New Chicks and Nieces to Help!

 

We ordered 40 more Cornish Cross meat chicks to arrive yesterday so I enlisted some helpers to pick them up and install them into their new home with me. Here are my nieces, Emma and Elle, at the post office with our new shipment of chicks. The girls were still stymied as to why on earth we got our chicks from the post office. 

 

Emma, in pink, really wanted to touch them but ultimately lost her nerve. Next thing I heard was "you touch them Elle. I think you'll like them."

 

We unloaded them while counting how many we got this time. Last time we conveniently forgot to count for extras during the unloading phase. Much harder to count them when they are running around. 43 was our total, the hatchery sent two packing peanuts.

 

One forgets just how tiny they are when they arrive as two day old chicks. Hard to believe our last batch yielded some 8.75 pounders. The girls wondered why we got more so I told them we would eat them when they  got bigger. Elle said "That's GROSS!" I promised not to eat them until they weren't cute anymore. Neither girl understands they concept that the grocery store stocks chicken that used to look like this too. How wonderful it would be to be three again.

Knowing Our Food

Our quest to know our food and how it was raised and fed has come to the end. At least paritally. We took our first batch of Cornish Cross meat chickens to the processor to become dinner. Hard day to say the least.

 

Amazingly we did not lose any before we delivered them to the dinner making place. Usually the standard 10% is lost prior to ever making it to process weight. I don't know if we are good at it or just got lucky with the chicks we got but we got 51 and still had 51 until yesterday.

 

Doyle built some cages to transport them in. The poultry processor is a little over an hour away and we got an early appointment to beat the heat. We caught them and loaded them into the cages we built and made a little shade for them. I really did not want to go with him but he needed a direction reader as we haven't been there before. We took 20 this first time and need to build a third cage when we take the other 31 down.

 

I think I will sit out the next visit. I actually stayed in the truck the whole time. Doyle said the place was brand new and very clean inside. All stainless steel and concrete with a quick and humane kill. I still felt awful all day long. I really am rethinking this "know my food source" stuff. I know they lived a better life than in a huge place where they are kept in 8" square cages for a 13" square bird but I still struggled. I must admit the coward's way is to know it only as it comes from the store and I kind of like it that way. This was not the cheaper way to go. I figure we have $10 into each bird start to finish but since 31 are yet to finish I am not sure just yet. But cost wasn't the point, the healthy, chemical and medication free food was. I hope they taste good. If I can eat them.

 

In this picture you can see that this bird dressed out at a little over 6 pounds. They all came between 5.5 and 6.5 pounds. The intake man at the processor said that our birds were in excellent shape and were clean and well kept. That made us feel good. We never were able to leave the house during this endeavor as these birds drank 25 gallons of water every day. It has been a long 9 weeks and we still have a week or two to go. Is it all worth it? I don't know yet. I will let you know how they taste when I finally get up the nerve to eat one. I won't waste them, that would be sacrificing what they did for us, but it may take me a week to actually cook one. I am proud of me for not crying but I still feel bad. I will get better with this but I won't be raising pigs for dinner any time soon.

Toads ~ Just Kidding!

The meat chickens are growing into toads. They are huge! They are a White Cornish Cross and they are bred to be super fast growers and holy sh*&, they aren't lying! These soon to be dinner chickens (I am still struggling to be OK with this) are six weeks old and giants already. We actually take their food away from them at night, which a lot of people don't do, and they are still amazing growers. Imagine if we left food out for them 24/7. Taking the food at night slows down their growth a little so that they don't tip over for no apparent reason. This kind of chicken does that a lot. I am happy and proud to report that none of ours have. Yeah us!

 

Hard to believe they were just tiny little fuzzy guys (and girls) a mere month and a half ago. Nuts. Thank goodness people don't grown like this:-D

 

On a happier note, the laying chicks are 17 days old now and were starting to fly around the brooder so we let them out of it tonight. I think they love it. They run around and try to fly and bump chests. Sheesh, I hope that isn't the male trait coming out in my female ordered chicks. They better all be girls, that is what the hatchery was supposed to send. Roosters are currently out of my league and I don't want to have to find homes for roosters, that seems an unlikely to succeed task.

 

We had to put them into the run for a few minutes while we took the brooder out of the chicken house. They weren't sure what the heck was going on. It will probably be at least another week before they go out again, I want to make sure they are feathered properly for temperature control reasons. They have grown a lot already and still seem so small. 

