The Rooster is Dead!

Chris is busily working on an account of our trip, leaving me with the sad task of informing all who care that our rooster died several days before we left.

It was a rather shocking discovery for Chris. He opened the coop door and there he was; dead on the floor! We're not entirely sure what happened. Several extended family members reckon the hens took revenge. I'm not unconvinced this was the case as the rooster was rather forward and frequent in his attention to the brood, leading my brother to give him a title that belongs in the courtrooms of those charged with acts of certain kinds of assault. The rest is best left unsaid.

I can't say the hens appreciated the attention; instinct wasn't always in play as I did see two of them turn and chase him once when he got too close. The girls in our house didn't like him much as he was quite aggressive toward us. I, at least, could see his value in our springtime venture of our home-based mini hatchery. Katie and Helen used his presence to advantage, wrangling out of chores as the coop is right next to the barn.

Stephen, on the other hand, simply liked having the rooster around. It added a male presence to the farmyard that was severely lacking (all the sheep are female).

Interestingly, we have been trying for a month or so now to figure out how to optimize our egg production since fall came upon us. We are using lights and keeping the hens in the coop a bit longer each day to encourage laying. We didn't want to add chemical crumbles since we moved the flock to organic wheat (locally grown). Up until we left last week our egg production from the 25 hens had fallen to about 6 per day.

Yesterday when we returned....10 eggs! Today: 13 eggs!

Could the rooster's presence have had something to do with our lowered egg production???

For now we won't replace him since we weren't planning on incubating eggs until late spring. But I think I'll do a bit more research on egg production and roosters...

Poultry Harvesting is Complete

Yesterday we harvested our 21 remaining Cornish Giants. As we neared the day, I began using the word "harvesting" instead of "butchering" to offset some of the dread I was beginning to feel. I love the power of words...it helped a bit!

We enlisted the help of experienced poultry harvesters, Mike and Linda Casey. Mike and Linda are Burkholder family friends from way back. They managed to borrow a plucker and a butchering cone from neighbours and showed up with an array of other equipment to make the job easier.

Chris and I decided we would not post photos of our harvesting day; there are plenty of sites on the internet that describe and show the process in graphic detail if anybody wishes to know more.

It wasn't as bad as either one of us thought. I surprised myself by remembering a fair bit from my childhood. Chris managed very well for his first time harvesting his own meat. (He's chopped up a fair bit of his own food in the last year but vegetables don't have the risk of inducing sqeamishness or trauma like having to butcher an animal has!)

The chicken coop has now be completely claimed by the laying hens and we will soon start to build roosts for them.

Our general feeling about our meat raising experiment? Probably not cost effective compared to store bought meat, but we certainly know what we fed them so there is some security there.

We were also unsettled by the way Cornish Giants have been bred and will probably not raise this breed again. They grew so big, so fast, that they experienced leg problems, leading us to isolate four of them for the last month. We had to feed and water them separately which was a real pain. These birds also do not have a sense of self preservation and would simply stand still while a layer hen pecked a hole right through the skin and fat to their bone. That, for me, was most unsettling.

This farming foray DID put us closer to our food and that in itself was a great education. It does make you think very much about all the issues regarding meat production.

For now we are going to enjoy the next year raising layers and harvesting eggs. We will defer the decision about getting meat birds again until next year.

Over the next few days we collect our lambs. I have taken the kids to the credit union and they have filled out their withdrawal slips and have tucked their purchase money away in a safe place!

Have you seen this chicken?

If you buy chicken at your local super market the odds are high that you are intimately familiar with this bird. It is a Cornish Giant and according to the limited reading I have done this breed provides well over 90% of the packaged chicken that hits our grocery shelves in North America.

Our family started raising day-old chicks on March 19th. We chose 26 Red Rock layers and 25 Cornish Giant meat birds for our foray into raising chickens for food. The Red Rock lays a brown egg and is considered suitable for egg production and meat. The Cornish Giant is pretty much raised for its meat.

We finished building a coop for our birds and moved them in over a week ago now. The coop is spacious, providing close to 3 square feet of space per bird. We enclosed a run attached to the coop that allows them to go outside in the warm weather. When they are older we intend to allow them free range in our yard so they can forage. The chickens are young and are still hesitant to leave the safety of the enclosed coop.

We are feeding the birds feed purchased at the local feed store, and are introducing them to vegetable scraps from our table and worms from the composting bins.

When we got the birds they were tiny, fitting into one of the kids hands. The Red Rocks and the Cornish Giants were different colours (dark brown and white respectively) but were otherwise the same. Four weeks later I am beginning to wonder if all of them are really chickens.

