Belligerent rooster meets grandma’s hatchet

Although it was over a half century ago I remember it as if it were yesterday. It was a cold, blustery morning at my grandparent’s old Fall Creek Farm. My grandmother had put on her old blue denim farmer’s jacket and red headscarf before heading out the back door to the hen house to gather the eggs. She hadn’t been gone very long when she stormed back in the house—red faced and mad as a wet hen. She muttered something to the effect of “That’s the last time that rooster is going to flog me…” as she reached for a Granddad’s kindling hatchet and headed back to the hen house. I watched through the kitchen window as she took long deliberate strides toward the hen house, headscarf blowing in the wind, hatchet in hand, prepared for mortal combat. Little did that belligerent rooster know what she had in store for him.

I later learned that when she had entered the hen house the rooster had flown at her face and succeeded in scratching her with its talons. Being flogged by a rooster can be startling, especially if you aren’t prepared for it. It can also be dangerous because their talons are sharp and a cranky rooster can be extremely aggressive. This wasn’t the first time it had happened with this particular rooster, and grandma, although normally a mild-mannered woman had decided it wasn’t going to happen again.

Upon returning to the hen house she quickly dispatched the cranky rooster, striking him down mid air with one quick Babe Ruth swoosh of her Carry Nation hatchet.

I continued to watch through the kitchen window as she made her way from the hen house, headless rooster in tow, plucking rooster feathers as she walked, leaving a trail of feathers behind her. As I opened the door for her she smiled and said, “He will be good with dumplings.”

That evening, when granddad came home from work and we all sat down for supper he pleasantly commented that he didn’t know we had any hens dressed out. Grandma said that we didn’t until this morning when she went to gather the eggs. She then told granddad that he needed to buy a new rooster.” He grinned, but not enough to get himself in trouble for he had seen the scratch on grandma’s face. The following Saturday we bought a new rooster. Granddad named it Dumpling, perhaps as a warning of things to come if it didn’t mind its manners.

For many years a large portion of my income came from the poultry industry. The side of the industry that I am familiar with is the little known by-product industry.

I once heard someone say that at the end of each business day a McDonald’s restaurant can calculate the day’s profits by adding the receipts of the days French fry sales. The same type analogy has been used with the poultry industry only the poultry industry calculates the receipts from the sale of inedible by-products.

In the United States we kill, consume and export millions of chickens every day. Just one large processing plant will kill 100,000 fowl every day. This creates a tremendous amount of inedible material that has to be disposed of. Modern renderers process and recycle this material into valuable commodities that are traded on the world market.

Mountains of dehydrated high protein meat meal, feather meal, blood meal and high-quality fat are manufactured from what the layman would consider to be worthless waste products. They are not waste products, nor are they worthless. They command high prices for animal feed and pet food. The fat that is extracted from heads, feet and viscera (or “offal” as it is referred to in the industry) is not only blended into animal feed but also used in a wide range of products from paint to cosmetics.

Often referred to as The Invisible Industry, Renderers are the original recyclers. By converting waste products into valuable commodities they keep the price of chicken within the budgetary reach of consumers and in reality, enable the meat industry to continue to operate. Without the rendering recycling industry continually processing and recycling the inedible material from the nation’s packing houses the meat industry would be forced to shut down within a matter of hours. Billions of pounds of raw decaying material would quickly overwhelm land fills and taint water supplies. Modern rendering plants are clean, computerized, high tech and odor free. We’ve come a long way from when we used to kill our own chickens.

Drumstick anyone?

Ernie Mitchell, Moose Lake Hill, Orr MN, © All Rights Reserved 2010.