Chickens: October 2007 Archives

I recieved 6 blue orpington eggs. I set them in my incubator. I candled at day 4 and couldn't see any signs of veins. I candled again at day 7. No sign of growth. I gave them another 6 days and still I saw no veins.

This morning I pulled the plug on the incubator. I cracked open the eggs. Just as I suspected. The eggs are not fertile.

I am cleaning the incubator and getting it ready for another try.

 

I made another incubator.

I found this potato box at a thrift shop for $8.

We cut out a place in the lid and routed a channel so that a pane of glass can be inserted for observation. The glass is out now because the glare from my kitchen lights made it impossible to see inside.

The light is wired in the bottom part of the box where the little drawer is.

The thermostat is wired in the compartment where the eggs will rest.

A water wiggler, thermometer/hydrometer and the set up is complete and ready to regulate the heat.

For those who are still unsure about the wiring I made a photo of how the wiring is completed.

I cannot explain any better than I have in the other two incubator posts so maybe looking at this photo will help take away the rest of the mystery.

For those who have questioned the water wiggler. This is a digital thermometer/hydrometer with a probe and a water wiggler.

The probe on the thermometer is threaded into the water wiggler and placed along side the eggs. The temperature on the inside mimics the temperature of the inside of the eggs. The ideal hatching temperature inside the egg is 99.5 degrees F.

Use this setting of 99.5F to regulate your thermostat to turn on and off the light bulb to maintain the correct heat.

I am very pleased so far with this bator. The temps are steady and holding. The probe temp is holding at 99.9 and the humidity is around 40% and holding.

I have 11 true blue/black Americauna eggs set in the potato box 'bator. We are currently on day 8. I have candled the eggs and see veins and the embryos. The chicks are growing! I have had a real heck of a time with all of the sudden changes in the weather. The humidity went crazy when the rains came (not complaining!). The temperatures began to swing with the rain and the box had to be moved to the study where the servers are keeping that room a constant 77 degrees. As if that wasn't enough the other day the buld blew and the temps fell to 80 before I knew it.

Wish me luck on a good hatch.

I wish you could see the real color of these eggs. They are such a lovely shade of blue.

Other links: my styrofoam cooler incubator and my bread box incubator.

Good luck to all of you who are inspired to build your own incubator.

Steve asked for a 'simple' chicken salad. He further clarified a very basic chicken salad. Which meant he didn't want the apples and craisens and walnuts in it.

I had the last of the chickens we had processed in the roaster so that I could pick the meat and can another batch of broth. I picked out a good portion of tender chicken and chopped it.

I made a cup of my homemade mayonnaise

I also boiled up a few of my little pullet eggs.

Chicken, boiled egg, mayo, salt, pepper, chopped celery and onion, garlic powder. Simple chicken salad just like he asked.

I served it on pumpernickle bread with lettuce and tomato.

It was really good along side a steaming bowl of homemade chicken noodle soup.

Like my bowl? Ross under $3. w00t!

My little Rhode Island Red pullets are laying me an egg or two every day. They are such lovely little treasures to find when I go out to the barn. They taste great, too!

I used one of them to make mayonnaise.

Mayonnaise is very easy to make. It is a simple combination of egg and oil that is emulsified and seasoned.

Take 1 home grown farm fresh egg and 1 cup of salad oil. Gourmet mayonnaises are made with combinations of different oils. Learn to make a good basic mayonnaise then experiment with other oils.

I used a stick blender but a food processor works just as well. If you have the arm strength a nice cold bowl and a wire wisk will work, too.

Season with salt, white pepper, a dash of ground mustard powder and a sprinkle of lemon juice. You can season it for your taste and preference.

Most recipes call for the egg to be drizzled slowly with the oil as it is being beaten to make a great emulsification. It takes more than a few minutes to make the mayo in this manner. If you use a stick blender add the egg and oil to a deep container and whip it up in under 10 seconds.

I do not always make my own mayonnaise. I am a die hard Duke's mayonnaise fan. I cannot live without my Duke's - ask most any southern cook ;) LOL Sometimes I run short or forget to pick up an extra jar (I try to keep at least one in the pantry at all times but it flies off the shelf around here) and that is when I make my own. I also like to make my own for potato salad. Yummy.