The Red Rocks are fiesty little birds. They like to perch on the divider separating the two breeds and either watch or jump into the Cornish Giant enclosure. One of them, that has turned a deeper red colour, will actually peck at us when we come close, and has earned the nickname Little Red Hen from the kids.

The Cornish Giants are now on average 3 to 4 times larger than the Red Rocks. The Giants eat constantly, waddle slowly when they move and cannot perch because they are too big to hop up. These birds are a fascinating example of genetic selection. All chicken breeds have been domesticated and culled genetically for desirable traits for centuries. The Cornish Giants have been selected for their capacity to eat and develop body mass.

We lost one of the Red Rocks early when it was struck by a falling lamp. Otherwise, these birds are very healthy, and seem to be having no problems.

Over the last week we have been having problems with the Cornish Giants. Four of the birds seem to have injured their legs and are now having difficulty walking. The chickens like to huddle together when they sleep, and if it is cold they huddle closer. This huddle is like a rugby scrum, I have watched birds bowl over and walk over birds already in the huddle. My guess is that it does not take much to injure their already over-burdened legs as they get jostled in these huddles.

We have isolated the injured birds, and this seems to help with their recovery. Otherwise, the injured birds get trampled when they go for food or water, and eventually just lie down and stop moving. The separation gives the birds a chance to recover while they are not competing for food and water.

Unfortunately one of these injured birds died this past week. Our son Stephen took this very badly, insisting it was OK to slaughter them when they are fat and ugly, but they shouldn't die 'young and cute'. He has been very involved looking after the birds, and I suspect the slaughter is going to be an interesting day. Stephen and I buried both of the birds that have died. I realized a few days ago that Stephen has been raising little crosses on these sites after we are done.

The Cornish Giants are the product of the factory farms of the modern agricultural system. These birds are economically viable because they maximize the return on time, feed and money invested. In a small farm setting they have difficulties; they are slow, injury-prone and not very robust. Anecdotally, others who have raised these birds have told me similar stories.

I am reminded of a science fiction novel I read as a teenager (I do not remember the author or the book's name). The premise was a society that had consumed all of the open spaces left on the planet and lived in continent-spanning cities. The primary food source for these cities were genetically modified chickens (unrecognizable as today's birds) that provided the protein for the world's citizens. I now suspect this author was raised on a farm and had an over-active (but not totally far fetched) imagination.

I am not sure what all this means to me as a consumer of chicken meat. I now have a less-than-rosy image of the lives of meat birds raised and slaughtered by larger farm operations. I am uncomfortable watching these meat birds waddle around unsteadily in our own yard. Will I eat these birds? Yes. Will I raise them again?

Unhappily, one of our injured birds is not looking very good. Stephen does not think the bird will survive the night. I suspect I am going to see more of these over the next little while ... I just pray the dog does not figure out the significance of these markers!

Which came first, the coop or the house?

Today being the first day this week we have not been running around collecting tires or driving our children to Battle of the Book competitions (Katie's team placed first in zones; yay!), we worked on the chicken coop all day!

Why the coop and not the house? The chicks are taking up our shop floor. They stink and they are not so cute anymore. We often find one or two of the layers perched on their brooder wall beaking off (hey, a joke) at their neighbours the Cornish Giants, on the other side.

We think for practical purposes we will license the truck this summer and the truck needs some break work and the shop is our chosen spot to curse and swear at the vehicles. It has a big roll down door so we can swear very loudly (and play music) without the kids hearing us.

So the coop is becoming important.

For the last several days all of us have been working on it. We moved it into place next to our sheep barn and Chris and Stephen framed one wall. We are going to have an entrance area with shelves. This wall will be insulated and we have sided the outer side with #2 log siding that was laying around.

Here's the first part of the framed wall.





















The framed wall with door. Yes, it looks a bit rough. I have some dark stain to treat it with

















Cutting the chicken door. Hit a blue ox screw. Ouch.















Cutting out the window opening. Much easier to allow for a window when the building is going up. Such is the life of retrofitting. Chris is using our small electric chainsaw. Although we don't use chainsaws very much on our machined log buildings, we have always had a good gas chainsaw. In 2003 when the wildfires came through our valley we purchased the electric one to minimize the danger of fires from the gas machine. The electric chainsaw is a bit more responsive in small places.









Here's the chainsaw coming out the other side. That would be alarming if you weren't expecting it!

















Chris finally got ticked off with the little electric Stihl chainsaw and brought out the Husquvarna. The white dots are sawdust specs flying at the camera. The hole wasn't as smooth, but it finally got done.















