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I have a recipe to cook a whole chicken and it tells me to crop the end of it. What is that?

To cowgirl 27 - the only thing that I think it could be is to tie up the end of the bird. I checked cooking definitions,glossaries and dictionaries and came up with nothing.
Now I am curious to find out what it is.

I tried looking it up everywhere too. I got the recipe from a collection by regular people, so maybe its a term someone made up or they used it wrong. I'm not sure. They used it in reference to where the the neck was. I thought it meant tying up the legs to cover the cavity too, but when I read it again it was for the other end. I would type out the sentence for you but I threw it away. The chicken came out fine, so I guess I either cropped it and didn't know it or it didn't need to be cropped. Thanks for trying to help me. If I find out what it means, I will let you know.

Typically I dont think we hear about the bird crops these days as most of us buy are chickens at the store all ready cleaned and done for us however bird
crops are most commonly used to temporarily store food for later
transport to the stomach or for regurgitation to feed offspring.

Yucky.

Thanks Joy. I don't plan on ever preparing a chicken that hasn't already been cleaned. I'm a bit squeemish. Though you never know. Someday I might have to. It was hard for me to fix up the already cleaned chicken. It was my first time and it was my husbands idea. He said it was practice for when I want to start fixing the Thanksgiving turkey. I just wish I didn't have such a weak stomach. The chicken turned out really good though, so maybe I will get pretty good at it.

Thanks again!

If you don't like to handle chicken when you prepare it just go out and buy a box of latex gloves and use them when you handle the bird. Afterwards just toss them in the trash and your hands stay clean and dry. Try it,it works.

Well, it won't help being totally grossed out, but that is a very good idea. I will try that!