Poultry Concern

I'm an emotional spender. I know this, I deal with it. But on my very worst days, when I'm feeling a wreck and happen to be at a store (which I try very hard not to do when I am emotional) I tend to well...over buy. Even if it's just a couple extra things from the dollar section. When I had to rehome the goats that was a very sad time for me. I compensated with poultry. Something tangible I could have. While they were a cheap investment initially, I am realizing these large water fowl are eating more than I was prepared for.

Ducks, Geese and Turkeys eat a lot. They are meant to get big, fast. Part of the over buying was due to the non-sexing the three hatcheries I bought from didn't offer. The turkeys came from a guy with a local hatchery a few towns over who sold as a straight run. The others from two different feed stores that also bought straight runs from the hatcheries they ordered from. Apparently, vent sexing these fowl is different from a chicken though I haven't had luck doing that myself either. So, I bought enough to cover any day-old losses and crossed my fingers I got some females, planning to sell off or eat whatever extra males I ended up with.

A few months later I have been able to get the ducks and the turkeys gender figured out. Mainly because they have distinguishing features. The flipped sex feather on the rump of the ducks. The pouffed out strutts on the turks. The geese? I'm still unsure of.

Out of six turkey poults I have four toms and two hens. I have a friend interested in one of the Toms for Thanksgiving and one will be ours for that day, too. I wanted to keep a mated pair or whatever females and 1 male to try and breed out for next year, these heritage poults go for $10 a piece at a week old, $12 for 2 weeks and so on. It seems like a good investment. That is, if the Toms will stop chasing the dog.

Instead of selling off one Tom -which really wouldn't put a dent in the food consumption- I think I'm going to ask for those interested to put a small deposit down on the bird of choice. Maybe $10 that would go towards a bag of feed and give me a guarentee that we would have a buyer for these twenty pound beasts come November. I need to research free range butchered turkey prices.

The ducks I wanted only a mated pair and out of four I got two sets of boy/girl. According to a farmer in the check out lane at Tractor Supply (where all the best information comes from), one duck eats as much as nine chickens in a day. Even without the paper backing, that I believe. I'm trying to find a home for one of the duck pairs now. Feeding the equivalent of 18 chickens in a day when they aren't contributing yet by eggs, is a little rough. We would dispatch them and eat them, but we're not big duck fans here. They were never meant to be food at our house anyway.

The little chickens I bought we only lost one day-old, so we will have 23 hens laying soon. I have been having a hard time finding buyers for the extra dozens of eggs I get each week (we're up to 6 eggs a day now, on average), so I am trading five of them for two weeks of organic produce at a nearby farm. The five little hens don't eat a whole lot, and since we free range them on 10 acres, they forage for much of their food but keeping track of them and feeding them is still in the cards. I'll still have 18 laying hens by the end of July.

This weekend we're dispatching at least one rooster and the last of the Christmas meat birds. The poor dear hen has started laying. When I saw her in the nest box, the expectant nervous look she gave me said "See, I'm contributing!" I've been adding one of her pretty brown eggs in with the blues and greens that I have been selling. We *may* keep on the smaller rooster just because there is an opportunity for us to sell fertilized eggs but I'm not sure it's what I want. We came out here to sell healthy food to those around us, science research is great. I'm just not sure it's what this litte farm is about.

Out of all the animals we have the poultry and fowl really are the easiest to care for and mainatin. Other than our one hen still nursing the injury from the roos we've been very lucky health-wise with our birds. So, for now we're downgrading a bit on the number of animals we have and planning out what to do with the rest. I'd advertise more loudly that we have eggs for sale but I've heard so many horror stories of people getting caught selling eggs without a license (that is very hard to come by) that even the little bit of word of mouth we've been doing has me on edge.

It makes me sad to think we live in a country where trading eggs or milk from your farm to someone else for money or other food is a crime. The regulations make it difficult for anyone without a subsidy or a bank loan to get a foot-hold in the Ag community. I'm doing what I can.

Sunday Dinner.

It's happened again. Another agressive rooster. We hoped dispatching Terror Chicken would have made the cock to hen ratio fairer but it has not. I'm nursing a hen that has huge open wounds down both her sides because of rough mounting and then the two remaining males literally cock fight ON TOP of the poor mounted hens.

