Our old birds each year we got as much meat from the carcasses as we could and ground the meat up for ground chicken. We used that in all kinds of things. I would make bone stock from the carcasses and was careful to ALWAYS add vinegar to leach the minerals out of the bone. The minimum time I simmered the carcasses was 12 hours. I recently found 18 qt roasters at a tag sale and this year have been using those. I made 10.75 qts of of bone stock this week in 1 of them. The bone stock always gelled when left at room temperature to cool.