Some mayonnaises are far more yellow. This is from using 2 or 3 egg yolks in place of the whole egg. You can search out alot of different recipes on the internet. I prefer whiter mayonnaise. There are some who think using an egg white lowers the quality of the mayonnaise but I'll put my home grown eggs up against their store bought yolks any day of the week and will have a better mayonnaise. I am that confident in the goodness of my fresh eggs.

Give it whirl and tell me how you did. Whatever is left over you can put in a jar and put in the fridge. It will keep for a while.

Many comments or emails are coming my way about the safety of raw eggs. Let me say this - I trust my eggs to be clean and healthy. I do not go around partaking of raw eggs or raw egg products that I am not sure of. The warnings about eating raw eggs and the chance of salmonella is usually more likely to occur in a commercial egg than a home grown egg.

I trust my eggs.

When I received my spring chicks McMurray added 7 red star cockerals to the order 'for warmth' - ha! we had 47 birds in that order they didn't need warmth. They are known as the packing peanuts.

Anyhoo ..

We tended those baby roo's the same as all the pullets. They were fed and cared for and loved and played with by our children. My 19 month little Steven old can carry them around (with supervision!) in the barn when we are all out there petting and holding them all.

They are 19 weeks old at the time of this photo.

I have noticed they have become more aggressive toward the hens especially in the past week or two. Just plain out MEAN to the hens. This morning I was out in the barn and one of the big boys comes over, pecks my shoe, nips at my knee which is the signal to pick him up. I tucked his big self under my arm and went about filling feeders and talking to my girls. Yet another comes over with the same song and dance wanting his turn. So down goes one and up comes the other. I hold him while I check the waterers and set them out for my husband to fill. Soon all the chores are done and I am standing in the door watching the interaction of all the chickens. Buster throws back his head and lets out a magnificently loud crow quickly followed by Laf then the Packing Peanuts follow lead. I love that sound. It makes me smile.

So, I am standing there watching this with the hens around my feet picking and scratching. Suddenly one of the Red Stars jumps on my sweet partridge rock hen and grabs her by the neck and just holds her down on the floor. Immediately before I can react 2 other Red Stars come over and bite down on her. She is squawking and raising the roof - I would be too! They are trying to pluck her feathers!

This just pissed me off. We have known for sometime now that we had to cull the roosters. They have been so friendly and docile to us that we have really put it off longer than we should have. Truthfully I have been waiting for cooler weather to do the deed and we haven't had any. It is in the upper 90's and even hotter in the barn this afternoon.

I grabbed one roo and pulled him off of her and used my foot to get the other two off. The one in my hands I took out and put in another room with my stand by large dog crate for separating chickens if needed. I go back inside and one of the Red Stars is starring down Buster but learned his lesson quickly and backed down. I grabbed him up and put him out that same crate. No sooner had I come back in than the other Red Star was pecking and wanting to be picked up. I grabbed him up and put him out with the others. I was just fuming. I checked my hen and she is fine.

I was just fuming mad at how aggressive they were and the tag teaming of that hen. I sort of felt bad, too, because these guys are some of my husband very favorites from the coop.

I went back into the house, put on a huge pot of boiling water, Steve sharpened a knife and the hatchet. We made 3 slip knots in some length of small rope. I went back to the barn, pulled out 2 of the bullies and left the third one for my husband to get.

One. Two. Three. We hung them to bleed out while we got the pot of water and other things we needed.

I dipped the birds for less than one minute to loosen the feathers. Once I had finished the picking Steve did the gutting.

Start to finish it took us 2 and a half hours to dress, clean-up and burn all of the 'evidence' (including coming inside washing and finishing the birds and us getting a shower).

I know it would have taken much less time if we weren't having to keep an eye on my 19 month old who thought it was fun to try to squirt everyone with the hose, or run off behind the barn or any number of other things little boys do.

Fully dressed and ready for bagging each bird weighed out at just a little over 4lbs.

I am very pleased with them but know they can't hold a flame to the cornish x's we are raising now.

They were lined with a nice strip of fat. The flesh is whitish/yellow. I have one soaking in the frig for tomorrows dinner.

This weekend we will most likely do the other four meanies.

I wanted to follow up and show you one of the chickens I roasted for supper last night. He was delicious! I also made macaroni and cheese, fresh english peas and potato rolls with butter. My 19 month old ate every bite of his chicken. My husband, a first time home grown chicken eater, loved it. He really was good!

I wrote this week before last. Since that time we finished all of the extra roosters. We ended up with 11 birds that we culled form the flock. I cooked them all and picked the meat. I have about 8 quarts of meat and 3 gallons of chicken stock in the freezer.