I understand that the young cocks are clumsy and I suppose we still have a fairly slim male/female ratio to work out. There are eight eligible ovulating females (out of twenty-three) and two males. I suppose that isn't quite good enough for those randy bastards.

While I was running for my life across the field  to reach the dog in knee high muck boots as a knee high Barred Rock ran after me, neck feathers flared and flapping like the fires of Hell, I decided then and there roosters are not for us. Only minutes before Rob (the man of the house and a war vet) in a single miraculous leap, jumped from the ground onto the hood of his Lincoln after a good loud scream in an attempt to scurry away from said rooster.

Someone in the hen house always has to be at the top of the pecking order. I just don't think it needs to be a male. Sunday, Chicken is on the menu.

Eggzy

My friend Ara just posted about this new site that connects flock owners with people looking to buy local eggs. I just set up an Egg Stand for HeartSong. Let me know if you can see it and what you think of the site.

The only thing that is a little awkward about the site (which is in a Beta mode BTW) is that there is no easy way to search your zipcodes. Egg Stands are listed in order of dozens available with the zipcode on the side.

Hopefully, in the future there will be an interactive map or a zip code or area search function but for now it's nice to join a community that supports local Ag through the US.

For our own flock we are up to 5 laying birds though I'm not 100% sure who the two new girls are. Their eggs are blue/greens so I'm thinking it's a few of the Borg Americaunas. The eggs are on the small side and not consistent just yet, they're just now over 4 months so it's a little early for them to start laying anyway.

The egg counter on the side will go away soon, I've completely lost count. It'll be replaced with our Eggzy Egg Stand link. (Can someone check to see if the link there goes to Eggzy or my farm?)

Feed prices and feeding a flock this size is getting a bit insane for me right now. If you're interested in some free-ranged eggs let me know, I've been selling them for $3 a dozen ($2.50 if you bring me an egg carton or return one of mine) and have 3 dozen available right now. I'm also looking to part with some 2-3 month hens of varying breeds.

Meet Torture Chicken

This is Torture Chicken. He is a Rhode Island Red rooster. He is also mean. Very mean. The children named him Torture Chicken because he is so very mean. He is really, really terribly rough when he um..."sits" on the three older laying hens. He likes to stalk people. And give them the evil eye.

Torture Chicken is still fairly young for being such a jerk. He is one of the four week old chickens I bought myself for Christmas. One of the four cross-my-fingers-I-want-more-hens baby chickens that all turned out to be roosters. The other RIR got killed by the neighbor's dog. Maybe that is why Torture Chicken is so terrible. Maybe he's seething in uncontrollable fury over the loss of his only brother. Maybe his blood boils with the injustice of the world and his inability to do anything about it.

Whatever his reason he's a mean, onery bastard and this weekend will be soup. Tasty, evil soup.

New Digs

The three Buff Orpingtons and the Black Maran have moved from the nursery into the A-frame coop with attached run. There were just too many birds getting too big in one smallish area. Also the three Phi Beta girls decided they would stoop to roosting in the larger coop now that a couple roosters are gone. If you can't be 'em, roost with 'em.

These Buffs are six and a half weeks old now, the Maran is supposed to be 9 weeks but I think the chicken guy aged her wrong. She's just so small. Once we dispatch two of the three roosters and the three remaining broilers we'll move these girls in with the big chickens. (We've gotten one chicken being processed and hope to get to the remaning four today.)

I went a little gung-ho buying pullets this year. I had a few reasons

1. Pullets notoriously end up as roosters at our house 

2. A dog has killed one so far and completely free-ranged birds are more suseptable to losses. (though we have Leeloo outside guarding them and mature roosters now plus guard geese brooding)

3. We're not keeping all the chickens as they age

I'm hoping to raise them up to 2-3 months old and then hand pick the chickens I want to keep as laying birds then sell off the remaining. I'd like about 15-20 layers at a time, I have a half dozen more than that now.

