After our success selling our last batch of broilers (40 birds in two days!), we decided to order a bunch more. This batch is all female, so they’ll weigh slightly less at slaughter, which will bring the price dowm.
We’ll fatten them up for 8 weeks, and slaughter them sometime around the end of October. Stay tuned!
When I went to check on the laying hens yesterday afternoon, I was greeted with this sight:
This is evidence of a chicken attack. There was another little pile of feathers near the edge of the woods. I think it means the initial attack took place here, but she was able to run to the edge of the wood. There, she lost the battle and was carted off into the woods.
The attack took place just outside their electric fence, which means that this particular hen was still able to fly over the top of their enclosure. She was probably trying to figure out a way to get back in the fence when she was struck.
We started out with 32 layers in June 2009, and we’re now down to about 22. It’s amazing how quickly they get picked off by predators. But that’s the life of the chicken for you: they’re at the bottom of the food chain. EVERYTHING eats chicken. For our next batch of layers, we will have to use much tougher love when clipping their wings.
Jake and I (practically) sold out of our freshly slaughtered chickens in a day and a half. I only have three birds left! Plus the 10 we’ve reserved for ourselves. I didn’t realize demand was so high for humanely-raised, locally-grown poultry, but they flew out of our hands faster than we could freeze them. And the feedback we’ve gotten so far from customers who’ve already cooked their birds has been glowing. (Is it unbecoming to bask in one’s poultry raising majesty?)
Buoyed by our success, we’ve decided to do it again.
Yes, that means that we just ordered another big batch of chicks. This time, 35 female broilers. The baby cluckers arrive next week.
The hatchery will only mail chicks during the hot season because chicks can’t tolerate cold (which is why raising broilers is strictly a summertime pursuit). Like last time, we’ll raise them until they’re about 8 weeks old. But because they’re female, they’ll weigh slightly less at slaughter so they won’t cost as much. Slaughter will take place near the end of October….just when summer gives way to serious autumn chill.
Never in my wildest dreams did I think I’d one day be a chicken farmer (!?!?!), and I’m still not sure if this qualifies as a step up or one step closer to living in a hollow, but it’s definitely an adventure. Right?
California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed landmark legislation yesterday requiring “that all whole eggs sold in California as of January 1, 2015 come from hens able to stand up, fully extend their limbs, lie down and spread their wings without touching each other or the sides of their enclosure, thus requiring cage-free conditions for the birds.”
It seems insane that the treatment of animals would be anything otherwise, but I guess that’s what happens when consumers get used to paying $9 for 5 dozen eggs — which works out to something like 15 cents an egg — at a store like Sam’s Club or Costco. You know those hens aren’t living the high life, that is for sure.
I have to say, the hens are doing SO much better now that the roosters are no longer in the picture. It’s almost like I’m working with an entirely different flock.
The hens are calm. They don’t seem as stressed. The feathers on their heads and backs are slowly starting to grow in again. They’re actually starting to look pretty again. Less haggard. More robust. Their feed consumption has dropped considerably. My friend Becca thinks it’s because they no longer burn as many calories trying to outrun the rapey roosters. Sounds good to me!
I’m reminded of something an old farmer dude once said to me and Jake right before we got our chickens.
“Hens do so much better when there’s a rooster present; they really keep the hens in line.”
Yeesh. A dude would say that. I for one haven’t found that to be the case.
Let me preface this post by saying that we opted to process three roosters over the weekend because too many of our hens look like this:
The roosters dig their long, sharp talons into the hens’ backs and pull feathers from their heads during mating. It’s quite unpleasant. I’m not sure if all breeds of roosters behave like this, but ours are particularly aggressive when it comes to getting their freak on. I was afraid one of our hens might die because of it. So we made the tough decision to cull the flock.
Here’s a tutorial in how to process chickens. Don’t worry, I didn’t include any blood and gut shots!
First, the necessary equipment:
This is the Scalder, which is basically a giant tub filled with water and heated to 140 degrees. The slaughtered birds are plunged in the Scalder a few times to loosen their feathers. Once the feathers are adequately loosened (i.e. the wing feathers can be pulled with little to no resistance) the bird is ready for the Featherman.
This is the Featherman. The Featherman is like a top loading washing machine equipped with hard rubber fingers that spin around really fast that pluck feathers from the bird.