The hen house is now much more calm. The hens are less stressed. The feather pulling pretty much stopped. Best of all as I have shown you is that the girls have started to lay eggs.

The home grown birds do have a bit of a different texture than what you would be accumstomed to from a commercial chicken. They are also much more flavorful. The broth cooks off richer than any I have had in a long time.

In about 6 weeks we'll have 27 more birds ready. It is a lot of work for one saturday but that one day will provide a minimum of 27 meals. I think it is worth it.

During the heat of the summer it probably wasn't a good idea to get hatching eggs. The post office handled them so poorly many of them arrived broken and the box leaking. I gave up on hatching eggs until the weather started to get cooler. This morning I will set another batch of eggs.

This set of eggs is the long anticipated blue orpingtons and the pure bred blue/black americauna that lays a beautiful blue egg.  (NOT a mutt bred chickens that lays a varied color of egg known as easter eggs/easter eggers.)

I have been carefully regulating the new incubator and happily anticipating the arrival of the eggs. The eggs were shipped monday morning and I received the box wednesday morning.

Every egg was perfect. Nothing broken. Everything appears to be in great shape. Even the weather has cooperated and remained in the upper 50's to the lower 70's. Hopefully this hatch will have better results than the last. I do blame the extreme heat as well as rthe rough handling of the post office for that lost batch of eggs. We checked the eggs after 25 days and only one had the slightest signs of a developing chick. It was very sad.

Wish me luck. I think I am going to need it. I am very nervous this time around. The six brown eggs are from blue orpingtons. Beautiful birds that live in the North Georgia Mountains. Send me good vibes. The perfect hatch would be 100% and 5 pullets and 1 cockeral. Yes, I do know I am blowing smoke! It doesn't hurt to ask for what you want!

The blue eggs are from blue and black americuanas. It would indeed be more wishful thinking to ask for a majority of pullets but I figure in for a penny, in for a pound. Come on pullets! I have eleven of these eggs. I don't know why the color washes out but I wish you could see how pretty and blue they are.

I know you all don't respond well to these posts I write about me and the livestock. I guess you all don't want to know all those mundane things but this is what is going on these days out here on the farm.

 - Green Acres is the place to be - Farm Living is the life for me!

I have been wanting to set up a smaller incubator than the one I made back in the summer. The original incubator is huge and can set a flat of eggs (2.5 dozen) at one time. I don't want to have to regulate and run that big box just to hatch a few eggs at a time.

I was trying to think outside of the box and away from the the styrofoam coolers. I asked myself what can a chicken loving housewife use to make a small incubator out of inexpensively? How can she do it safely and without worrying about the electrical and know she did it right?

So, I built a new one.

I used an old breadbox with a plexiglass window insert that I found at the goodwill for $7. You probably have one or know someone with an old one they don't use any more. If I was back home in Georgia I know my sister has 2 I could have gotten!

I picked up one of the $11 thermometer/Hygrometer with probe combos by acurite (I have one but I wanted a second one incase I decided to use both bators at one time), a water wiggler $0.88, $5 a bottle lamp kit, and an $8 single pole hot water heater thermostat. I already had some little wood screws, electrical tape and a surge protector.

First I secured my thermostat to the upper top corner of the breadbox. I did so because I want the thermostat as far away from the heat source as possible. I want to be sure the eggs on that side don't get too cool.

Next I drilled a hole for the lamp kit making sure the lamp neck was placed so that when the lid closes the light bulb is not touching or extended out too far.

Using the bottle lamp kit I threaded the hollow metal tube through the hole and then threaded the electrical wire through the tube and screwed down both ends to make it tight.

Following the lamp instructions I wired the ribbed wire to the brass screw (see #1). I then cut a piece of the wiring and ran that from the silver screw through the side hole to the thermostat (see #3). I took the other wire coming into the box and threaded it through the side hole and wired it to the other screw on the thermostat (see #2).

It wasn't hard. You can do it. Take your time. If you wire it wrong when you plug it in your breaker will trip. You'll know then what to do. LOL

I then cut a piece of shelf liner and laid it in the bottom so the eggs would be coushioned and not roll.

The light works, the thermostat works.

I did caulk around the little window so that warm air wouldn't easily escape and cause the light to run more than it needed.

I did not drill any vent holes in mine for 2 reasons. The humidity in my house is at 52% and has beed holding that for the past week. The lid has a lillte gap along one side that I think will let the bator breath properly. If I need more venting it won't take 1 min to drill out a hole. We'll see.