I'm still debating what to do with the roosters I'm sure we're bound to get.* We'll either raise them to slaughter size or sell them off at about 4-5 months, when we're for sure they're boys but not before they start with the testosterone nonsense. Or we will build multiple small, movable A-frames and keep the cock with the hens and brood out babies for sale.

I haven't decided yet.

I bought many, many different kinds of chickens because of my lack of being able to have many kinds of animals. I figured if all I can do is poultry this year, well, this year won't go to waste. Plus they're all unique and pretty and I like telling them apart by colorings, giving them names and such.**

My only issue now is that I bought a lot of solid black chickens and now that they've lost their baby colorings I can't tell an Australorp from a Sex Link and they were getting really close in size to the Maran -which is also solid black. At least the Wyandottes have gotten their white colors in and should be marked significantly different from the Barred Rocks.

I might have to have a chicken expert help me identify them later on though.

*Watch in a few months for a post that we got entirely all pullets. I'm convinced Fate laughs hard at me sometimes.

**We have learned to only name chickens we're not going to eat.

Pallet Brooders

We've used pallets in a lot of farm projects. We've made a deck, a compost bin, a goat mountain and now brooders. We're lucky to have a two stall open air barn but the 10x10 size is a little too large for baby birds. I've made two brooders, one in each stall. The first I made yesterday for the ducklings, goslings and poults.

 The far right pallet is attached to the wall using L brackets which makes it easy to disassemble. I've wrapped one side with chicken wire nailed in place using U staples for fencing. I had a few spare hinges I used to attach the pallet on the left to the stationary pallet on the right.

The shorter wall I used some salvaged IKEA laminate flooring simply screwed into the pallet to prevent poultry escapes. Then we secured a rubber strap (again we had lying around) to keep them closed.

Close up of the wire on the pallet.

Cozy poultry.

This is the smaller brooder made with the same concept. L brackets secure this pallet to the wall and hardware cloth is tacked on only the bottom half of the pallet. 

 The second side is secured with a fence kit I bought for some project years ago and never did.

Inside the chicken brooder.

The lock on the chicken brooder.

Total cost for all these projects was very reasonable. We got the pallets for free or $1 a piece. The chicken wire was a gift from my mom (when she gave us the 10 chickens at Christmas) but would have cost approx $10. L brackets cost approximately .50 a piece (we used 6, so $3). Rubber strap was about $2.

Chicken brooder costs roughly $8 for 16 square feet of brooder space. (fancy lock)

Turkey/Duck/Goose brooder roughly $6 for 32 square feet of brooder space. (less fancy locks)



Making your own meat

In January I posted about our need to butcher a mean rooster and my inability to then eat it afterwards because of emotional barriers I didn't know how to get around. I had almost convinced myself that going back to vegetarianism was probably the better way. But to me* it wasn't taking responsibility for my food source, it was hiding from reality.

I won't lie to you and say that slaughtering animals is an easy thing.

It's not.

It shouldn't be.

But that initial experience has opened me up to the ability to butcher our own birds with -well, I wouldn't say detachment because that's the whole reason we're doing it ourselves- perhaps more understanding.

They are prey.

I am a predator.

I'm just smarter than other predators and take care of my prey. But they still have value beyond my dinnerplate. They are still Life in one of it's majestic forms. Even as I choose which bird's life will end, I still mourn for it and thank it for its sacrifice.

The dog that killed my bird for sport more than food has helped opened my eyes. If I don't eat it, something else will. It's what I choose to eat and how I care for it before hand that tips the scales, in my opinion, to what is responsible and what is not.

Yesterday we butchered two of our Red Broiler roosters. I was able to assist on the entire thing from start to finish, even capturing the live birds myself, and I did not waver. Other than the initial kill, the children were able to be present and asked questions. We thanked the birds aloud together for the food they provide us. I showed them the insides and labeled the parts for them as we took them out. Leeloo happily ate the heart and liver of one of the birds. We tried to make as much of the bird as we could with little waste and what we couldn't eat, we composted or left deep in the woods for the scavengers. Even the blood will be mixed with water to feed the fig trees.

My progression from only touching boneless, skinless white meat neatly packed in a styrofoam tray to grabbing a clucking rooster by the feet and an hour later vaccuum sealing boneless, skinless white meat in my kitchen has been a huge travel. But I know it's the right one, since I posted on our facebook wall the photo of the neatly wrapped package and have three people eager to purchase our homegrown chicken.

