A Chick Grows Up
Words lack the capability to describe the love and care a mother hen showers on her chicks. You have to see it to understand how important mother hens are to chicks. Born at the end of November, the chick at 2 and a half months of age is nearly halfway to becoming an adult. At times, she ventures out on her own, but she still spends much of the day with her mother, and roosts with her at night. This is what humanely raised chicken looks like. The chick is 13 weeks old now. You can scarcely find a chicken that has enjoyed life so long in your supermarket. You certainly won’t find any that have had the joy of being raised by a mother. At a man and a hoe, that is the only kind of chicken I raise.
Billy
It takes both a rooster and a hen to create a chick. Just in the US, some 9,000,000,000 chickens are raised each year for meat. Which means that hidden from view there are millions of roosters and hens kept to pump out fertile eggs. Artificial insemination is not used much in the chicken industry. According to Marian Stamp Dawkins, Professor of Animal Behaviour, University of Oxford and Emeritus Fellow in Biological Sciences, Sommerville College, Oxford:
In commercial production, breeders are usually fed very restricted rations to prevent them from becoming overweight, obese and infertile, sometimes only 25-40% of the food they would eat if they could.
In other words, breeding hens and roosters are kept on starvation diets to keep them from becoming too fat. If they get too fat, they can’t physically breed! Imagine how you would feel if you could only eat a quarter of what you would like to eat.
However, this certainly is not what happens at a man and a hoe. The heritage breeds I raise don’t over eat. They won’t stay in one place and eat nonstop like the broiler breeds most chicken farmers raise. I could dump out a whole bag of grain and feed, and the chickens here will eat their fill and move on, leaving much of the grain and feed untouched. They have better things to do than sit around all day and stuff their faces. With acres of pasture and forest to explore, they would rather be outside enjoying the sunshine, courting, chasing small birds, and finding fat earthworms to savor.
Billy is a special rooster. The first rooster at a man and his hoe. He is now five years old and is starting to show his age. He’s survived an encounter with a raccoon, when he bravely kept a raccoon from getting the hens. He’s battled with younger roosters challenging his dominant position. Over the years he’s broken a toe, and after battles with younger roosters, hobbled around while he healed. But he’s still the king of the flock and has two inch long spurs to prove it. He’s very gentle with the hens and is the favorite rooster of many of the hens.
So when you buy chicken or eggs from me, rest assured that there are no starving breeding roosters and hens used in the process. All of the chickens here have very full lives, spending most of their time outdoors, and get to eat whenever they want.
Reincarnated Chicken Manure
So what happens to chicken manure when it is reincarnated? It turns into edible wonders, like these over wintering onions I pulled this morning. Most chicken farmers get rid of their egg laying hens by the time they have gone through two egg laying seasons. However, on the micro scale that I operate, the manure these older hens is as valuable as the eggs they lay. I’ve had hens live more than seven years. Billy, the oldest rooster, is five years old this year. Eight Week Old Chicks
The chicks born on December 19 are 8 weeks old now. They are still spending their days and nights with their mother. Most commercial broiler chickens are in the supermarket by 8 weeks of age. These chicks are still having the time of their lives foraging for food with their mother. Here, they are digging for earthworms next to a compost pile.
[wpvideo rA8Rcrdn] Staying Warm
These chicks are seven weeks and still have a ways to go before they are independent. Many broiler chicks have already been butchered by the time they are this old, and most only have another week or two before they are off to market. These heritage breed mix chicks are many months away from the dinner table. Staying Warm
If you are planning on having chickens roam free, it makes a big difference if you have guard dogs. Good ones will detect coyotes venturing too close, chase off raccoons, hunt down opossums, and keep the hawks and eagles away.
Our two guard dogs are fearless. Working as a team, they chase coyotes far off into the woods. The chickens get along with the dogs so well that some of the chickens lay eggs in their dog houses. The dogs love that.
The dogs also sometimes break up roosters which get into a fight.
