Archive for the ‘Animals – Chickens’ Category
September 20, 2009 – Inaugural Chicken Butchering
Today was the day we’ve been anticipating for quite some time. Two years ago the closest locker that butchered chickens (about 25 miles away) stopped processing chickens. Last year, the next closest locker (about 80 miles away) stopped doing chickens. Rather than drive even further – twice – once to drop off and a day or so later to pick up, we decided to try to be more efficient and do it ourselves.
Here’s the initial setup. I made some makeshift killing cones out of some aluminum flashing I had lying around. Hiding behind the cones is a 35 quart turkey fryer for a scalder, then the new featherman plucker, (we looked into making a homemade whizbang, but the price was 2/3 of a featherman so we went in with two other farmers to get this plucker). Next is the table for cutting up, finally some big coolers for chill tanks. We decided to take it easy and only do 20 birds the first time to test out our system.
Linda working on cutting up a chicken. We are very pleased with the way the afternoon went. It probably took about an hour and half to do the 20 birds, not counting set-up and cleanup. It’s not often that something goes better and takes less time than you plan for, but that was the case today. I think the key was having great information. The featherman web site has a great couple of YouTubes showing how to butcher that were very helpful in addition to GJ from her butchering many decades ago.
I was pleased for a number of reasons. The plucker worked like a champ – it tumbled the feathers off in a matter of seconds. The makeshift scalder worked well enough and kept the temperature very steady. I’m pleased with the flexibility as well. Before, you needed to get appointments at the locker 8 weeks ahead of time. Now, the birds can be done when they are ready, not when the schedule says. We’ll probably end up doing a couple of times per batch – give some of the smaller ones time to catch up or have batches with different sizes. The threat of transporting in hot weather is gone as well. I also think it’s cleaner – for the birds and the people. No co-mingling or cross-contamination with other chickens. There was not a noticeable smell doing this outside. That is in contrast to the waterproof-apron- wearing employees in a hot, humid soup of water vapor and chicken dander in the plants. I also like the more humane killing method, to my way of thinking, using the cones instead of the wildly flopping birds of other methods. We also ended up much cleaner than I imagined
All in all, we are very pleased with the event and will have the rest to do in a while and then turkeys at Thanksgiving.
one year ago…”Claire’s Birthday Event”
September 2, 2009 – Rogue Chicks
This hen is a repeat offender in hatching a clutch of eggs away from the hen house. This is her second brood of the summer, this time eight delightful chicks.
About half of them are black and the rest variations of brown. You can see all eight of them here if you count the leg of the one behind the hen.
Here’s a close-up of one of the chicks – looks like this one may have some Aracuna parentage.
August 26, 2009 – Chicken Tractors
It’s going to be a lean chicken year at high hopes this year. Uncertainty about lockers closing down and deliberations about buying a chicken plucker pushed our decision to get chicks out to our second batch time, and the skunk killing about 65 of our chicks leaves us with about 35 left, probably about enough for our family and none for sale.
The remaining chickens are tucked away in their movable chicken tractors where they get fresh pasture daily and protection from varmits.
one year ago…”Linda on Grinnell College Home Page”
August 1, 2009 – Skunk in the Brooding House; 35 Lost
Martin came running in the house this morning at chore time, yelling in an excitable voice about a skunk in with the chicks. Even though we have a cat named skunk, the intensity of his voice told us it was not a cat skunk, but a skunk skunk.
We went out to see what was up and sure enough, in the corner of the brooding area was a skunk, with bodies of dead chicks littered about the brooding area.
I couldn’t shoot the skunk in the brooding area because it was on a cement floor and had a small cement wall next to it. So Houston, we have a problem. We need to get the skunk out of the cafeteria. This particular skunk had violated our “tithing to nature” and had decimated over 1/3 of our chickens.
We sat and thought for a while – tried opening the doors and banging on metal to try to make the skunk decide to leave. It’s a delicate matter to try to upset the skunk enough to leave, but not enough to make it spray. This is the question nearly every ruralite has to face sometime – how do I get rid of the skunk?