I'll have another post about the actual process, my experience with the different breeds, slaughtered weights and stuff in the next few days. I just wanted an initial post about how I feel about the process now since it's such a dramatic change from where I was at a few months ago.

*I stress that this is a personal choice. I do not look down on those that cannot or will not eat meat because of the fact of slaughter, that one life has to end to satisfy another, that is a different kind of sacrifice, but these are my feelings about the issue. I have been a vegetarian in the past, I don't feel for myself that is the right choice at this time.

Broke 100

Our three laying birds have been hard at work. In two months they've communitively laid over 100 eggs.

One of One Hundred.

When I first started with four little day old chicks impulsively bought from the feed store, I never realized the road I'd be travelling down. Four seemed like a huge number of birds. We had just about doubled our farm animals with them at the time. They're amazing little things able to forage nearly exclusively for their food and then deposit payment for our letting them in the form of beautiful little eggs.

Hard at work.

The three girls left from the original flock of four are the only egg contributors at this time. Imagine that, 3 birds, 8 weeks and 100 eggs. Considering they're also only 7 months old, its pretty impressive. We've also had the opportunity to share our eggs with others. It makes me proud to hear back how delicious they are. We have five more Amerucaunas just over two months old that will be joining the laying flock. Add in the eleven 2.5 week old chicks and the three .5 week olds and we'll have a veritable egg farm come fall.

Next Generation.

We're raising some up for sale. I'm sure some of these will end up roosters. We seem to have back luck that way. The feedstore only guarentees 90% pullets from the sexed birds we bought. Either way, we've come a long way from 4 birds in the back yard just seven short months ago.



A Farm Girl's Best Accessory

If Cordi and Emmy are outside they will have chickens in their arms.

At first I objected to their constant handling of the chickens.

But they are careful and gentle and listen for the chickens when they cluck to get down.

It has definately helped make the chickens calmer and friendlier.

And they don't exclude the two month old chickens either. Which is wonderful, perhaps they can tame one of the boys we have applying for the Rooster position.

Well, one can hope. Either way, the chickens are getting luved up. Which, I think, makes the eggs just a bit tastier.

My new obsession

I'm trying hard not to let the news of no sheep or goats pull me down too far. There are still a lot of things we can do and we need to focus and concentrate on the positives. One thing we definately, positively, 100% can have is chickens.

Right now, the small A-frame coop houses the three oldest birds. I built that awesome new coop and they hate it. They're like the cool girls in school that hang out by themselves and whisper about you when they know you're looking. They look down on it like it's the chess club and they're the top of the pyramid at football games. They don't like being in there with the little chickens.  They steal the little ones food and scare them off from the scraps because cool girls don't eat with loosers. They make eggs, gawddamn it. They're the Phi Beta's of my barnyard and everyone else is in on scholarship.

I like totally love them.

I haven't grow attached to the new bunch of chickens from Christmas mainly because I'm still heart scarred from butchering Coco and the majority of that batch are going to the pot. Soon. I was adamant the kids didn't name any of them. After the one that got murdered by that mangy neighbor dog, we're down to 8 out of 13 that are definately roasting material. The remaining 5 are so alike that I've started referring to them as 1 of 5, 2 of 5 and so on. They're nearly identical and the Borg identifiers aren't even bird specific, I just make sure there is a total of 5 of 5 at lights out.

Since I have so so many Americaunas (the three big girls plus the five little Borgs) I am desperate to mix it up. The hatchery websites charge just about what I'd buy in birds for shipping making a $35 order nearer to $75. That's a little rich for my blood. Searching CraigsList I found some of the more interesting breeds available from a feed store. I packed up the kids this morning and we headed out to buy some birds.

I went a little overboard. I have twelve new babies brooding in the barn bringing our current total of birds up to 28.

Silver Laced Wyandotte (this is my favorite, so far.)

 Black Australorp (Can I have 2 favorites?)

Buff Orpington (ok so, three?)

