I’ve been on the “new” Misc. Farm for almost a year now and have had a chance to settle in again. With my current flock of chickens aging I’ve lost a few hens here and there and their production has understandably dropped. I knew if I wanted to continue with poultry I’d need to add to the flock and having raised chickens for eggs and meat for four years with my former spouse I feel pretty confident with them. I decided to take a bit of a leap of faith this year. I’ve been interested in raising ducks, as well as chickens, considering the meat and eggs are both more prized than that of chickens. So I ordered a “homesteaders delight” package from the hatchery for later this spring which includes 10 new laying hens, two ducks, two geese, and two turkeys! I also ordered 10 laying ducks. That should bring my layers up to about 30 total with the extra ducks, geese, and turkeys destined for slaughter. This will be the first slaughter where I’m in charge from start to finish. As with all things, either I’ll overcome my trepidation and succeed or I will have to reconsider my relationship with some foods. I’m thrilled and terrified at the same time. I’m not slaughtering for on farm sales this year. These are purely for my own education and freezer but I suspect it will be a bit more of a community affair. I’m pretty sure I’ll need help with the turkeys just based on their size alone. If you think you might be interested in participating for your own education, or sheer horror, please sign up for the Farm Newsletter or drop me an email at: farmer@miscfarm.com.

I’ll update the Egg Announcement newsletter when the new ducks and chickens start laying. With the day old chicks and ducklings arriving in late spring that won’t likely be until early fall.

Despite seeing a coyote twice in a short period of time I haven’t had any problems.  I think the goats sharing space with the chickens actually works well as a deterrent.

So all is good on the farm front!

Last spring I had a young flock of laying chickens that I moved out of the brooder house to the front yard with a range house and poultry fencing.  This has been the halfway house for two other flocks and works well when they are still on the small side but ready to be out on their own.  It’s probably more for my reassurance than their safety, or so I thought.

While getting ready one morning I looked out the bedroom window to see a crow fly down, land on the range house, and then hop in to the little chicken’s yard.  He (they are all he to me for some reason) dropped something when he hit the ground which seemed peculiar.  Ever being the optimist I called to my husband, ‘There is a crow giving stuff to the little chickens out front.  It’s really weird’.  He came in to the room took a look and stated that it seemed unlikely the crow was “giving stuff” to the little chickens.  We went outside to discover the raven had savagely killed at least one of the little chickens.  Later research and anecdotal information from a neighbor reveals that they first poke out the eyes of their prey and then proceed to rip them apart.  We’d later see evidence of this ourselves, finding only the feet of another little chicken left behind.

We cleaned up the body and went back in the house to finish getting ready, unsure what else to do.  Then a knock came at the front door.  I opened the front door to see one of our neighbors that I’ve only met nearly an hour away at a county extension small scale farming event.  He informed me that the crows were picking off my little chickens.  My husband and I quickly brainstormed what we could possibly do and one of us ran to the hardware store for poultry netting (the plastic kind).  We threw it over the little chicken’s yard and headed in to work, now late.

We came home that night to find only the feet remaining of another little chicken and enough guts and mess that we weren’t entirely sure how many others were missing.  The little chickens would cower when anything or anyone came near.  We zip tied the poultry netting to the fencing all around even though we were still unsure how the crow(s) was navigating the volumnous netting.

A day later we discovered more bodies and that the zip ties had been broken around most of the yard.  We eventually moved the few remaining traumatized survivors to a secure location and I haven’t used the “halfway house” approach since.  Oh, and I bought a .22 LR and learned how to shoot

And now… I’ve noticed crows/ravens hanging around the barn where my current flock lives.  I’ve even seen them sitting on the barn fence in front of the chicken’s stall and flying in to the hay loft.  It concerned me, but I figured (still the optimist apparently) that they were just getting in the chicken’s feed.  Not sure there is much I can do about that if the rooster won’t chase them off.  But then I’ve started finding broken eggs.  First a couple in the hay loft where a wayward hen insists on laying.  I just assumed that the hens were doing it, it happens in the nesting box sometimes too.  A few days later I found one in the yard between the house and the barn…  And a few more days and it was another by the corner of the house… and today two more out on the far side of the yard.  All of them have been cracked open and the yolks are missing.  Apparently they don’t want the raw egg whites (can’t say I blame them).

I’ve been making sure I pick up the eggs twice a day so there aren’t many sitting around and I’ve disturbed the nests in the hayloft in an effort to prevent anyone from laying up there.  I’ve taken a few shots at the crows when it was safe to do so.  I guess we’ll see if any of it helps.  I’d really like to hit one of them one of these days though.  I guess I’m an optimist with an unsaited sense of revenge.

• Two 4 foot by 8 foot sheets of 1/2 or 3/4″ plywood (don’t recommend OSB even though you’ll see we used a sheet) – ~$20 each
• Three 8 foot long 2″x”‘ boards – $2 each
• Pair of inexpensive cabinent hinges – $4 to $7 total
• One hook and eye latch – $2
• Draw pull door handle (optional)
• Roof hinge (optional)

I was home sick on Monday and when checking on the baby chicks I noticed one of my layers was pasted up and not behaving well.  I brought her inside, cleaned her up and returned her to the brooder box.  Her posture was a little odd still, but she was active so I didn’t worry.

Yesterday morning she was standing but kind of stunned as the other chicks whizzed around her (they are very active at this stage).  When we got home last night she was clearly doing very poorly.  I came in to the house on the verge of tears and told my husband she was dying.  There was no question that it was better to end her suffering at that point and my husband handled the unfortunate task.  He had already poured me a glass of wine and I took it out to the back patio where the sun was setting and sat on the ground while the full grown hens milled around trying to decide if I had a snack and what to make of me being at their level.