This is an oversized kill cone. Jake temporarily installed it underneath the bird house. How nice. In the driveway. Even nicer. The kill cone is what immobilizes the bird right before the throat is slit.
This is Adolph. Close readers may recall my travails with this agent of Satan. After being viciously attacked one too many times, we offloaded him onto our neighbors Sam and Sandra. Sam and Sandra had every intention of processing him themselves…..but for whatever reason, they never got around to it and Adolph ended up spending the remainder of his days in confinement. As much as I dislike this bird, I couldn’t stand the thought of him caged up in close quarters so we offered to butcher him ourselves, if only to put Adolph out of his misery.
Jake transported Plumpy and Heimlich from the coop to the “kill zone” — our driveway!! (???) — in this yellow cage. Don’t worry, they were only in the cage for 15 minutes or so.
First order of business: Grabbing hold of a rooster. It’s not fun and games. Especially with a bird like Adolph. But Jake’s clutches proved to be too swift and powerful.
Holding a chicken upside down hypnotizes them. They go limp and don’t try to resist or fight. This is the recommended carrying method right before slaughter.
Adolph is placed head first into the kill cone.
Jake makes sure Adolph’s throat is all the way exposed in order to make a swift, clean cut. Adolph, meanwhile, remains completely still; he’s in the chicken trance.
The cut is made using one of Jake’s army issue “kill knifes.” Adolph’s body twitches violently as the blood drips into a bucket placed underneath the kill cone.
This is the part of the process where I had to turn away. I became very emotional. I suppose it’s because it was the first or second time I’ve actually witnessed an animal dying so I could eat him. I wonder if it gets easier with time. And SHOULD it get easier with time? It takes a special kind of person to do it dispassionately. I have a lot of respect for people who do it.
Anyway. The body is then dipped in the Scalder to loosen the feathers.
Once the feathers are sufficiently loosened — we did a “pull test” on the wings — the body is placed in the Featherman.
The centrifugal force of the Featherman pushes the just plucked feathers out an opening into a waiting bucket.
It literally takes less than a minute for up to four bird to be completely plucked in the Featherman….compared to at LEAST 20-30 minutes plucking ONE bird by hand. Which leads me to conclude that if you’re going to get in the business of processing chickens, a Featherman is a must.
Jake pulls a few remaining feathers from the bird. The reason for the feathers, we realized, is that we didn’t scald the bird quite long enough in the Scalder. The birds require a thorough dunking to ensure the feathers easily come off.
Starting to look more like grocery store fare, right? Except for those gnarly feet.
I took the liberty of sparing you, gentle reader, the evisceration process. Here’s what the bird looks like post-evisceration and the legs have been removed, and the body thoroughly rinsed. It looks pretty much like any Safeway broiler.
The chicken is then bagged in plastic and immediately frozen. It’s recommended to freeze birds before eating them in order to destroy any lingering microbes. I guess it’s similar to flash-freezing fish before it’s turned into sushi; another line of defense against contamination.
We then did the same thing to Heimlich and Plumpy. It was particularly difficult to watch Plumpy go because he was such a distinct member of the flock. For the longest time, we thought he was a she….a Rosie O’Donnell butch hen who rode roughshod over the other hens. Until the constant crowing and obsessive mounting indicated otherwise (or did it?).
All in all, processing three birds took about two hours, from capturing and caging them to bagging and freezing them.
I wouldn’t say it was a particularly enjoyable experience…it was quite emotional, as a matter of fact….but I’m glad I partook. It gives me a little more appreciation and respect for the animals whose lives are sacrificed so that I may eat meat.
And now I can finally look forward to eating some decent chicken.
For the last two nights in a row, I’ve been awoken to the sounds of a shrill, screeching animal lurking somewhere in the hinterlands of our property.
I don’t know what kind of animal it is though its screams sound like a baby being stabbed to death, but I can only guess the animal is a wannabe chicken killer: a raccoon, maybe….a badger? I have a feeling it stalks the perimeter of the electric fence around the Hen Hut, screaming in frustration, or climbing all over the new chicken tractors, trying to figure out a way to get in to maul the 50 baby chicks.