If you build one you might need to drill holes and plug them with a cork as needed.

I also went back and added some of the weather stripping you put around dorrs and windows to stop drafts around the inside where the lid closes down. I was loosing alot of heat that way.

Now it is sitting and warming up. It will run from now until the Blue Orpington eggs I am getting have their 21+ days in the incubator.

I am not one to count my chicks before they hatch so wish me luck. Eggs went in the mail yesterday to be shipped to me. I am on pins and needles hoping they make it to me intact. The post office damaged the last batch I got.

This little bator can sit on my kitchen counter and not be in the way. The big bator I had was always in the way no matter where we had it while testing it. We ended up keeping that one on the dining room buffet with the last batch of eggs.

This one is pretty and won't look out of place on the countertop.

Nothing is wrong with functional and decorative! :D

P.S. Those of you who teach school (Mary!) this is a great idea for spring time. Set eggs in late March and 21 days or so later they would hatch in April.

Henny Penny And The Tail Tale of Two Eggs

Once Upon a time on a little farm in Virginia there lived a happy flock of spoiled hens.

Henrietta hen was being moody and would not share the most prized and favored nest box in all of the kingdom with her friend Henny Penny.

So Henny Penny made her own nest on the other side of the hen house in a lovely old feeder box hanging on the wall.

The little rhode island red hen clucked and scratched around in her little nest of chicken crumbles and black oil sunflower seeds.

Until finally one of her friends, another rhode island red, came to see what there was to see. Her friend saw nothing.

Henny Penny ruffled her tail feathers and clucked some more.

This time her friend Ginger, a buff orpington, came to inspect the situation. And she, too, saw nothing.

Henny Penny spun around her nest again. She stuck her head in the corner and pretty much told everyone in the hen house to kiss it that morning. Something was going on that made this day different from all of the others before it.

Henny Penny continued to sit in her little improvised nest. Then suddenly, without warning, she jumped out of the box and wandered away.

This is what she left behind for all the world to see making this day unlike all the other days that came before it. Henny Penny laid her very first egg. Even more importantly she did it while the farmer was there to see it all happen.

Fussy old Henrietta who wouldn't share the most prized and favored nest box of all nest boxes in the kingdom was still clucking and scratching around and couldn't get comfortable but later when the camera was turned off she hopped out of the nest box and left behind one little brown egg, too.

And they all lived happily every after on the tiny farm in Virginia.

The End.

I have a barn full of pullets. A pullet is a female chicken under one year old. After one year they are hens. So, I have about 40+ pullets who became 19 weeks old monday. When they start laying I can expect at the height of the season to collect somewhere around three dozen eggs a day.

Between the ages of 18 - 24 weeks most pullets will begin to lay eggs. They will be small at first but will get bigger and more uniform as the pullet matures. There is no magic number to predict when the pullets will begin to lay. It is sort of like with us females. Mother natures takes her own course and you just can't predict the day and time that the moment will happen.

The cycle for the eggs often follows a 25 hour pattern. If an egg is laid at 8am today it might be 9am tomorrow before that next egg gets laid. But that is not always the rule. Some hens will lay like clockwork at the same time every day. Some hens might lay an egg every other day.

It is very exciting as you approach the age of laying. It is also very frustrating looking each and every day for those first eggs. I am guilty of checking often and then checking again.

Now here is a little lesson - you do not need a rooster to have eggs - beautiful farm fresh eggs. You only need a rooster if you want those eggs to eventually incubate (with or without a hen) and hatch out lovely little chicks.

Please take note of what I am about to tell you -

1. There is not one bit of difference between a brown and a white egg. Nor is there any difference between those and any of the colored eggs from chickens who carry a color gene from an ancestor cross bred with a true ameriaucana.

2. You cannot tell the difference between a fertiled egg and an unfertilized egg. People who say the little white string in an egg is rooster sperm is an idiot.That is the chalaza and it is what attaches to the membrane at the shell to keep the egg yolk centered in the egg.

3. If you did have a fertiled egg the only way to tell is to look VERY carefully at the yolf after a few days and look for a tiny speck called a bullseye where the cells are beginning to form.

4. You can eat fertilized and unfertilized eggs and NEVER know the difference. There is really no difference. You won't be eating a baby chick if you eat a fertilized egg.