Afterwards my husband and I talked about the responsiblities for the lives of our animals, the decisions we have to make, and as usual I was pretty emotional about the baby chick.  We talked about how it’s supposed to get easier over time, but that while we hope it does get easier we also hope we never lose the connection.  I reflected on how each time we lose an animal or choose to end a life the emotional reaction causes me to do a full evaluation if we are doing the “right thing”.  The right thing for us?  for the animals?  for our family?  for the earth?  Despite the heartbreak and emotional toll it takes on me, I haven’t yet come to a different decision than the ones we have made leading up to this point.  We also discussed about how at the point at which I don’t cry over a lost life anymore, that maybe we would need to reconsider our decisions as well.

This will only be the first of many lives lost either by design or unfortunate circumstance for the season, but I still find it challenging regardless.  I struggle to describe to someone else how I can make the decisions we do despite my strong affinity for the animals in our care, but I still think offering them a grieved, humane life is better than faceless killing.

With the feathered feet and a normal number of toes we are left suspecting that the breed is either a Cochin or a Brahma.  You can see some great photos of Brahma and Cochins here.  It appears to have a different “build” than the other chicks.  It’s a bit stockier and fluffier.  It looks like it’s waddling most of the time.  It’s terribly cute and I can’t wait to see how it grows up!

We also have discovered that there was a small error in our order.  We did get 27 chicks as requested but it looks like we got one extra Cornish-X and ones less Araucana.  Oh well.  One of the “Araucana” also appears to be very light golden which I didn’t think was typical for Araucanas so we’ll see how that one grows up.  It’s clearly not another Cornish-X though.

We got the call from the post office at 5am this morning letting us know that our hatchery order had arrived.  We had prepped the brooder box over the past two weekends and it was all ready to go so we jumped out of bed and headed to the post office to pick them up.  We came home and got them settled before dashing off to work, but my husband had time to set up the webcam again.  So for the next couple months we have Baby Chick Cam!

We have 27 total: 14 Cornish-X (meat birds), 6 Arucanas, 3 Barred Plymouth Rocks, 3 Black Sex-links, and 1 “Free Rare Bird”.  Since the Arucanas can vary quite a bit in coloring we actually aren’t sure which one is our “free rare bird” just yet, but it will be fun guessing!

It went a bit easier than I think either of us expected. While we don’t view taking a life lightly, it was very grounded. Chickens don’t scream or make any otherwise resonating sounds at death. We didn’t get a clean separation of head from body with the first blow of the hatchet so we’ve noted the need to get the hatchet sharpened in the future. The entire chore probably took 20 minutes and we weren’t really rushing things.

We set up the “bayou” burner with our largest stock pot (another note: a larger pot would be handy) and got it steaming hot. An appropriate bucket for bleeding out the bird was located as was a makeshift chopping block and the hatchet.  We put a drop cloth on the ground to make collecting errant feathers a bit easier.  The back patio was still covered by a portable car port that we use for Burning Man and one of our plastic tables was still set up from an event we hosted the week prior.  The cover from the rain and washable work surface were handy.

The only challenge we ran in to was the fact that a slightly nervous chicken isn’t going to stick his neck out there for you.  Add to that, the fact that he is a fully feathered rooster and we quickly imployed a trick we’d seen in some “how to” instructions.  We essentially used a rake, or pitch fork, in our case and slide the tines on either side of his neck below the head.  This allowed me to stretch his neck slightly so my husband could ensure he had a visible target.

Two chops and it was done, a little blood on the chopping block but most of it went in to the bucket.  Once the bleeding slowed and the final involuntary thrashes had stopped the bird was dunked in to the scalding water for a few minutes.  Once removed from the water, the feathers came out in handfuls.  A bit easier than I expected.  Once mostly cleaned the neck and feet were removed and we moved inside to complete evisceration in a more sanitary environment.

My husband is a real trooper and handled the nasty work.  Once that was done we cooked up the offal for our pets rather than waste any portion of the life we’d just taken.  Even my husband’s generally adventurous palate hasn’t taken him there just yet.  We added the cleaned and quartered bird and the scrubbed down feet to a stock pot with water, a chopped onion, a few garlic cloves, salt, and pepper and let it gently boil and simmer for a few hours.  After that time we strained out the meat, sorting it from the exhausted onions and bones, and set it aside.  The remaining 3 quarts of stock was by far some of the most luxurious we’ve ever made and was set aside to cool so we could remove most of the fat.

We had originally planned to make stew as that is the most common use for tougher birds, but it didn’t seem to really honor the life we took.  It seemed more of a way to simply render it edible and move on.  So instead I opted to make what my husband has been calling Rooster Risotto.  I’d just call it chicken and mushroom risotto.  The unctuousness of the stock certainly lended itself well to risotto (and we still have a couple quarts left).  I simply added 5 or 6 rehydrated dried morels (and their rehydrating water) and a quick grate of parmesean cheese to an otherwise basic risotto.  I then nestled a portion of the meat on top and added a drizzle of truffled olive oil to finish.  The earthiness of the morels and truffle oil really elevated the depth of the meat.  The al dente nature of the risotto also helped balance the chewier nature of the meat.

Most people seem to regard aged birds as practically inedible but we found that it brought a depth of flavor that was quite impressive, more like the gaminess of duck really.  The texture is far from the boneless, skinless chicken breasts most encounter in the grocery store, but isn’t unpleasent – just different.