I grew up on a small farm, technically a hobby farm I guess, because my Dad worked five days a week (ironically, for a huge chicken processing plant, I think Australia's first). But we grew enough food (meat and vegetables) to come close to being self-sufficient. We had chooks, goats, sheep, the occasional pig, a small orchard and a lot of very busy vegetable beds. And towards the end of our time there (we later moved to a larger farm further out of the city) we also had heifers which we mostly raised then sold, in-calf. We kept the prettiest Jersey as our new house-cow at the larger farm. All the chooks were battery hens as I was growing up; husband & I have kept ours free-range.
When I was a kid I used to watch my Dad kill chooks and process them for the freezer. I helped a bit (plucking, not drawing) and also preparing the giblets to help Mum make stock. She would cook the feet and get me to help peel the skin off, then they would go back into the pot with the giblets to make stock. There's a lot of natural gelatine in the feet; also in wing-tips.
My mother taught me how to make a tiny amount of food go a long way, and to also never waste anything. I've been on holidays with the family and made what the kids called scraps soup. easy child 2/difficult child 2 calls it "stone soup" after the folk story and has made it herself (yes, with the stone!). Scrap soup - we had cooked roast chicken the night before (bought form the shop) but instead of throwing out the bones and carcass (including the wing tips which few people will bother to eat) I made a small pot of chicken stock. To add extra flavour I also used the ends and skin of an onion I'd cut up for some salad, and also some carrot peels. I hunted around for the rubbishy stuff that was going to be thrown away anyhow such as wilted celery, wrinkled & floppy. It's amazing what you can use.
The result was really tasty, and once we'd finished it what was left in the pot (bones & scraps) really DID have to be thrown out, there was no flavour left in any of it.
It was a very useful lesson for the kids.
Strong suggestion if you want to teach the kids a number of lessons all rolled in together - tell them the story of "stone soup" and then as you tell the story, MAKE the soup. As you tell the story, get them to rummage in the cupboards, the fridge and the garden for anything you can use.
I guess it also fits in with the concept of "freegan" which I've heard about recently. I don't think I'm a true "freegan" although some aspects of it are similar to the way I was raised; but if you think about it, your acquisition of Herbert fits in well with a number of philanthropic, ecologically friendly ways of living.
As for being reluctant to "eat Bambi" - I used to feel that way too, until the day I saw the damage the local deer had done to my lavender bushes. These critturs are feral here, their hard hooves cut the delicate ground plants and muddy the waterholes for our native animals. They damage the native plants and are ruining the entire ecosystem. And they forage in our rubbish bins - as a herd, they gang up and knock over the bins, they're worse than roaming packs of dogs!
But I'm OK about eating kangaroo - when you know their life-cycle and how rapidly they can bring a population up to plague proportion, it's easier to feel OK with it. I love cuddling a tame roo, but I also know the damage they can do to a farm. They can and do survive well in the open country away from farms, so they're not in danger of extinction (or even in any serious reduction in numbers at all! At least the main three large species). husband was just wondering what would happen if we got a mob of Red Kangaroos and released them in Nevada...
The roo meat we buy comes from Grey Kangaroos (they are really cute, too). The two bigger ones, the Red and the Euro (aka wallaroo) live further out back. The greys are the ones which really invade farms and are the ones we saw happily occupying pasture paddocks beside the main highway south of Sydney when we drove south over Easter.
The endangered ones (some of the smaller roos, or certain wallaby species) may have been eaten by early settlers but not in my memory. They are not the ones that cause problems, they have been protected as long as I've known about them. The wallabies we have near us are very plentiful throughout their range but do avoid human contact. They're all protected, but the three large Macropod species do have to get culled to prevent plagues of them. At least this way, the meat doesn't get wasted.
Anyone want the recipe for kangaroo tail soup? (it's the same as for oxtail soup). Mind you, I've never cooked it. You'd have to be a legal roo hunter AND have the time and inclination. But if they ever get released in Nevada, you might find the recipe useful...
Marg