5. Fertilized eggs can sit for as long as 10 days or so before the hen has enough to sit on if she goes broody. They do not begin to develop into what will become a chick until they have started the incubating process. It takes lots of continuous warmth provided by a nice fluffy feathered hen or a monitored incubator to begin the process toward a hatching chick.

6. Never count your chicks before the eggs hatch.

I wrote all of this to tell you this story.

Last night I was finishing up with cooking supper (chicken stew from one of our own processed chickens!) so Steve and Colby and Gracie went out to the barn to check the feed and close up. The girls came in first.

Gracie says, "Can I show momma what we found?" 

Colby says, "No, not yet." I said, "If my chickens laid an egg and you all didn't come get me my feelings will be hurt." Not really but maybe? LOL

Steve comes in and the conversation is repeated with him only this time Gracie holds out her hands and in each hand is a little pullet egg.

So I have no idea which two started laying yesterday but I do have an idea since they were found in the nest boxes closest to the door that it was most likely one if my RIR and one of the barred rocks.

You know threatening them is what I think did it. I went out there yesterday morning and said to them all as I filled the feeders, " I took 3 boys out here for being lazy and mean do you girls want to be next? If not, you better get to producing some eggs!"

The photo is two small pullet eggs. They are very light brown. They may or may not have a yolk in them. I'll find out later when I crack them to cook.

How cool is that?

My chickens make me breakfast!

Want to hear what I hear every morning?

Cool, huh?

Please pardon the quality of the video, it is grainy. The small digital camera takes a quick film clip but when it is uploaded and changed from one format to another the picture quality really bites it. I am going to use the videa camera and try to get a better film later today.

When I left Georgia and came to Virginia I had to get rid of my flock. That was hard. I loved my chickens but I loved Steve more and so I moved up here and married him. I am the lucky one.

It has been four years since beginning this new adventure and just this year I have been able to begin building another flock of hens.

This spring when I got chicks from McMurray I ordered a few of several breeds. I wanted to remind myself what it was I liked and didn't like in certain birds. Buff Orpingtons have long been a favorite but for some reason I am just not in a BO raising mood up here -although I do have four pullets now. I love BIG birds. I don't like bantums and I don't like fru fru chickens either. No real particular reason why other than I just prefer the bigger breeds.

If it were possible to raise roosters without mayhem in the coop I would in a heart beat. I love those guys! I have 3 rooms for chickens in my barns and I don't think Steve would build me runs for every breed I take a fancy to.

I thought I would show you two of my favorite boys that I have now.

This is Buster. He is a Barred Plymouth Rock.

This is Laf (as in Lafayette, Marquis De La). He is a Cuckoo Maran.

They are pretty big boys at 19 weeks, suprisingly large to me. I guess it shows how well they eat.

I can't wait to see how their tails feather out. It is so exciting to watch them grow! I especially like the way the red of their combs and wattles really stands out against their black and white barring.

Both are pet quality and nothing special for the breed. I raised them and I love them and so that makes them super duper in my book.

So now can you point out the differences in the roosters? Can you see what characteristics mark them for one particular breed or another?

It is very easy to confuse a barred plymouth rock, a cuckoo maran or a dominique - unless you know what to look for.

I'll help you out.

First, look at their combs. Both have a single comb. So obviously they are not a Dominique which has a rose comb (but in a few cases can have a single comb).

Second, look at their legs. Barred Rocks have yellow legs. Cuckoo Marans have white legs. You can see the leg color follows through with the beak.

Thirdly, look at the pattern (or barring) of the feathers. The barred rock has a more consistant pattern whereas the cuckoo maran has a 'cuckoo' or irregular pattern.

Forth, typically cuckoo marans are much lighter in color, especially when compared to the hens of the same breed.

Learning to identify the different breeds isn't hard if you are interested in learning. It really isn't much differnt than someone looking at a dog and quickly being able to identify the breeding. When something strikes your interest it is easy to learn about them.

I don't know how to take the photos so that you get a true idea of the size of these two roosters. When they straighten their necks out to crow they are somewhere around 2 foot tall. When you pick them up and tuck them under your arm it is like carrying a basket ball. At 19 weeks they weigh in at around 8lbs or more each. I love watching and noting the changes in their growth. They won't be at full size until around two years old. They will go through one or two molts in his first year but then when they feather out they are going to look incredible.