Rhode Island Red (Classic. But not my favorite)

I also grabbed (cause, why the heck not?) two Black Sex Links or Rock Reds since those are a hybrid and are sexed by their color. Which is slightly creepy but they're definately pullets and we don't need more she's-a-he surprises. Now the naming begins! Should we go with theme names or just let the kids pick silly ones like the peeping chick they want to name "Noisy"?*

*the kids get to name everything so don't feel too badly for them.

Happy Little Haul

Seriously.

The neighbor's 2 dogs escaped this morning and in front of Rob who was shouting and spraying it with water and the owner calling them, one of the dogs took off with one of the 2 month old Rhode Island Red rooster chicks I had bought myself for Christmas in it's mouth.

Why do I feel like I should be singing this to a country tune? 

The irony was that it was the husband of the neighbor that told me Monday we couldn't keep the goats. Rob -in his frustrated anger and not knowing it was that neighbor- commented about us having to get rid of baby goats yet dogs that are causing harm are allowed.

The dogs took off with their bounty. The neighbor followed after them. Then he came back a few minutes later cradling a half dead baby rooster in his arms. He's offered to pay for it but it's the principle of the thing. It's another nail our confining coffin of country life. The wee rooster is in a clean nest under the heat lamp with water near the tip of his beak. He won't stand and won't drink after a couple hours resting. I have little hope for the poor thing. Even if he was destined at a later date to become dinner, he still shouldn't have to suffer being mangled by a beast twenty times it's size. He should have had another half a year at least and gone out with a quick humane death. I'm seeing what happens in the next few hours. It breaks my heart but we may have to put him down.

Now we have to invest hundreds into fencing for the chickens now that the dogs know where the fast food drive thru is unless we're ready to accept more chicken losses.  

Coop D'Jour

A few weeks ago I started a fairly big project. With the addition of fourteen new chickens the lovely A-frame portable chicken tractor we built last fall wasn't going to cut it anymore. I downloaded some instructions that were really more technique guides (which I also paid for -grrrr). There were no measurements, scale drawings or even just a set of instructions which you could modify based on the size coop you needed.

Needless to say, I was quite disappointed and not at a point where I wanted to invest any additional money into plans. So, armed with a few tens and an overall idea of what I wanted, me and the kids headed to the hardware store. I was just about knocked over with lumber prices and for some reason the Lowe's in our area up here only sell cull lumber by the truck load (also including warped and bent bits metals and other non-lumber items. Really people.) so I couldn't use scraps to build it. I headed out to the garden center and the guy out there said he'd sell the broken fence replacement panels half price. Bingo! We have a lumber winner!

I want to take a moment just to clarify how difficult it actual is piecing together a fairly large wooden project with no actual directions or measurements and odd scraps of wood while trying to work in the cold and/or rain and making sure the kids don't kill themselves in the house alone or walking through a construction zone. It's really difficult.

It took three hauls from two different lumber stores to get all the materials I needed at the best possible price. I did have to purchase some things new -a pretreated board for the bottom, straight framing timbers, screws and the roof. Overall, I made a 4x4' coop with 4 to 6' walls and an attached 4x1.5' seperate nest box with hinged lid for roughly $100.

Before hubby helped me level it and fix the door. Not terrible.

Nice and level, rooves are on and lock for the door has been placed.

We used chicken wire that was given to us by my mom with the chicks for the vents and tree limbs harvested from the forest for the perches.

The roof is made of corrugated plexiglass to maximize the light inside the coop. More light = longer laying days.

I used mistinted exterior paint for the coop and chose a light color to help reduce the heat build up inside. Regular price was $27, markdown made it only $5. It took 3/4 of the gallon since the fence panels suck it up tremendously. After these photos were taken I painted the floor, inside of the nest box and about 12" up the sides to repel water and be able to see pests easier.

Overall, I'm pleased with the coop and hope it makes the girls happy enough to give us lots more eggs!

It's All In the Egg

One of the easiest, quickest things you can do to up your food intake, lower waste, get free manure and entertainment is to get a flock of backyard birds. The small home flock has taken a huge leap forward recently. Birds living side by side business and commerce. Taking up so little room but giving so much in return.

We've only been co-habiting with chickens for six months but it feels like they've always been around.

