You know you're in the countryside when!

[Toddy]

Hear ? do wood pigeons carry intestinal worms and other parasites ? and can they be passed onto humans ?

A friend was talking about eating chicken hearts, and I wondered about all the innards that get thrown to the foxes and ferrets from the dozens of pigeons another friend shoots.

cheers,
Toddy

 

[British Red]

I can't see pigeons as a close disease vector. But all pigeons are scavengers by nature - I surely wouldn't eat pigeon liver pate! To be honest though, if you cook it well, anything that comes out of a bird should be pretty safe

 

[Adze]

I surely wouldn't eat pigeon liver pate!

I'd give it a go if I'd made it myself... mind you, you'd need an awful lot of pigeons.

 

[Toddy]

The wood pigeons are devouring all the berries on the ivy along our side fence just now. The birds are huge. We can't eat ivy berries, but the pigeons seem to have no problems with them. Makes you wonder though; does any of that stuff that's not good for us end up in their flesh ?

cheers,
M

 

[British Red]

Nah not as such. Thats the advantage of omnivorous diets. We eat things that turn stuff we can't eat into stuff we can eat! The best example has to be goats, goats eat all sorts of stuff and need rough dietary material. Then we eat curried goat ...but it has to be proper West Indian curried goat. Man those guys can make goat taste awesome!

 

[feralpig]

I've never eaten pigeon myself, but was under the impression that it was very nice, Wood pigeon in particular. I know peeps who shoot and eat them around here, although we don't see Wood pigeon that often.
I was always told that the biggest risk is that they carry salmonella.
I saw someone clean one once, took him all of a minute to gut it and take the feathers off, just left with the meat.
A few twists and a bit of tearing was all it took.

 

[Essexman]

Our local butcher sometimes has pigeon in the window, about five in a tray. But they leave them unidentified - no label.

 

[John Fenna]

Pigeon breast fried in garlic butter - awesome!
Have you seen the stuff that REALLY freerange chickens eat?
I am still happy to eat chicken liver pate...

City pigeons are another thing altogether ... they probably scavenge on all sorts of toxic stuff - McD's, KFC, Rustlers, kebabs etc...

 

[boatman]

One road puzzled us in Wiltshire as about every quarter of a mile there was a dead badger neatly tucked into the left-hand side of the road five or six in all.

 

[cranmere]

Hear ? do wood pigeons carry intestinal worms and other parasites ? and can they be passed onto humans ?Toddy

Probably. I tend to treat all meat of unknown provenance (and all poultry) as potentially carrying bugs and parasites. Cooking thoroughly will deal with pretty much everything but I get fanatical about hand washing after handling raw meat.

 

[Swallow]

It was mentioned at the Rabbit prep session at the Bushcraft Magazine May Meet that during the war rabbits were asked for with the kidneys in. Reason being butchered rabbit does not look that different from butchered cat. But a Rabbit has it's kidney's 1 higher than the other, wheras a cat has them at the same height.

Whether that statement tells us about the two tasting similar or wartime townsfolks' taste buds, I have no idea.

 

[santaman2000]

.....A dead cat needs buried. My Dad said though that he had to fine the men in an Arab boatyard after they ate the company cat, because, "Everyone knows that eating cat cures a belly ache"......

What exactly did he fine them for? In other words, what was the charge. Assuming of course that they hadn't actually killed the cat, it doesn't seem like EATING it would be illegal in and of itself?

Anyway, you might like this book on uses for dead cats www.amazon.com/101-Uses-Dead-Simon-Bond/dp/0517545164

Reply by Toddy....

Thank you
Oh they killed it first, but they killed it to eat it, iimmc.
WW2, Dad found himself put in charge of a wee boatyard on the Nile. The Germans had scuttled every vessel they could find so there was a desperate need for boats. Dad didn't speak a word or Arabic, his workforce didn't speak a word of English, but they were all craftsmen and Dad could draw They got along very well indeed; he was even invited to their weddings and so on.
Eating the company cat though; that took a bit of understanding.

cheers,
M

 

[santaman2000]

....A friend was talking about eating chicken hearts, and I wondered about all the innards that get thrown to the foxes and ferrets from the dozens of pigeons another friend shoots.....

The "giblets" (heart, liver, and gizzard) are usually included in a packet with roasting size chickens and turkeys here. Most people like to dice them up into the gravy. The smaller frying size chickens usually have the livers sold separately in small tubs (about the size of a butter tub) and are usually used as fish bait. The gizzards are likewise sold in small tubs and usually get dreged in flour or cornmeal and deep fried.

Come to think of it, that's how you know you're in the deep countryside; when you find chicken gizzards on the menu.

 

[Toddy]

The giblets here just get boiled up for soup and then generally discarded. That said, I mind feeling really nauseous when Tara asked if I'd put them (they include the neck here) into the soup and leave them she said she liked sooking the meat and juice out of the neck bones.

Kind of why I wondered about the innards of the wood pigeons. The ones around here are very well fed and are about three times the size of the flying rats found in cities. The local pigeons are bigger again than the city ones.
I do know that it takes four woodpigeons (the local ones) to make a pie for HWMBLT who is the only real omnivore in the household.

cheers,
M

 

[santaman2000]

The giblets here just get boiled up for soup and then generally discarded. That said, I mind feeling really nauseous when Tara asked if I'd put them (they include the neck here)

Yeah the neck also comes with the roasters here as well, just not usually considered part of the giblets AFAIK. When I was a kid, many country cooks still fried the neck on frying size birds. Not so much anymore.