While these roosters are docile and gentle to us now as they age it is possible for them to become aggressive. Roosters are preprogramed by nature to act and react, to protect their flock and their territory. They do learn some behavior but it isn't always possible to condition the birds. Natural temperment plays a big roll. These birds can seriously hurt a human, even a human that feeds and cares for them. It is the equivalent of a bull or a stallion or a hog or a male guard dog. My birds seem to know that we are the head roosters and so far they treat us that way. The hens squat by us indicating they are ready for mating - it is their submission to us - which is a good thing.

We watch carefully when the children, especially Steven, are out in the coop with us. He can quickly become a target of the birds. They could seriously injure him and then I would have to kill them all (the roosters). You can't train it out of them when they decide to make one thing their target.

It is also nearing the time when all of the extra roosters have to be culled. Only one rooster to a hen house and I am lucky that I have such a big place and can have several hen houses therefor several roosters. We had a bit of a shake up in the coop yesterday. I'll be telling you about it later. The pecking order has changed and will change again.

I am curious to see who comes out on top as the king of the hen house.

Friday morning at 8am I got a phone call.

"Hello."

"This is Chris. I have a box over here for you, Angie."

"I'm coming right now."

Hang up the phone.

Throw off my pj's and dig for my shorts and shirt. (Still hot here. WTH?)

I am out of the door and down the driveway as fast as my feet will take me. Looking both ways I cross at the corner and hurry over to the tiny clapboard building that was once a little store. Two minutes later I am following the same path back to my house and straight into my kitchen.

It is a very noisy box and it moves around and shakes. I grab the scissors and cut the bands on the box. Carefully raising the lid to assess the contents I peak inside.

Instantly all attention is on me. The noise gets much louder. One by one I take them each out of the shipping box and dip their beaks into water with a vitamin added to give them a good boost.

They can live 72 hours off the last of the yolk they absorb just before hatching (some even hatch and spend a day or so with the yolk sac on the outside of their body and it slowly absorbs and closes off much like a belly button).

So each chick gets its beak dipped into nutrient rich water so that they instantly learn to drink. This is the first drink they have had in their young one day and a half old life. It takes about 5 minutes or less and each on is then running around and drinking freely by themselves. I ordered 25 and the hatchery sent me 27. They are good like that. The hatcheries always add a couple extra just to be sure you have a full order. Often times in the cooler months they add more to accomodate more warmth for the benefit of the chicks. Last spring when I ordered I was sent 7 extra - always roosters - for extra warmth for the chicks. Roosters are considered expendable to a certain extent in the hatchery and egg business. You don't need a rooster for eggs. You need a rooster to make chicks.

They are fluffy, healthy and very active. Their eyes are bright. They peep very loudly. The climb right over the top of one another with little reguard to get to where they want to go. They hundle together when cold for warmth.

I gave them time to have a good long drink and to stretch their legs while I set up an old pack and play I picked up at the junk shop. I lined it with a nice soft bedding of pine shavings (not cedar bedding, the oils from cedar are poison to chickens).

I then put down one layer of paper towels over the shavings. Chicks have to learn to walk and carry themselves so that the materials used should not be slippery. Newspaper is too slick and the shaving while needed can cause some problems with weaker chicks. The effect is called spraddle leg.

I have never had this happen to me. I just put down the paper towels so that I can better gage how much they are pooping  the first day. Chicks can very easily eat bits of shaving and block themselves up - it's a pasty butt and can be very serious. So I watch the pooping and check their butts for the first few days. Fun huh? LOL

In general healthy chicks don't give you any problems. There are at times the occassional less than healthy chick, while some find it cruel, the humane thing to do is to end it quickly and be done instead of letting a sickly chick suffer and muddle on until nature ends it for you. There are illnesses that just cannot be fixed. There are defects in their physical development that cannot be fixed. Sickly or injured or chicks with birth defects quickly become a target of the healthy bunch. It is natures own way. Natural selection. Survival of the fittest. Raising livestock comes with its own set of rules that pet lovers often can't understand. You do no favors when a chicken is left to the demise of the flock. Chickens are like raptors. They will pick and peck and tear until there is nothing left but a bloody, poorly feathered carcass. And, yes, if left to their own devises chicken will eat another chicken. Chickens are meat eaters. Any kind of meat. Even each other. That is why tending your flock and making sure theyhave plenty to eat and drink and lots of space to run around in is very important.

OK - moving on before you all get depressed -

Here is a brief clip of the sites and sounds of new chicks.

