Growing and cooking your own fruit and vegetables is one life's most rewarding adventures- but beware, once you start, you won’t want to stop! Consider this though, have you ever considered growing your own meat? What is stopping you? Is it the killing of the animal? Or maybe the fear of attachment during the rearing of it? I try to think of surplus cockerels as food from day one. A cockerel that I know has eaten lots of left overs from the kitchen and the garden, is looking strong, fit and healthy (probably from being chased around the garden by me when he’s got where he shouldn’t be) has had a happy, healthy life but most of all has had a GOOD life. If you consider what happens to most cockerels commercially you are actually doing these poor guys a favour and if they are eaten soon after reaching maturity they are far from tough and make a mighty fine feast when the time comes. Of course, there’s the bigger picture too, you are not buying cheap chicken from the supermarket that has been reared intensively.
When we eat chicken, whether shop bought Free Range birds or our own, we do make sure we have the time to make a feast, usually roasting our bird, having a good meal from it, then picking the carcass ofthe remaining meat for another ‘leftovers’ meal or a curry. Finally, there’s the bit I love, making a fine chicken stock to turn into a soup. Chicken and coconut soup is my favourite. If you have never made soup from stock before then boy have you been missing out!
My chicken stock recipe will give you the base for some interesting soups that can be made and to turn this into chicken and coconut soup, simply add coconut to your stock and bring to a simmer before serving. See the Poultry Recipe section for more information.
Keeping Chickens 
