That's really interesting about the rigor mortis. My mum, who grew up in a small town in a time when there were milkmen, often talks about how they would order their chickens from the milkman. He would bring one with the milk on Friday morning; my mum would spend the morning getting to know her new chicken pal; then her dad would come home for lunch and kill the chicken in preparation for a glorious fried chicken dinner on Sunday. Having only worked with chickens in a feeding and egg-gathering capacity (for other people), I always just figured that the chicken was killed that early because it took a lot of steps to pluck it and ready the meat for cooking . . . or to keep my mum from getting too attached. But waiting for the rigor to go off makes a lot more sense, heh.

I love your story!

When it comes to chickens, I feel like our grandparents knew so much that hasn't carried down through books to the current generation. I find it odd that all of the tutorials I've read about butchering chickens haven't mentioned rigor mortis!