The obvious answers are to let it leave on its own, or try to catch it in a live trap. Neither of those were acceptable since it was already in the cafeteria, so to speak, and not in any hurry to leave or to walk into a baited trap. Then it dawned on me – water! Rain happens in nature – the skunk should not be too alarmed with rain and it might make the skunk want to leave to seek shelter. So we retrieved a hose out and gently sprinkled the skunk from on high – much like a cat, the skunk did not like the rain, but was familiar enough with it not to be alarmed enough to spray and ran out of the building where he was immediately introduced to Mr. Remington for violating the tithing to nature rule at high hopes.
one year ago…”Envirothon Part 1: The Long Road to Flagstaff”
June 17, 2009 – More “Wild Chicks”
Martin had been keeping his eyes on a clutch of eggs in the barn. When we were working on the door, Martin found the eggs were all cracked.
I told him to look for the chicks, because maybe they had hatched (or eaten by a critter).
It didn’t take him long to find the mother and the chicks, in this case a Buff Orpington hen and five chicks. Finding a “free range” mother hen and chicks is like a combination of Santa’s presents and finding a 20 dollar bill on the street. It sure beats keeping motherless chicks under a brooder.
one year ago…”Claire in Washington DC: Episode 1″
June 10, 2009 – Road Hay
Is it free? Is it easy? Do kids like to help? Sign me up – it’s “road hay” season again. The county sickle-bar mowers have cut the long grass along the sides of the roads and it seems a waste to just let it sit there.
We can always use organic material, whether for bedding, composting, or in this case, Martin is spreading it around in the area close to the chicken coop where all the plants have been beaten down. It’s easy to scoop up with a hay fork and Martin likes to pack it into the pickup truck with the topper and we can get quite an amount in one trip and then decide where it will do the most good.
one year ago…”Bad Feeling about Next Few Days”
June 9, 2009 – Barred Rock Chicks
A few weeks ago a barred rock hen squirreled away a clutch of eggs outside of the hen house (so we couldn’t grab them) and hatched a brood of six chicks. She’s a good mom and has kept all six alive for a couple of weeks.
They are starting to forage further and further away from the barn as days go on.
one year ago…”They Said a Quiet Day – WRONG”
January 23, 2009 – Laying Hen Update
The layers we ordered in early December were finally given free reign of the coop this week.
They are growing up nicely and all of them survived the brooding in temperatures down to -25.
Getting in and out of the coop has been a challenge, with the continual drifting, water dripping off the roof and filling waterers. So, it was time to get the axe and shovel out and free the doors of snow and ice.
one year ago…”It’s Cold, That Leaves Only Accounting”
December 7, 2008 – Off Season Brooding
We have experienced reduced production in the laying hens, in part because we did not replace our two and three year old hens last summer. So, to get back on track next spring, we ordered 35 more last week.
You may remember the entry about trying to ready the new brooder. With the cold weather, we decided to try to keep the chick in the basement for a few weeks, rather than having them out in the cold coop while breeding them. So far so good – they don’t eat much and don’t smell as long as the “litter box” is changed occasionally.
June 27, 2008 – Chickens Need Rethinking
The loss of our local chicken locker threw us for a loop this year. Instead of driving 20 minutes away and taking the chickens with us when we left, the closest other locker is an hour and 20 minutes away and we needed to take two trips, once to drop them off, then another to pick them up the next day.
The chicken raising business is perhaps the riskiest and least profitable enterprise we do. Feed went up 25%, butchering cost doubled, and we used $70 in gas just to drop off and pick up the chickens at the locker. I dropped them off on Wednesday and because of the longer trip to locker than usual and heat while we were waiting in line to start, we started losing chickens waiting in line. I think we lost seven of the largest ones as they are most prone to overheat. Another person waiting with us had the same problem, but we were able to move about 50 of her chickens from her horse trailer to the empty box of the pickup.
The next episode was when Linda picked them up the next day – a storm had moved through the town before Linda arrived and power was out at the locker. The locker owner understandably did not want to open the locker doors with the power off, because he wanted to keep as much cold in the locker while the power was off. So more waiting while waiting for power to be restored.
We dropped about half the frozen chickens off with customers and kept the rest as a 50-50 mix between frozen and fresh for ourselves. So this morning Linda and Emma worked on cutting up the chickens in meal-sized portions for quick winter meals.
We’ve been debating doing on-farm butchering, and the cost associated with the locker, the gas to drive there and the eight hours of time driving and waiting at the locker (not counting waiting for power to be restored) push us to think about that direction.
June 14, 2008 – Nearby Tornado Cell
We had a nice day – no rain, but heavy rain and hail just missed us when a supercell passed to our north a few miles.
This is a look at the backside of the storm just after a tornado warning was issued. The whitish part nearing the ground to the left of the farmstead in the distance is what everyone was worried about. We were so grateful we were spared more rain or wind damage.