But eggs don't come just from chickens; ducks, quail, and geese also give coop contributions. The white egg in the photo is from a duck. A marvelously large thing comprised almost entirely of yolk. The brown came from a free-range bird a few cities over and the blue-green is apparently now the trademark of HeartSong. I find these little treats -only one a day right now- scattered over the backyard. My three girls are still pre-teens in the poultry world. They're still learning what to do when this oblong thing pops out.

To me eggs are a natural thing for us to consume. Hens will lay eggs regardless of a rooster. I've likened it to a woman's menstrual cycle -a process that will happen regardless - which I think actually turned one of my friends vegan. Sometimes I suppose I have that effect on people.

We feed our birds whole grains and scraps of food, all the bugs they can eat and a limited supply of feed to suppliment over the winter when the bugs are scarcer. Their manure currently graces the tops of the upturned future garden plot; the minerals already soaking into the ground.

The unfertilized eggs will rot if not carefully picked up and prepared for another creature's lunch. It's a natural process that doesn't stress the bird, cause it pain or emotional upheaval. It's packed with nutrition and energy and can be used in a variety of ways from breads to breakfasts. After we're done, we bake the shells and feed them back to the birds, continuing the cycle and providing them with protein. There is literally no waste in a backyard

It's a good feeling to be producing something so vital, tending the creatures that provide them with fresh air, good food and lots of loving. Funny, how so much can come from something so little.

Of Chickens.

There is so much going on at the farm right now that involves poultry. It's funny because we're not really a "farm" yet. We're getting there, working towards it but there is a long way to go.

I'm currently in the process of building a 4x4' coop with an attached nesting box. Cross your fingers it's doesn't come out completely widdershins. I'm trying my best here but I'm doing it solo. I'm utilizing scraps and broken fence boards (the replacement privacy fence boards that get damaged or broken that the hardware store sells half price). So far I have a completed floor, 1 wall and most of 2 additional walls. I did purchase new lumber for the floor skids and framing but so far we're at a total of about forty dollars.

The fourteen chicks have been moved out to the barn in the goat's stall. They're doing fine so far with their heat lamp and many bodies to snuggle against.  The only complaint I have is that they go through feed like no one's business. We're needing to get another fifty pound bag and it's only been three weeks.

In other chicken news we got our first egg Friday night. It was tiny and blue-green and absolutely beautiful.

Saturday morning I took Coco to a local farm and had him slaughtered. It was a jarring experience for me. Remember now, I'm a city girl used to chicken unrecognizable from it's feathered beginnings. I had raised Coco since he was just a tiny puff ball of a chick so small I could close my hand all the way around him. It was -and still is- unsettling for me to have literally felt the void where his life had been only moments before his head came off. It was done quickly and resepectfully and I'd like to think he only had the one bad day in his five months of life. But I still haven't been able to bring myself to cook him and eat him. The scenes from the day keep flashing before my eyes when I see his saran wrapped carcass.

I'm avoiding the freezer right now.

One thing that I now realize that Coco had on his rooster duty roster was keeping the turkey vultures away. Yesterday morning I came out to see more than half a dozen of these giant birds perched on the barn. Another dozen were circling. They're the size of my dog. With a six foot wingspan.

Thankfully, they don't like people or dogs. So, Leeloo got barn duty for the rest of the day.

She was pretty happy with that. Working dogs need work. I think we're going to move her run over towards the barn as soon as we can manage it. I'm sure out of the brooding chicks we'll get quite a few rooster candidates. I'll test drive them to see who gets the position. Roosters aren't bad. They're good at keeping the chickens safe and mating them but they do have agressive tendancies. Some breeds more than others, some roosters are jerkier than some. Kinda like people in that respect.

I don't know what my chicken future holds. I know that while I can give them a good life, I can also give them a good death. Could I do it myself? I don't think I could. Could I help? Probably not. Does that mean that I will cease to eat chicken? I'm not sure yet. I have to discover if I feel that ensuring a happy and healthy life with a humane and respectful slaughter with minimal stress and pain that I am not present for is acceptable to me and my beliefs.