Here's the hole for the window. Still one more round to remove; it was being held by blue ox screws and we had to take the bolt cutters to them.











Here's the window installed in the back wall of the chicken coop. It's pretty fancy. It's made out of clear douglas fir wood and is gridded and screened. It was one of many windows we used to sell in our packages. This one suffered water damage a few years ago and because we had always been so busy, it wasn't worth our time to fix it. Now we had the time. It's still not in good enough shape to put in a house, yet it's takes the coop "uptown". Chris has since put on trim, which I will take off soon and paint barn red to match the tin of our sheep barn. We still have to put red tin on the coop.

We insulated the ceiling inside with 2" rigid insulation. We still need to finish siding the inside of the framed wall and build the enclosure out of the stucco wire we bought today. All in all we spent $210 on the coop (roof insulation and stucco wire). The remaining materials we had on hand from our house renovation project 18 months ago. Tomorrow we will finish these jobs and move the chickens.

Moving sheds to make way for the coop

Chris spent most of Saturday with my father and friend, Mike Casey, moving our small shed in McLure to our site here in Darfield. The shed had served as our promotional sign coming into Barriere, but as we are not actively drumming up business we had other plans for it.

I spent the day at the kids sheep husbandry day which I always find a lot of fun. I don't think the male lambs do, though. It was ear tagging, castration and tail docking day. The 4-H club has a potluck for lunch and it's always nice to visit with friends. I have to say that although the club means a lot of work for the parents, it does create an amazing sense of community.

We spent today cleaning out and moving our various storage sheds to make way for our larger shed as our chicken coop. According to our "master plan" as Mike calls it, we will be able to separate the meat birds from the layers in the coop and let them have an enclosed run on the days we are not here. We plan to free-range the chickens when we are on site. Having said that, the meat birds are almost 4 wks old (Cornish game hen size, apparently) and are HUGE. Another six weeks doesn't really give them much time to free range! We really do have to move them soon. Mike says that KFC chicken is all 6 weeks old. I can believe it; these birds eat their weight in grain in a day, it seems.

Here is a picture of Chris moving the larger shed to its new home.

One layer chick lost...

I'm quite choked about this. After keeping all 52 chicks alive for three weeks, I accidentally dropped the heat lamp and it landed on one of the layer chicks, mortally wounding it. Katie was with me so I had to be cool and collected, but had I been alone I probably would have had a little freak-out.

Stephen was also very upset and after insisting on looking at it, claims it was one of the ones he named (great). So now I'm the one who "killed" the chick. I keep explaining it was an accident while at the same time wondering how long it will take for everybody to stop glaring at me...

We are in real trouble when the time comes to butcher the meat birds...

First medical crisis for the chicks!

O.K. we are still waiting for word on the permit for the earthship.

However, we had our first health crisis in the poultry brooder.

I was returning from my nightly bicycle ride (southbound on Hwy 5 up the north side of the Darfield hill) and upon coming through the front door Chris says "good, you're back, Stephen get your camera, we may have a problem with one of the chicks".

Chris did admit he didn't know enough about chicks to know if it was a problem.

With slight trepidation we marched through the mud (yes! our snow is finally melting!) and into the shop. I cast about the brooder to see if some creature looked amiss...yikes! With Chris and Stephen leaning over my shoulder I pointed and said, "I think we have a problem".

Stephen, by this point was quite upset and got an eyeful of the bird. "WHAT'STHEMATTERWITHIT?" he asked, voice elevated, oh, maybe 30-40 decibels above normal.

"I am not sure, " I said. I reach in and grab the little girl (it was one of our layers) and picked it up. "Take a picture Stephen".

With photo recorded I cast about for a container. "I need a container," I said.

"What for?" asked Chris.

"We are isolating this baby, " I said. If we had avian flu or hoof and mouth disease, or tapeworm, or whatever it is that birds get, I was going into quarantine mode.

"Where are you taking it?" asked Chris, who had plans on posting the picture on the internet and getting a 21st century diagnosis.

"I'm taking it to Robin."

Robin Schilling is our neighbour just slightly south of us. His family owns the Schilling ranch, which used to be a dairy when I was growing up but is now a beef ranch.

Robin can pull a calf, shoot coyotes, make hay, move sprinklers, and grow corn. He and his family also keep poultry. He's a professional engineer like Chris so if anybody could diagnose my little chickie it would be Robin.