As the barn and chicken coop are sopping wet with manure and water and the first hay cutting has not yet been made, I improvised and found some bedding along the road! It was easy to pick up and I hauled five truckloads home from within a mile of our house for the barn and coop.
The chickens are enjoying their new bedding, complete with seeds to peck at for fun and nutrition!
one year ago…”Thingamajig Thursday #76″
May 16, 2008 – Tyson’s “Natural Raised Without Antibiotics” NOT!
It was much heralded when Tyson Meats came out with a line of “chicken raised without antibiotics” last year. Pay very close attention to the wording of the claim. Americans, led by doctors who see increasing cases of antibiotic resistance in human patients, have become more aware of the importance of not ingesting antibiotics as a course of daily life, thus the press release from Tyson announcing the new line of chicken.
Now, Tyson’s biggest competitors have taken Tyson to court. First, for labeling their chicken “raised without antibiotics” because it infers that other chicken is not as good. There have been a number of cases of “food disparagement” mainly against organic or natural food companies whose mainline competitors claim that making a statement that milk is free of rBSt or free of antibiotics disparages other foods and the courts have been sympathetic and ruled against the labels. The organic meat company I had the privilege of serving on the board of directors ran into this when a few years ago we wanted to test every beef animal for BSE at the company’s cost and put on the label “each animal tested for BSE,” but that would have been big trouble because it implies that other meat is not safe. The USDA forbid us in this case.
I always thought that this was a law aimed directly at small and organic companies from the big food corporations. After all, virtually any marketing claim implies that one product is better than another. Take Campbell’s Soup “Mm-Mm Good” – doesn’t that imply that other soups are not good? Or doesn’t “Good to the Last Drop” imply that other coffees beside Maxwell house are not good to the last drop.? Or perhaps closer to Tyson’s case is that “Finger Lickin’ Good” KFC chicken claim means that other chicken isn’t. I think you probably get my point.
The only difference with the latest Tyson case was that it was a big company suing another company for food disparagement. Tyson’s main competitors Smithfield and Perdue have lost $10′s of millions to Tyson as a result of consumers running to Tyson’s new “raised without antibiotics” label. In the course of the lawsuit this bit of Pulitzer-quality deceptive language came out of Tyson’s regarding their “raised without antibiotics claim:”
Then during trial in federal court in Baltimore, Tyson officials acknowledged they also inject eggs several days before they hatch with antibiotics that are approved for use in humans. Dave Hogberg, Tyson’s senior vice president for consumer products, said it is a common industry practice.
Hogberg said injecting eggs with antibiotics did not undermine the “raised without antibiotic” label because the term “raised” is understood to cover the period that begins with hatching.
More consumers are becoming concerned about the use of antibiotics in poultry, swine and cattle because they and many public health experts think that it contributes to the rise of antibiotic-resistant viruses in humans.
So, watch the language carefully – injecting the eggs with an anti-biotic bath means “raised without antibiotics!”
one year ago…”Technical Communication Conference”
April 28, 2008 – Hot Chicks and Cold Nights
I wonder how many googlers will be very disappointed in viewing real chicks after searching for “hot chicks” in a search engine!
I’ve found over the years the most reliable predictor of unseasonably cold weather is the day chicks arrive on the farm. This year is no exception – we expect a low in the 20′s tonight and our county has a freeze warning and a flood warning – now there’s a combination that sounds like fun!
The chicks came at an unexpected time, so being the good farmer, I just used whatever I could find lying around to help keep the heat close to the chicks. Linda says these chicks must feel like they’re “living in a van down by the river” due to their ramshackle accommodations (apologies to the late Chris Farley). There’s a piece of leftover metal siding, an old storm window screen draped with one of the circa 1972 draperies that graced our house when we moved in, another more modern screen with an old sheet, and a salvaged window out of an outbuilding.
I must admit, I’m partial to the genius that is the old window over the makeshift brooder as it keeps heat in, while offering a peep in at the peeps.
one year ago…”Starting to Plant 150 Trees”
April 25, 2008 – Egg Season
We are at the height of the egg season. We do not supplement extra light in the winter to increase productivity, so the spring brings a natural flush of production.
This year, I’m going to try to freeze some eggs in ice cube trays for cooking later in the year when the flush of eggs trickles to a near stop later in the winter.
one year ago…”Fruit Blossoms = 3 Day Rain”