New Year, New Beginnings

The chicks in the bathroom have been escaping their cardboard homes. It's a bit startling to open the door or step out of the shower and have a curious little animal standing before you with it's head tilted wondering what the heck you're doing. And then poop all over the floor. I have decided that December is not a great month to buy chicks.

With the goats back with their momma's for a few weeks we have a free stall to brood the baby birds. We have to keep them away from Coco until he's dispatched. He doesn't seem to like intruders in his domain. We modified the gate with chicken wire and hung heat lamps from a pvc pole. The temps are beginning to dip again after a moderate week last week. I'm worried about them out there but free ranging in the bathtub isn't ideal either.

They seemed to do well last night, only the biggest, most feathered birds went out. The five Americaunas are still in a box in the bathroom but they're still so little escape isn't really an option right now. The Red Broilers are supposed to get near up to six pounds by sixty three days.

Coco still hasn't been slaughtered. I think we're both still working up the nerve. Neither of us has taken a life before and we've only been chicken farmers since August. Plus, Coco scares us. He stomps around the yard, stalking and making noises. He rushed me yesterday and I kicked a bucket at him (which didn't hit and didn't phase his attack) and then threw a gate to get away. He's much smaller than me but commands much feared respect. I'm refusing to defrost the chicken in the freezer until we do it though. Just seems wrong, somehow. But I think his dictatorship is causing stress in the girls which is why we haven't seen a single egg yet. We have bought a small piece of sheet metal to make a kill cone from and we've been researching techniques online. We're working up, just a bit slowly. (on a side note, if anyone lives near or around Gainesville and wants to come show us how to do this, we'd be much obliged.)

Yesterday, my neighbor's dog broke out and came for a visit, when I brought him back I asked if anyone in the area had a plow and might want to help me dig up some ground for a garden. I came back home with two names and a little hope. The first neighbor's tractor wasn't working good so I asked the second and I'm still waiting for the wife to ask the husband and get back to me. A plow would save me a lot of work, the grass here is stubborn and thick and while I'd get a great work out pulling it up by hand, I wouldn't have the engery after to actually plant anything. But the seeds are waiting.

 And so am I.

The benefit of the doubt

It's been about six weeks since we figured out our pullet was really a cockerel. In that time we've gotten a lot of advice for "dealing" with the fact that he's male. Most of the suggestions were slaughter. I had a hard time justifying killing our rooster just because he has the wrong gene for our farm. Being male isn't a death sentence and it's not an excuse for unnecessary slaughtering. It's not his fault we picked him out. Remember our goal here at HeartSong is to reconnect with our food, give it the best life possible and treat it with respect and compassion.

Truth is he's been a good rooster. He keeps his girls from straying too far from the coop. Or herds them back when they go too far. He sings to them when he finds tasty morsels and generally just struts around the barnyard as if he was four feet high instead of just the single one. I have noticed him becoming a little agressive with the girls whenever the desire to mate falls on him. Which is pretty darn frequently. But that's nature for the most part, I think. Cant' fault him that.

Up until yesterday I've let him be and he's lived his life being a rooster and all that it encompasses. But then he walked across the invisible line I've drawn for him. I told myself that as long as he was "good" -meaning not agressive- that he could stay. I have heard people say they have roosters that are just fine and dandy, perhaps Coco is one of those. I tried to give him the benefit of the doubt. Heck, having my girls brood their own chicks was a neat idea up until he attacked Amelia.

Now every time I look at him I am mentally guaging his weight for the pot. Her scratches on her face, neck and shoulder will heal and there probably won't be scarring but Coco has dissolved my trust in roosters.

Out of the fourteen still brooding in the bathroom, the roosters will be the first to go. Farm lesson 64 well and learned. This weekend his time is up.

Eve

Christmas Eve morning broke with the fields covered in sparkling frost. The four new chicks I bought myself for the holiday were merrily chirping away in the master bathroom. I filled their bowls and talked to them so they'd know my voice and set out for the outside chores. The air bit into my jersey knit jacket. This girl isn't used to tromping more than a few steps to tend the animals. The chickens in the barn strutted into the yard without a mind to the temperature. They wanted their breakfast, the icy bits were just frosting. I needed to get a move on and the wind helped me get my chores done that much faster. It was the day before Christmas, my mom was on her way and I desperately needed Benedryl and butter.

