Even though it is still early January, the hens are laying more eggs. Their winter slump has ended and daily egg production has gone from five to seven up to eighteen. It will double from that in a few months.
We have one hen, Lucky, who lays her eggs in one of the dog houses. Each morning it is a race between us and the dogs as to who gets her eggs. This morning we got the egg. Most mornings all we find is an empty shell.
Where Do You Want Your Chicken to Come From?
Where would you prefer to get your chicken? From a plant like this Foster Farms processing plant which was recently closed due to cockroach infestation? At a plant like this, up to 140 chickens move through the processing line a minute. That is more than two chickens a second. And the chicken processing companies want to speed these processing lines up to 175 chickens per minute.
Or would you rather get your chickens from a quiet cabin in the woods where chickens are butchered just one at a time, and only five or so chickens are ever butchered in a single day, with each one being handled with great care?
Chickens at a man and his hoe never leave their home. They are never transported in crowded containers to processing plants miles from home. Instead, they are carefully caught, and once caught, their heads are covered with soft towels to keep them calm. They never see what is happening to them, and the other chickens never see another chicken being butchered.
It is your choice.
Roasting a Rooster
This is a seven and a half month old Golden Buff rooster, butchered at 224 days, and let to rest for four days in the refrigerator. Three to four days is a good time to let a chicken rest before roasting, especially these chickens which exercise so much every day.
These are not birds which sit around all day, doing nothing but eating and growing fat. They aren’t crowded together cheek by jowl. What they do provide is a big story and a big taste. A chicken does a lot of living in seven months. As chickens go, it’s seen the world, traveled far from it’s roost every day, had the chance to experience romance and live a full life. At times they go so deep into the woods they can’t see another chicken. You’ll never find chicken like this in your supermarket.
Three Week Old Chicks
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At three weeks the chicks are traveling a long distance with their mother. At times she is the one who is following them as they go in search of good things to eat.
Worms and bugs make up a big portion of a chicken’s diet. They are great to have around to keep the bug population in check. But if you are growing vegetables or flower beds, you need to keep them out, or they will quickly dig up all your vegetables and flowers as they search for worms and bugs.
17 Day Old Chicks
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At 17 days of age, these chicks are spending most of the day outdoors. Their mother takes them outside at the crack of dawn in search of good things to eat. In a matter of hours, they will travel further than broiler chickens travel their entire lives. When you see how far chickens like to go in search of food, you understand how intolerable it is to raise them in densities of one chicken per square foot. With a mother, chicks enjoy a very rich life.
Fresh Liver
You’ll never find liver like this in the store. Liver from chickens which exercise much of the day, get plenty of fresh air and sunshine, is plump and dry.
When chickens are out walking all day, rummaging for food, playing, and having a good time, they are pumping copious amounts of oxygenated blood through their bodies, much like people who exercise. Chickens raised in cramp quarters and butchered at a very young age, never attain the level of health of chickens raised outdoors. And this shows in the quality of their livers.
Fried in butter, chicken fat, or olive oil for several minutes on each side, it has so much flavor that no salt is needed. In fact, you should first taste it before adding any salt. Often salt, instead of enhancing the flavor of foods, just makes foods taste like salt.
Liver is best eaten within a few hours of processing a chicken. Are there any stores which sell chicken liver from chickens butchered that day? Let me know if you find one. The next time you buy chicken liver in a store, ask the grocer when the liver was taken. If they don’t know, what does that say about their concern for the quality of the food they sell to you?
Frosty Morning
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<p>A little frost doesn’t bother the chickens. It’s a cloudless morning and the sun will soon melt the frost.</p>
Rooster Cull
A sure sign that there are too many roosters roaming about is to find hens on their roost during the day. Young roosters especially can harass hens more than the hens want.
So after you’ve caught a rooster to cull, what tools do you need to take care of him? Not many. The tools below will suffice.
Today’s cull resulted in a four pound plus rooster. But as you can see, this one has had his share of battles with other roosters.
Nevertheless, it will end up making a wonderful roast. At seven months old, it is also a good candidate for canning.
Maintaining of flock of roosters, hens and growing chicks, is nothing like raising meat chickens by the tens of thousands. The dynamics of chicken culture are complex. Hens like roosters and you often see them flirting with their favorite ones. At the same time, too many young roosters can be a pain in the ass for hens, not to mention a threat to the older ones. But the rewards are worth it. The eggs are out of this world. The variety, flavor, and texture of these chickens just can’t be found in any store.
16 Day Old Chicks
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The chicks are 16 days old today. Their mother is taking them for an adventure along a woodland stream. The lives of chicks are greatly enriched by having a mother. Large, commercial operators talk about enriching the lives of chicks, but their concept of enrichment consists of hanging bunches of string, giving them sand boxes, or hay bales as described by PoultryHub – Environmental Enrichment. Really? Is that all? Which would you rather have? Chicken which got to play with a bunch of string, or chicken which was raised by its mother?
Sharp beaks – happy chickens
Healthy chickens have very sharp beaks. They need them to peck at food, dig in the dirt, and when hunting, to kill their prey. Chickens will quickly spear and kill a field mouse. Chicken beaks are complex organs with many sensory neurons which help the chicken sense things. Sadly, most commercial hen layers are debeaked as chicks. The reason is that when chickens are crowded too close, a chicken will peck to tell the other chicken it is too close. With crowded chickens, this pecking can cause injury and once a chicken develops a wound and starts to bleed, other chickens will peck at the wound leading to severe injury and death. But all you have to do is give the chickens enough room and they won’t peck each other. The next time you buy eggs, ask your grocer if the hen that laid your egg was debeaked.
Chickens at A Man and His Hoe are never debeaked.