Good news is that I have one very friendly chick. All the others are afraid of me. She comes right up to me and sits down in my hand. It is pretty cute. I named her Monica. She is also the smallest chick we have, kind of a runt. The next 5 friendly ones I can pick out of the bunch will become Rachel, Ross, Joey, Chandler and Phoebe. Can you tell what my all time favorite show was?

Chicken House Update

Progress on the chicken house has been great! I feel like we are almost done now and that is a huge relief. We began trimming it and have two sides done, two to go. We still have to build the pop doors but the holes are framed and ready. We also have to put gravel in the run on top of the hardware cloth bottom. And then we need to lay the linoleum and build the roosts and droppings table. The coop is wired for electricity and so close to done. I will still need to paint but the siding came pre-primed and the fresh milled trim and battons can wait a while too.

 

My husband has admitted daily that he hates to build things of this magnitude. I suppose we won't be building a new home anytime soon. But I must say that for folks with no building experience at all, we have done a decent job and it should stand for a long time.

 

This is the enclosed run. The winters here can be pretty snowy so we wanted a place they could stay outside without slogging through the snow. We will add gravel over the hardware cloth bottom. Nothing should ever be able to dig into this coop or run. I am still thinking some kind of playground would be fun for them too!

 

And finally- an update photo on the meat chicks. They were 3 weeks old this past Tuesday and they are at least 6x bigger than when we got them. They eat a ton but we take their food at night so that they don't eat themselves to death. Very gluttonous birds. I am still hoping they become less cute so that eating them isn't so awful. All 50 are still alive and kicking and so far no spontaneous deaths have occurred. Thank goodness. I don't want to be the one to find one in the morning.  The laying hen chicks will be here on Wednesday and I am happy to say we will be totally ready for them. It was a race but Doyle has been a building fool for the last few weeks and so much progress has been made.

New Intimidating Row Garden

When we decided to put in a new garden in the north field, we expected to have so much space that we would have to plant cover crops in some of it. Well guess what? I am out of space and all the area not yet planted is slated for planting with seeds that I have stacked up all over the place. I honestly didn't see that one coming. This garden has intimidated me from the beginning. My husband wanted to weed with a rototiller and I wanted a no-till garden with permanent planting areas accessible by paths around them. That way, once established, there would be no walking in the wide rows and no need to till and disturb the microbial underworld of the dirt. We compromised. His corn rows he could do with as he pleased. My area I could try my new method. We have worked very hard on this area in the last few days. We installed fencing (farm fencing) around the perimeter and electrified it. There are 50 or more cows on our place as of this past week and I don't want deer helping themselves. So far, so good.

 

Later today or tomorrow we are picking up some wood shavings to put in all the permanent paths to keep our feet out of the mud and further define the planting beds from the walkways. I think that will make it look very nice. You can also see my Aquadomes at work in the garden. They are filled with water and are protecting 20 of the tomato plants so far. The others are just going to have to tough it out without them. 24 was the max the budget could handle this year. Maybe more next year. The long rows towards the top of the picture are 70 foot long rows for Doyle's corn. I hope to have that planted later today or tomorrow. I have a little more space to the east of the main walkway that you can't see in this picture. I need to define those areas before I show them to you. I am planting as much from seed as possible this year and only bought tomato and pepper plants. Next year I will start those from seed too.

MEAT CHICKEN UPDATE

  

Things are going well with the meat chickens we have growing in the barn. They hatched on the 5th of May and journeyed from Madison, Nebraska to rural Idaho. They all showed up alive and I am happy to say we have yet to lose one. Knock on wood! This type of chicken is hybridized to grow lightening fast and therefor  have a high mortality rate. This bothers me so, to maximize the health of these guys, we take their food from them 12 hours each night and give it back in the morning. That should help to keep them from eating themselves to death. I am still coming to terms with raising my own meat but I do still feel that they have a better life here with us than in a huge farm for factory use and subsequent grocery store sale. Healthier eating too! That is really the main goal here, to provide safe and healthy food for my family.

Meat Chicken Room

I promised to show pictures of our new meat chicken room so here they are. I think the room turned out very nicely. We only used 10 2x4's, which a friend gave us for free, and some old 3/4in. 12" wide boards that were rotting in the loft of the barn. They weren't good for anything but this purpose, but they made dandy walls. We have rectangular wire fencing coming from another friend and that will complete the walls above the wood wall partitions up to the ceiling. I am pretty happy with how it all turned out. We are saving our pennies to build the big new laying chicken house so the meat chicken room needed to be a thrifty project. Mission accomplished.