Both nights, our border collie Cowboy and I were awakened by the predator’s cries at the exact same time. We both leapt out of bed at once. I threw on my chicken boots, grabbed a flashlight and threw open the back door. Cowboy tore off barking into the night, searching for the trespasser, and I ran as quickly as my pregnant belly would allow me.
(Jake and Sunny, meanwhile, slept peacefully.)
Cowboy and I ran up to the Hen Hut. The predator had vanished. Cowboy tried to sniff out the intruder while I checked on the birds. All of them were accounted for. The electric fence worked. I checked in on the chicks. They too were well, if a bit agitated-looking.
When it was clear the predator had disappeared, Cowboy and I ambled back to the house for bed. Though I could tell Cowboy was a bit disappointed he didn’t get to wage bloody combat with another animal.
Another night maybe.
In the meantime, crisis averted. And Jake and Sunny hardly stirred.
In an attempt to further reduce the possibility of egg breakage in the nesting boxes, we Jake invested in a bunch of fancy plastic inserts that feature soft bristles, which are supposed to better cushion the eggs as they fall from the hens’ egg makers.
New nesting box inserts; a delightful Martha Stewart shade of blue.
To be honest, I don’t think we really needed these things since our old inserts — squares of smooth, sturdy plastic covered with a bedding of straw — worked well enough, but try telling that to my husband, who never met a piece of FarmTek equipment he didn’t buy.
Old nesting box inserts
Which ones work best? Last night I noticed three broken eggs in one of the boxes. Had this happened on the black plastic, I would have simply rinsed it off, dried it and covered the insert with a fresh layer of straw. But because it happened on one of the new mats, the egg yolk got all stuck in the tiny bristles, making it impossible to clean without a toothbrush. It was a giant pain in the butt and I was already in a bad mood because my back was freaking killing me due to Baby Chuckie laying waste to my lumbar spine.
The verdict: Newer isn’t necessarily better. Gimme the old pads back. (And ye gads, can I have this freakin’ baby already?)
"You think you have it rough? Try laying an egg a day, lady."
I’m confused about something.
Polyface Farm’s Joel Salatin, who featured prominently in Michael Pollan’s book, The Omnivore’s Dilemma, has spoken at length about the sanitizing benefits of owning chickens. On his farm here in Virginia, he says that he free ranges his chickens on pasture recently vacated by his cows. The chickens root around in the cow’s dung, munching on larvae eggs and other insects, leaving the pasture nice and clean and free of bugs. He says this is the all natural method for keeping away insects without pesticides.
But I want to know, what about all the larvae and insects harboring in the chicken poop?
I ask this question because we keep our chickens confined behind a 500-square foot portable electric fence that we move to a fresh patch of grass each week. I’ve noticed that the amount of chicken poop that accumulates in their pen over those seven days attracts all kinds of nasty bugs and flies. And the smell! It’s horrible. Especially on a hot summer day. Reminds me of a truck stop off I-95. And the chickens seem extremely uninterested in rooting around in their own dung for insects.
So I have to wonder just how good of land sanitizers are the birds when they themselves bring pests.
WWJD? (What Would Joel Do.)
Why does this hen’s back look like this?
She’s starting to look like the Colonel’s Original Recipe more by the day.
There are two explanations, as far as I can tell.
Number one, this hen is the low man on the totem pole. She’s at the bottom of the pecking order; the other hens brutalize her because she wears off-brand sneakers and has no boobs. (Oh wait, I’m thinking back to my own middle school days.) I’ve said many times, chickens are very hierarchical — it’s where the term pecking order comes from — everyone in the flock knows their place. Step out of line and a chicken gets stabbed in the back with a beak! I should mention that she’s not the only hen in the flock who’s starting to look a little rough around the edges. There are at least 3-4 more.
THe books say pecking can be exacerbated by crowded conditions. But c’mon — my flock spreads out like tourists in a Costa Rican time share. They have ample room to run, stretch, bathe, sleep, and lay eggs.
The Hen House has more square footage than my last NYC apartment
Which leads me to my other theory:
The two roosters are mounting a handful of hens too frequently. This hen may be Heimlich AND Plumpy’s favorite. She’s become their personal concubine — like Princess Leia with Jabba The Hut.
I can’t have that. Call me sexist, but a hen’s life is worth far more to me than a rooster’s. Methinks Heimlich or Plumpy or BOTH will have to be dispatched.
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