My son has chickens, 16 I believe, he has lost a few to predators, they are out of their pen during the day, but the other day he lost the pretty rooster, golden polish, he had won in a pet contest and blue ribbon at the fair. The neighbors dogs escaped their pen and they were awakened by the indoor dog barking his head off, this was 6 a.m. dog inside the pen, it was covered in that chicken mesh stuff, now covered in the heavier wire. He has cochins, a blue silkie (rooster), domineckers, white crested polish, two kinds that came from rural King that I don't know what they are, but they keep to themselves, I would get chickens too, but we have alot of dogs going through as well as all the other varmits..hope you enjoy yours as much as we have theirs.

There are some excellent extension publications and sites online dealing with processing home meat chickens. Seriously think about NOT biting off more than you can chew at any session and particularly at your first session. I have never done more than five at once even with help. I prefer plucking to skinning as well, but the kill/scald/gut/pluck/pinfeather process is time consuming. If you kill out more than four or five, you may end up slaughtering animals and wasting them. Learning to gut them out the very first time is tedious and you need to be careful so as not to contaminate your food with their fecal contents. You certainly don't want to kill more than you have freezer space for. It's NOT a fun process in any sense of the word. It isn't enjoyable watching them in their death throes. Humanely slaughtering involves a technique I can't do well, and I have my son do it. You would be surprized how an axe can bounce off feathers. I had to have my husband finish off a kill once, and for pity's sake he is a butcher and he grew up in the family slaughterhouse and I caught him apologising to the poor rooster for our clumsiness. I incubate my own chicks, so get a 50 percent male outcome. ONe has to make a committment to how they'll handle the rooster situations. No, don't process the bantams. Many people love them for pets. Just find them a good home. I don't slaughter much anymore, but sell the full sized roosters as well. I like to know I have meat chickens up there, but it really is a major committment to take it seriously.

I picked up a cookbook from Half Price Books called, "Classic Turkish Cooking" by Ghillie Basan. It's a fascinating book that goes into the history of Turkish cuisine, how it was influenced by the various cultures and people that have occupied them or lived there, and how it's changed, yet stayed the same over the years, It talks about the various ingredients they use, and suggests substitutes for some of them that might be difficult to get. I found out about this book in a round about way, by getting a newsletter from The Splendid Table. One of the chefs that was featured referenced this book, telling how he found it at a used book store. Low and behold, I found it at our used book store. Maybe there's more out there. Some of the spices listed in the book are Allspice, cinnamon, Coriander, Cumin, Dill, Garlic, Parsley and Kirmizi Biber, which is a red pepper. The author explains, "In essence, kirmizi biber is a red pepper, a type of horn chilli (their spelling) that came originally from the New World, but has grown in Turkey for several centuries and is regarded with pride. In fact, you could say that it is the national spice." She does say that cayenne or paprika can be used as substitutes, but are not the same. I've made a couple of recipes from this book and enjoyed them both. Sally

What might be the moral to the story? This might be it: wait a little while if you are shocked when you read about a problem that sounds shocking to you. It probably also sounds shocking to everyone, but wait. Don't be trigger happy. Don't indulge yourself by typing out your feelings. Wait. Someone will post some kind of fact-based response within a few hours. Isn't there a Supreme Court Justice who subscribes to this theory of conservation of personal (his) initiative? He doesn't believe in "indulging himself" by vocalizing any thought processes, either. Of course, I don't recall his reserve having garnered him many plaudits for holding his curiousity or opinion in check. My initial position was paraphrased by marcolo several times. Several people have made a big ado about it. Marcolo pointed out why it is good to ask for information first. Wow. What a new idea. Ask around. Get new input. (MARCOLO! Paging Dr. Marcolo! Need Davidro-to-english translation help here, please.) Assuming I understood the point of the post, isn't that what a post on the Kitchen Forum is about? Airing personal experience, making correlations, getting opinions on similarity or dissimilarity of experience? I don't believe that posting is an automatic ticket to litigation-city. That said, while I don't disagree with David that the massive haemorrhaging of personal outrage on the KF can be a trifle wearying, the instances cited here that have apparently motivated this thread are ridiculous. For one thing: "exploding glass doors" vs "exploding glass doors that way". Yes, tempered glass explodes "that way" but to think that anyone should be expected to be blase and off-hand about the fact that their oven door blasted itself open in the course of its "normal operation" (I'll hold my opinion on self-clean in check here) is asking for the moon. It doesn't matter than tempered glass breaks a certain way - it does matter that it spontaneously imploded without a clear and discernible impact to trigger; that makes the data noteworthy and the event really should be publicized. Yes, perhaps the glass was subjected to stresses beyond normal range a while back - or even undetected anomalous events at the time of high drama: bird strike, pellets, surface scratches, edge impact - and now the smallest minor perturbation to the nominal took it beyond its elastic limit, so to speak. But if a certain product has a habit of shattering (multiple reported such outcomes) - well, the likelihood that there should be such a high correlation between purveyors of that item and 6-sigma beyond norm events that shattering glass should be an expected outcome, is statistically insignificant. More than likely then, there is indeed a manufacturing defect - either in the glass manufacture process, or planarity of the door frame into which it is inserted, its tensioning or some other assembly process. Tempered glass might shatter safely, but it doesn't have a habit of shattering so much so that anyone buying ovens or doors or whatever should expect that after the 3year/5year/7year window that they should expect to walk upto an imploded door. This is just silly. It is absolutely the right thing to do to air the fact that E'lux's oven door shattered in self-clean mode. If many E'lux ovens do that, it is likely an E'lux problem and won't be known until such complaints are aired, collected and documented. If many oven doors shatter in self-clean then either ovens will get to a point where they won't use glass in self-clean ovens or self-cleaning will be outmoded (yesssssss!). Whatever. (regardless that as far as I know, self-clean temps are well inside the tolerance regime of tempered glass). None of this happens until the user airs this. & others aren't edified until they happen upon such reports. The only factually incorrect, if that, information I ran across on the e'lux oven thread was the moral outrage about the health risks of someone walking into the glass shards. Fact is that shattered tempered glass is safer than regular shattered glass but it's no bowl of tofu, chaps. So, while I think that keeping a bit of a tamp on the emotional quotient isn't a bad idea, the motivating example has even me arguing against this thread and I certainly don't support the idea of filter's eliminating posts that exceed some imagined emotion threshold or pass someone's idea of fact-filled posts. If the last was the case, I doubt that the OP's post (top post, this thread) would have made the cut .... Hmmmm, come to think of it ....