 

 

 

These chicks came from McMurray hatchery. They are jumbo cornish x rock (reads as cornish cross rocks) which is a cross bred chicken of a white cornish rooster and a white plymouth rock hen. They have been bred to produce a bigger breasted and more meat to bone ratio bird. They are powerhouse eaters and will lieterally eat themselves to death if given the opportunity. They do not recieve free choice feed 24/7. They are fed as much as they can eat during the day but the food is taken away at night. They do have plenty of water and can drink all they want 24 hours a day.

These birds will grow quickly. Far quicker than anything in my barn. In 8 - 10 weeks these chicks will be 4 - 6 lbs full size birds ready for processing and to be put int he freezer. Rememer we live on a small working farm. Livestock is a food source not pets. These chicks will not live much past 3 or 4 months at the best. Their grow so very fast to produce the best possible food that their legs are generally weak and their hearts cannot support them and give out. They are very easily stressed and will have a heart attack and pass away quickly. That is not to say that there are not chicks that have survived will past the 3 or 4 month stage. It is just not common.

These chickens have a purpose. While they are here they will have a very good life. They will be well fed and well cared for. They will have sunshine and fresh air and will walk in the grass. They will know what it is like know sunrise and sunset. They will live out a very natural life.

For those who are offended by this and prefer chicken from the grocery commonly labled purdue or tyson - those animals lived a pitiful existance and often where abused before making it to your table. Most Americans are too far removed form their food sources that they have lost respect for the animal that gave its life for their dinner.

These chickens will exceed the USDA term labled as 'organic' or 'free range'. I cannot lable and sell my chickens using those names because I am not certified by the USDA but you should know that those words do not mean all they they imply.

Now don't get all riled up with me, this is just a very general explanation. The details are a bit more complicated even the different agencies within the  the Dept of Agriculture (USDA) can't get their act together and decide amongst themselves all of the specifics.

Commercial 'organic' means generally that the chickens were raised with only 'organic' labled feed and had not been injected with antibiotics nor eaten medicated feeds. The feed to be organic had to come from fields not sprayed with chemical fertilizers or pesticides.

Small farm 'organic' means the chickens where raised in a barn built with out any pressure treated wood, the feed is not just a commercial feed but supplemented with fresh yogurt, grains, meal worms, bugs, vegetables, etc. created without the use of pesticides. The chickens also are not exposed to antibiotics or other drugs. They come and go in their house and run (a combination of which is called the 'coop').

 Commercial 'free-range' means the chickens were not in cages. They could move around freely at will and come and go as they desired. It doesn't mean they ever see the light of day. They spend their short life span inside a warehouse where the lights, water and feeding is all automated and they never set foot outside under the morning sun. Cage-free doesn't mean all that the grocery store lable implies either. They don't go to roost at sunset. Generally their life is in a building with humans controlling the elements. They have most likely never seen a bug much less eaten natural proteins outside of those given by the commercial feeders. Remember chickens are meat eaters. Remains are processed into feed and fed right back to the chickens.

Small farm 'free- range' means the chickens had access to the outdoors. They were pasture fed. The foraged daily for grass and bugs and breathed in the sunshine and fresh air. They come and go as they please. They roost and crow and scratch and peck.  The fields where they are raised have not been processed with fertilizer and other chemicals.

 So you see the government has taken words which mean one thing to the consumer and used them to lable food stocks that really do not meat meet the standards of those words.

My chickens exceed the USDA standard. They wouldn't qualify for the USDA lable 'organic' and 'free-range'. I don't need a lable or to pay the government outrageous amount of money for the lable. Chickens that are pasture fed and eat bugs are not considered organic but umm, that's what chickens do by natural - naturally, as nature intended. See a problem here?

Just to give you a better idea of the difference of egg quality- store bought eggs, even those labled organic are usually sunshine yellow or yellowish-orange. Small farm chickens that have a wide variety diet, that eat bugs and grass have deep dark orange yolks that store bought 'organic' eggs can't even begin to compare to. Do you know that chickens can be fed certain feeds to make the yolks appear more orange - like food coloring instead of the yolks being naturally more protein filled and orange?

So, all of this rambling to say - don't fret over my little chicks. They have a far better life here with me than they ever would have living over at the tyson and purdue farms. I feed them. I hold them. I see to their every need. I respect the purpose their life has and do not take it for granted for one instant.

Tomorrow I want to show you my most favorite roosters. Stay tuned for Rooster 101 on Home Grown TV!