Alex -my oldest- and I set out on the twenty minute drive into town for our essentials. Everything took longer because everyone else was hunting down those frantic last minute things, too. We took our time and my mom beat us home. When I came inside the house was in an uproar, there was a present in the house I needed to see.

Ten more chickens greeted me with tiny chirps in the doorway. The five Americaunas and five Red Broilers were added to the box with my two Barred Rocks and two Rhode Island Reds. I'm not sure which was better, the chicks or the acceptatance and encouragement of my dream from my mom.

We ate, presents were shared and before I knew it they were headed back out. We're a good three hours from where we lived before when we were only three houses away from each other. The rest of the afternoon was spent tending animals and building an off-ground structure to place the rabbit cages. I mucked out the old horse droppings from the stall and made a small compost pile for the garden. The entire time our four birds were clucking and chittering about what we were doing, walking under feet and being shoo'd out of work areas. It wasn't the hinderance you'd imagine. The personality and curiosity make for comical watchings.

When darkness fell Leeloo was anxious and thrumming to run. This land is a veritble smorgasboard of scents for her to trail and track through the grasses. We have to keep her on a leash or run else she'll be in the woods and lost on a scent before she even realized it. I took my coat and grabbed her leash and let her pull me around at a breakneck run. It was exhiliarating and made me realize how out of shape I truly am.

She caught the smell of something that had her darting full-speed for the forest. The single outside light casts an illuminated circle that just bites the edge of the barn. We were headed past that into the inky black that coats the trees and land like a sheet. I didn't know what scent she caught and coyotes are notorious in these woods. My heart beat faster with something more than just excitement. Perhaps ancient self-preservation reared up in me but whatever it was had me throwing my entire body weight againt the desires of my fifty plus pound dog. We veered back into the safety of sight without much fuss and slowed our gait till we were still as could be with both our chests heaving in the bitter air. My heartbeat pounded in my ears as I rubbed her down.

It was a good day, so far different from what I'm used. But good in a way I hadn't really had before.

Turn this rooster off

Coco is crowing All. The. Time. starting at 3 this morning he has felt the need to declare his territory every hour on the hour, or sooner if he likes.

I'm not sure what to do. We have three weeks until we move (eighteen days really) and we're not legally allowed to have roosters. Now I know why.

What to do?

Revelations

Sometimes while you're travelling down the dusty path of life you are given certain truths. You take for granted what someone tells you, what you've heard or think you remember. You can go about your business knee deep in falsehoods and never even know it if you never bother to glance at your feet.

Recently, I discovered a falsehood. A mistake if you will. Though this wasn't intentional or sneaky or sly it opened my eyes to the realization that there are still some things I take soul deep for granted, just because a stranger told me so. And just so much I still don't know.

In my last post I invited you to meet the girls of our backyard flock. I have to apologize to you for passing on the misconception in the title post.

Coco is in fact not a girl. A new truth we learned three nights ago when we awoke to a distinct cock-a-doodle-do at five in the morning. That glorious crow opened our eyes to other behaivor and traits in our dear Coco that are very blatantly male.

Her...I mean his comb is quite a bit larger than the others. He pushes out his neck feathers into a mane when he's scared, fighting or irritated. He's quite a sight bigger (and always has been) than the girls. He's got beautiful green hued black tail feathers much longer than the other three. His feet are enormous. And then there was the tell-tale crowing which repeated this morning.

We did not want roos for a specific reason (mainly that we can only have 4 chickens in the city but agression was also a factor) so all these signs of testosterone have been ignored because I was ignorant of what a rooster really does and is. Being a first time chicken owner and not wanting roosters I never researched roosters, I had no idea of their behaivor and looks. I took the word of the feed store (and the extra pricing to have a sexed group of chickens) as an unfailable truth. But human chicken sexers are not free from error. No one is.

There really isn't much to do about it at this point. If we had discovered she was a he earlier we would probably have just sent him off to freezer camp, but for the past four months we've repeatedly told the kids these four would not be eaten. I would like to at least keep one truth in tact.