Stephen, Helen and I pile into the car with the chick and drive over. The Schillings (Robin's wife Jody, and sons Tyler, Tyson and Tanner (8, 6 and 4)) are all suited up to tag calves. I caught them just in time.

"We need a vet!"

Stephen thrusts our shavings-lined ice cream bucket at Robin, who eyes the chick rather professionally, I thought.

"Do any more look like this?" he asks me. Nope.

He surveys the chick for a few more seconds. "I think you have an extreme case of pastey butt."

What????

"What?" I ask.

Apparently this particular chick has been pooping and there's so much of it she can't poop. Robin explains that we need to moisten the chick's behind until we get rid of it.

Wait a minute. I'm still confused.

"So, like, what, moisten its butt a couple of times a day?" I get a blank stare. I hurriedly continue. "That big...missile sticking out her rear end is because her poop hole is blocked and it can't get rid of poop so her butt is distended?"

No, Robin explains, she's been trying to poop and the poop's drying on her butt and it apparently has been building up for some time. Really, we didn't notice. How unobservant can we be????

"So you're telling me this chick has been carrying her weight in dry poop around for a little while?" Robin nods. "How do I fix it again?" I ask.

Robin looks at me for a minute and says, "Hang on a minute." And he disappears to his basement with the chick.

A few minutes later Tyson comes up the stairs to tell me "she's a little o.k."

After a few more minutes of chatting with Jody about the black forest birthday cake the girls and I are making for Chris tonight (I had to borrow a few cups of milk from her for that, too) Robin comes up with the chick who is looking right as rain.

He cautions me that now that she's lost her weight in manure, she will probably be able to jump out of the ice cream bucket. (She does get loose on the way home.)

Feeling a big chagrined, we drive home. In the 20 minutes we are gone Chris has diagnosed the chick's problem by googling "constipated chick" although he does tell me there's some really weird results when you google those particular words...

Saved from avian flu and the thought of putting a cute fluffy chick out of its misery, I think what complete amateurs we are! And that we are going to be in real trouble at butchering time in May!

Chicks

Our chicks came today ( march 19th 2009) and no I don't mean dudes' girlfriends, I mean little baby "girl" chickens.

We were only supposed to get 25 layers and 25 meat birds, (yum!!) but we were lucky enough to get a few extra "to experiment with," as my dad said.

But I'm getting ahead of myself, I'm writing for me, my brother and sister, I'm Katie, 10 years old, my brother Stephen is 9 years old and my sister Helen just turned 8.

My mom thought it would be a good idea if we wrote about our new chicks and how we're keeping them alive.

Helen says: I think the chicks are really cute. I named two of them #1: fluffy (she is a layer.) and # 2 is fluffier it is hard to take care of a chick.

Stephen says: yummy meat birds yes indeed yummy yummy here birdy .Ok down to business. I named 2 babies and yeah that's my share. Here birdy.

I say: Oh ha ha Stephen reeeaaal mature. Anyway the chicks are really cute and I named 4! Fast, Furious, Funny and Noisy. (Stephen helped with Noisy.)

So more about the chicks:

1) The meat birds are Cornish Giants and they are yellow fluffs right now but will turn white.
2) The layers are Red Rock crosses and are black and fluffy.

Mr. Peterson from Country Feeds says we can literally watch the meat birds grow. They will be ready to eat in 10 weeks. Our layers might start laying this fall.

Here are some ways we take care of the chicks:

1) It is really important to make sure that the middle of the pen is around 90F if it is not they will be too cold and they will pile on top of each other and suffocate. If they are too hot they will go on the outside of the pen and pile on top of each other and suffocate (kind of dumb, isn't it?)

2) It is also important to make sure their water is clean.

3) You should probably start them on starter feed. After 3 weeks the meat birds can start on normal grain. After 6 weeks the layers may start on some special grain!!!

4) After they're big enough we will move them into our chicken coop.

5) Mr. Peterson said to dip the beaks into water so they would learn to drink.

6) You should probably get your chicks vaccinated so that they do not get diseases.

7) Soon we will have to separate them because they will be eating two different types of feed and the meat birds will be so big they might kill the layers.

8) Our layers will only lay brown eggs. You can get layers that produce white eggs. The way you can tell is that if your chickens lay white or brown is if their ear lobes are red that means they will lay brown eggs! But if they have white ear lobes they will only will lay white eggs (my mom did not now this interesting fact!)

9) Supplies we needed: heat lamp, cardboard enclosure, shavings (we had lots of those!), chick feeder and waterers, vitamins for the water, and starter grain.

10) Don't get too attached to the meat birds. They won't be around long!

by Katie, Stephen and Helen