a man and his hoe

every day is a good day

Category: About My Chickens

Cloud of Dust or The Sex Was Good

I went outside to take pictures of the golden chain tree, Laburnum, and spotted Billy and Imelda, our two old love birds. I dropped to the lawn to take pictures of them, when Kuma-Hime 熊姫 shook, throwing up a cloud of dust or dirt to bathe in.

Chickens are dusty creatures. They love taking dust and dirt baths. Hens make sure to teach their chicks how to take dirt baths. So it’s not surprising that chickens smell like dust. Since chickens enjoy dust baths so much, I wonder how chickens cope when living in environments where there is no dust.

When do chickens shake? After a good dust bath. The hens also give a good shake after sex. Once the rooster hops off them, they’ll stand and give a good shake, as if they’ve had a good thrill.

May 13, 2014
On Mother’s Day

This is a tribute to the 99.999999999999% of chicks who don’t have a mother. Who are hatched in mechanical incubators, rushed to broilers and laying barns, and grow up never spending a night snuggled under a mother’s warm feathers.

This is a tribute to the 99.999999999999% of laying hens who never get to hatch a single one of the many hundreds of eggs they lay. Who never get to express their love for little chicks.

A melodramatic, sentimental tribute, and yet, perhaps the fact that we don’t even stop to consider that chicks do need a mother, and think it quaint that there are still places that have mother hens raising chicks, speaks more about what has happened to us humans than anything.

A mother hen teaches the chicks manners. She teaches them to be confident in the presence of other hens, and to mingle with the rest of the flock.

Happy Mother’s Day! The chicks who have mothers sure adore them.
[wpvideo zHVGsckg]

May 11, 2014
Mornings Start Early

Mornings start early for the roosters. They start crowing at the crack of dawn.
[wpvideo K38coF0m]
Mornings start early for a mother hen and her chicks. They are often the first ones out of the chicken yard. Often it is the little ones that are most anxious to get outdoors.

It’s a different story with these chicks. Last night their mother was back up on the roost and the four chicks spent their first night without her. This morning they are glad to have her back, though now that she is roosting again, it won’t be long before they will be on their own for good.

And a pleasant surprise this morning was finding a young hen laying her first egg.

May 11, 2014
On the Board Today
On the board today is a young rooster, born in December. When you raise heritage breeds of chickens on open pasture and woodland, each bird is unique. It takes nearly a half a year for these birds to get to butchering size. A truly great rooster takes a full year to raise.

Each bird has a long story. A rich childhood with its mother and siblings. A period of young adulthood shared with its siblings, followed by a more independent adulthood, with plenty of opportunities to explore chicken love.

Modern factory farming is all about denying birds their uniqueness. It is about cutting expenditures to the bone and producing as much meat as possible and making everything the same. It makes fast food possible with its buckets of inexpensive fried chicken. Cheap food demands cheap wages which demands even cheaper food in a never ending cycle of ever decreasing quality and satisfaction. In the end it leaves us all poorer.

It deprives us of experiencing the richness of a hearty meal of slow-roasted fowl. Try finding a year old fowl to enjoy in your supermarket or butcher. I’ll be roasting this bird today at 190ºF. Come back this evening to see how it turns out.
May 9, 2014
Waiting for Mother

These six week old chicks are resting while their mother is off laying an egg. At six weeks, they are still tiny, and yet some commercial breeds are large enough to butcher by the time they are six weeks old. It will take these chicks all summer to get that large.

May 8, 2014