This took up about 1/6 th of the old milking barn. The goats have another room we walled off in the opposite corner. They will keep the meat chickens company. Ollie, the pygmy goat, was actually living inside a chicken house with the chickens when we got him. He liked the birds and they apparently liked him too. Maybe he will feel right at home with the chickens.

This is a view with the door open. It also has a large door to the outside barnyard on the opposite end. This room may serve several purposes in the future. Doyle thinks it would be the perfect pygmy goat kidding room. I say we are full up with pygmy goats for now. We still need to put plexiglass over the old windows as they are not very draft proof. They should provide nice daylight for the birds. There are two windows in this room.

This view is looking out from inside the new room. Notice all the fishing poles against the wall. Doyle had started buying new poles saying his were all broken. I found at least double that amount in a massive pile with fishing lines securing them all together. I started cutting and amazingly none of them were actually broken, just tangled to the point he wasn't able to use them so he bought new. I fixed that for him and he is tickled pink that he has so many usable poles now.

And finally this will be their home when they first get here. It will still get cold at night when the chicks arrive on May 8th so the metal bar across the top will hang two heat lamps. This feeder/waterer is actually 5 ft. across, it just looks small in this picture.

That completes the tour of the new meat chicken room. I am happy with how it turned out. I like the barn a lot better now that it isn't full of crap scattered and piled up every where. It just about killed my husband to clean it with me but he did and I must say we did a good job. It didn't even take long once we buckled down and got it done. I love neat and tidy. Oh, I almost forgot...... my in-laws gave us a large old freezer that did not work anymore. It was cleaned when it broke and has just been stored for years. We will store a huge quantity of chicken feed in it. That way it is air tight and rodent proof. Now all I need are the chicks and I am all set!

In For A Dime, In For A Dollar

We ordered our laying chicks a week and half ago only to find out that most hatcheries in America are out or seriously backlogged with orders. That was the Run On Chickens post and I must admit I was truly surprised. I have thought a lot about our nation coming to it's food senses and starting to get back to the basics, I just didn't think it would all happen this year. I decided that since I could not control everyone else, I would make my family healthier and raise our own chickens for eggs. It took a long time to convince my husband. The tour to my friend Brenda's beautiful coop finally did the trick. Her chickens are happy, healthy, clean and friendly. All the traits he was sure weren't possible. So we ordered 30 of own and plan to supply eggs to all of our family. I was so excited to finally find a hachery that had most of the breeds I wanted and ordered quickly so they would not run out while I gazed at the pretty pictures. They told me to call in a week to get my ship date. June. What? Yep, June. Boy was I mad! But as they quickly explained, I feel fortunate I am getting them at all. Lots and lots of people aren't. So that leads me to the next topic.

My husband thinks if we are going to feed animals every day, like pygmy goats and laying chickens, we might as well raise meat chickens too! I must say I was not on board with this plan in the beginning. I am still not sure I am. See, I move worms out of the way and let spiders go when I find them inside. I don't fish or hunt. I will eat it. I just don't want to get to know it first. But all that comes back to my plan to know my food before I feed it to my family. I don't mean know it's name and the color of it's eyes, but to know how it ate and what it was exposed to before it made it to my dinner plate. Meat chickens are most commonly the Cornish Cross shown in the picture above. There are others varieties and all have good traits but this is the fastest growing, plumpest bird. To me, the longer I "know" it, the harder it will be to eat it. This plan may go totally wrong but I have researched this all winter. The pros and the cons of this particular breed and the hundreds of reasons I will wish I had chosen another. But I want it over with quickly. We will use a processor to harvest our birds for dinner. You take them live and pick them up hours later in a sack for the freezer. Quick, clean and humane. As humane as eating your pal can be. I believe their life will be infinitely better in my care than that of the large raisers like Foster Farms. Even though it will still be short. This breed is considered a terminal bird, and comes to you as a chick with a short life expectancy. This means even if I become attached, which I doubt will happen, it would be cruel not to process and will likely die of some other ailment like growing too fast for it's systems to keep up.

I guess it took me a long time to get to the point here. I ordered 50 this morning. We built a permanent room in the barn, I will show pics of that later today. That room may become the pygmy goat kidding room if this goes badly. I hope I will still be able to eat chicken after all this. We ordered enough to jump right in with both feet and feed several to each of our family members. Wish me luck. I think I will need it.