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If raising avian food critters is a goal, and chickens are not candidates (and you have good reasons for striking off the list), how about ducks or geese? Both are good eating if you cook ’em correctly to deal with the higher fat content.

Or take a tip from Gary Larson and start up a Boneless Chicken Ranch. I imagine boneless chickens are inherently cuteness-challenged to the point of not fitting into the “pet” niche.

As for “Consider not Buying a Turkey” you can take another tip, this one from a Romanian peasant/gypsy close relative, substituting “turkey” for “chicken”.

Chicken Soup a la Rom Recipe

Step 1. First, steal a chicken

…

The gall of our Overlords when telling peons how we should live is amazing.

Here is a sign I encountered in our local Whole Foods grocery that awed me in it’s mixed messaging:

Reducetarianism

People are eating fewer animal products and going premium when they do (think grass-fed and beyond cage free).

Translation? -we want to sound all hip and cool Vegan and stuff, but we don’t want to hurt sales at our expensive meat department.

I imagined this re-messaging:

Alcoholics are eating drinking less spirits and going premium when they do (think single malt and beyond 15 years in the barrel).

Or this:

People are eating smoking fewer tobacco products and going premium when they do (think organically grown hand-rolled Havana cigars).

Oh, and on your chicken carcass stripping problem, well family legend says that a great grand uncle on my mother’s side got rich by inventing a system that used a highly pressurized compressed air for skinning pigs, so maybe Uncle Badger can fix up something along those those lines for you… just a thought.

I have always performed the Turkey carcass stripping, since I was at least fourteen. It started out as my way of getting out of the other post-dinner chores because I could sit at the table to do it. (I believe I’ve mentioned before that I am uncommonly indolent.) And everyone else was happy to let me do it, probably for the same reasons you cite above.

This year, we are having a family favorite meal: pinto beans, corn bread, fried potatoes, and cole slaw. And PIE. Lots of PIE, with a boatload of whipped cream. My 18 y.o. granddaughter will be here, so I will be able to give her hands-on pie-making instructions. She thinks pie crust comes rolled up in a box.

I don’t remember the Democrats apologizing this much for Jimmy Carter’s economy. They are scared witless.

During a brief stint as an unemployed programmer we discovered turkey was cheap. To the point where it was a regular feature every week.

And there are many meals to be had after the roast turkey was done.
Left over turkey dinner, sammiches, turkey on toast with gravy, and of course, SOUP!
Though a smoked bird brings so much more flavor to that soup!

Being a cheapass Yankee means getting everything off that bird that can be eaten bar grinding the bones down and it’s a job I don’t mind doing.

As for our Overlords, they should discuss things with Louis the 16th or perhaps Czar Nicholas II. While the ultimate ‘governments’ that took their places were shit, the overlords didn’t last long enough to see that part of things.

The new overlords should perhaps consider that, though based on Lock Down Phase III over there in the Old World, I don’t think they think it can happen again. They’re in for a well deserved shock I think.

Have you seen this product line?
I understand it is on the shelves at Walmart…
https://soylent.com/
If you poke around on the site you can find the about page where they explain that it was named “to honor” Harry Harrison’s Make Room! Make Room!

I’m frugal. I’ve been boiling bird carcasses and stripping meat since I was a young and poor married girl. Even before that! My family tradition is turkey on the table for Thanksgiving and the carcass in the pot on Sat. In fact, it’s become such a thing that we have a group call (or zoom these days) with all my siblings, kids and their partners, cousins and their kids, etc joining in, everybody sharing pics of their simmering pots. The newbys to the family all say it’s the weirdest experience but they’re all in in just a year or two! Really, the turkey boil is far more pleasant than the family meals ever were!! Probably because we’re all in our own homes, most of us in PJs and we can “peace out” anytime we desire. Ahhhhhhh……the Saturday after turkey boil…..

I think the experience of cooking, cleaning and killing your own food is extremely important. Do I kill and dress all my meat? No. But I have. It’s not about self sustaining, live off the land stuff, it’s about a sense of gratitude. A life was taken to sustain yours. That should be appreciated. I don’t care if it’s a deer or a chicken or a fish, bought at the store, shot in the field or pulled from a stream. Thankful.

Turkeys ain’t that expensive hereabouts…lots of 49 cents a pound frozen birds this week…I usually buy two and have the meat dept saw them in half for the freezer. Great for the BBQ or smoker. However, I order a chilled fresh bird from Diestel Turkey Ranch for Thanksgiving…they ain’t cheap this year for sure.

JavaMan’s grandfather killed a wild turkey every Thanksgiving. Now a wild turkey will make you very grateful: Dear God, it’s tough old bird on the platter, for which we are thankful. Even though there was always a fat tender Butterball, you still took some of Pop’s wild turkey. Do you want dark meat or darker meat? He was a freestyle cook, so you never knew what the turkey might be stuffed with, but he soaked it in buttermilk and laid thick strips of bacon across the breast before he roasted it. We haven’t had a wild turkey since Pop crossed over, but it’s a lovely memory, and I’ve got some big feathers in a box somewhere.

“Well daddy caught a turkey
In the woods the other day
So we put him in a pot to cook him
But he raised up his head
And he knocked back the lid
So we’ll eat ‘im on the other side of Jordan

So pull off your coat
And roll up your sleeves
For Jordan am a hard road to travel
Pull off your coat
And roll up your sleeves
For Jordan am a hard road to travel I believe”

There’s wild turkey a plenty down in the Palo Duro
Canyon Deborah, but the Texas parks department would frown on hunting them.
Damn things fly and roost in the trees at night. Who knew?
And for heaven sake never open a bag of chips within hearing range of a flock down there.

@durnedyankee—that’s wonderful. I bet Stoaty could set it to music and play it on the banjo!

@Deborah HH good memories, I roast wild duck and pheasants like your Pop did…Mmmm crispy bacon and duck skin. BTW- steamed fresh tortillas make excellent Chinese-style wrappers for crispy duck, char sui, and mu shu pork.

We got the Moderna booster jab last Thursday and it really knocked me down so two days of cooking isn’t on my radar. Imma thinking about rack of lamb or pork crown roast. We’ll see, there may a mutiny. Folks get sooo touchy over the Thanksgiving menu. One year I added a wee dram of Bourbon to the baked sweet potatoes and was promptly called out, they et them all, but it was disconcerting. One simply does not alter Thanksgiving dishes.

@BJM – we’ve noticed the same thing. Even if the creamed onions are never a hit, don’t you DARE change them!

Such a waste of a great opportunity to try new things!
Even if it is Vegan Lasagna (wince).

You sound as though you’ve never done the job, so I’ll point out that chicken killing is one of those jobs that may as well be done in volume. If you have a couple of fairly modestly priced gadgets, it’s just as easy to round up a couple of helpers, and do 100, as it is for one guy to do a dozen alone and without the gear. You need to look around and find someone who raises chickens seriously for themselves, and ask what they would want to do a few extra on their kill days. You drop a crate or two off in the morning, and pick up finished chickens in the afternoon. Anyone doing 50 at a whack wouldn’t think 5 more was that big a deal and might be happy to work something out with you.

If I had to butcher my own meat, I’d gladly go vegan.

Then again, I guess I’ve never really been hungry. A friend’s pop was a (Polish) prisoner in a soviet camp during WWII. His face would light up with absolute JOY describing the time they managed to catch a dog…