, Nik, never met a hamburger he didn’t like. In the eight years I’ve known him, I have never once witnessed him – in a restaurant – order anything other than ribs or a burger. The boy loves meat. But put a plate of home-grown rabbit in front of him and he won’t eat a bite.

Put a plate of home-grown rabbit in front of him, tell him it’s chicken, and he cleans his plate.

Since I’m the cook, I can’t really fool myself. The rabbits, fortunately, have mostly been sold as pets to nice families with no plans to eat them. There will be no more hassenpfeffer served in this house.

The Easier White Meat

Chickens are another story. Chickens are, in my mind, repulsive creatures. They poop everywhere and they stink. A chicken will blithely peck another chicken to death over absolutely nothing – a grasshopper, for instance. They don’t cuddle. They don’t have snorffley little soft noses. Chickens are much, much easier, if you want to eat meat from your own barnyard.

We had kept laying hens for years, but last spring, we decided to order some meat chickens. No one can accuse me of moderation, especially when it comes to animals. I ordered 35 roosters (listen quietly; you can hear my husband groaning), which arrived in a box at the post office one May Monday morning.

Ten of them were those disgusting Super-Duper, Extra-Testosterone Jumbo Cornish XX guys, bred for breasts so large their legs break under the weight if they survive past six weeks. The poultry catalogue wasn’t kidding: Beware of trying to raise these birds at altitudes above 5,000 feet – they die of heart attacks. None of those 10 birds survived to slaughter.

Twenty-five of the roosters, on the other hand, were regular old roosters, unwanted male partners to egg-laying hens sold elsewhere. The roosters were, like creatures of most any species, really cute as babies and grew increasingly obnoxious as they hit puberty. The roosters started fighting in their enclosed yard, enough that I started letting them out during the day to free range. We butchered a few at 12 weeks and a few more a bit later; we left another dozen to grow to roasting size.
From part of that remaining batch, I ended up with a rooster I identified as a Dark Cornish. He was absolutely gorgeous, with a lovely, solid plumpness to him. His body feathers were jet black, and his long tail feathers were shimmery, iridescent blue and green, almost like a peacock.

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