Our children... I mean, our chickens

We are here today to convince you that chickens are the coolest animals ever. And the easiest "pets" that ever lived. You ready?

We got our first round of egg-layers in March 2013 after deciding to jump on the backyard chicken bandwagon along with the rest of America. Best decision ever! Unfortunately a raccoon decided to attack our 8-week old chickens and only one of the six survived. So we got six more and tried again.

Chicken-keeping lesson #1: Their main predators come out at night so they need a very secure place to sleep that will not allow for any predators. We thought our coop was totally secure but learned this lesson the hard way.

Now, we have 17 chickens... 7 that are currently laying and 10 more that we got in April/May.

Chicken-keeping lesson #2: Chickens start laying eggs when they are between 4 and 6 months old. Then they lay really well for about 2 years and then egg production declines after that. Egg production also declines in the winter when the amount of sunlight decreases. Chickens need about 14 hours of light per day to lay well.

So without further ado, here are our chickens (which are also like our children for the time being):

Rhode Island Red

These are hands-down our favorite breed. They are super friendly, good layers, and just great all-around chickens. And they are pretty! We have 4 of these, 2 that are already laying and 2 that aren't.

This one is Cinnamon. She is the boss. And the favorite... because she is the friendliest of all the chickens. She also is good at getting into trouble since she has to ALWAYS be where all the action is. The angle of this picture is a little weird because she was right at my feet. She always has to follow us around to see what we are doing.

Chicken-keeping lesson #3: Chickens always establish a pecking order. It is just what they do. There will always be a numero uno. In our case, it is Cinnamon. If you want to see who is in charge, just watch how the chickens act when they eat... usually chickens will move out of the way when a certain chicken (or chickens) that is "higher up" comes to eat. Sometimes they will even go do something else until the boss or other "higher up" chickens have finished eating and will come back later once those chickens have left.

Ameraucana

This breed is awesome! They lay the blue/green eggs which are pretty much the coolest things ever. This breed is relatively friendly and fairly good layers. We like these ones because no two birds look alike, they all have their own features that distinguish them from the others of the same breed. We have 5 of these, 3 that are laying and 2 that are almost 10 weeks old.

The bird above is Zelda, she is the one who survived the raccoon. Fitting name, don't ya think?

Chicken-keeping lesson #4: Chickens seek for the highest place. If they can look up and see something to land on they will usually jump up to it. And continue doing so until they can't see anything else to jump on... or decide something is too high. Hence the reason Zelda (above) found a shoulder to chill on.

This is Coco... she is also an Ameriaucana. We think she is the prettiest of all our chickens (so far). Don't tell the others we said that.

Buff Orpington

I love this breed because compared to the others they look FAT and FLUFFY. Turns out it is mostly just feathers that make them look fatter. They are friendly and are also good layers. We have 2 of these - Princess and Leia - need we say more?

Barred (Plymouth) Rock

Now begins the breeds we have not had before until this season. We really just wanted to try out this breed because they are awesome looking with their black and white stripes. They are a cross between two breeds (can't remember which ones) but are supposedly very cold hardy and good layers! We have 2 of these, they are about 7-8 weeks old. So far they don't like us (they run away when we try to pick them up) but we will keep working on it.

Chicken-keeping lesson #5: Chickens, hens at least, are very nice animals. We have had many people come over and act afraid of our chickens, but the reality is they are more scared of you than you are of them. They usually run away when you try to pick them up (except Cinnamon, which is why she is the favorite). Also, it is best to play with them as much as possible when they are chicks (even though they hate it) so they get used to you and won't be so afraid of you when they grow up. 

Golden Laced Wyandotte

This is not the best picture but we chose to try out this breed because they are supposedly very easy going, cold hardy, and good layers. And they are cool looking. Are you starting to see a trend here? We have 2 of these and so far they are great! We named them both Goldilocks... we are really original. Our original 7 are named but once we kept getting more we couldn't keep up. Mostly because we couldn't remember the next day what we named them. But names that go along with their breed seem to be working so we are going with it.

Blue Laced Red Wyandotte

This is supposedly one of the rarest but prettiest breeds... which is why we decided to try it out. When it is full grown it will be blue, red, orange, and brown. Her name is Blue (shocking right?). She was a little blue puff ball as a chick and we cannot wait to see what she looks like when she is full-grown! She is the only blue-laced red wyandotte we have... for now.

Speckled Sussex

This is Susie the Speckled Sussex. She (and Blue) are going to give Coco a run for her money on being the prettiest chicken. She is mostly brown on top but her chest is speckled and if she puts out her wings they are white on the very bottom. She is our only speckled sussex and she still just runs away from us when we come near her but when she is full-grown she is going to be a beauty!

This is the chickens' food and water. Sam made the feeder out of a rain gutter and wood. We ordered the waterer which is hooked up to a bucket so we don't have to fill it as often as we were with other waterers. We feed the chickens 20% lay mash, which gives them the best nutrition for when they are laying. When they are chicks, however, they are on starter feed for the first 2 months. The starter feed is just smaller pieces and makes it easier for them to eat and digest.

Note: Cinnamon in the background... proof that she always has to be where the action is!

Chicken-keeping lesson #6: To take care of chickens, they pretty much need food and water and that is about it. They are easy peasy!

This picture is a tad blurry but these are the roost bars. Sam built these from 2x2s. Chickens love to roost and this is where they sleep. They all fight for the top roost bar, as expected.

These are the nest boxes Sam built. Good thing he is handy! The chickens haven't fully caught on to the fact that they are supposed to lay their eggs in these. Some days they do, some days they don't.

That would be Zelda in there. She has gone broody, which is a chicken instinct where a chicken sits on the eggs all day trying to get them to hatch.

Chicken-keeping lesson #7: Most people asks us how this works all the time (we didn't necessarily understand this before we got chickens) but hens are female chickens and roosters are male chickens. Hens can lay eggs all the live long day without a male (just as human females do once a month... not trying to go THERE but it is important to understand how that process works) but they need a rooster to fertilize the eggs in order to be able to have baby chicks (just like humans... don't worry, stopping there). We do not have a rooster - that we know of, any of the little ones could be - so we do not have fertilized eggs. So unfortunately, Zelda is sitting on the eggs in vain. And when we try to go get them, she tries to bite us. It is totally a cool instinct but is not ideal right now since we know none of the eggs are fertilized. One day we hope to have a rooster and hatch our own baby chicks!

This is the brooder, once again built by Sam (well, I helped too). It is made out of 2x2s, cedar 1x4s, and hardware cloth. There are two compartments separated by a gate (that is able to open) in the middle. This is where we put the chicks. Chicks need to be kept in an environment that is about 95 degrees when they are first born, which is why there is a heat lamp. Then, each week you decrease the temperature by 5 degrees. We built this to have two compartments since we are doing egg layers and meat birds (remember that meat birds grow way faster than egg layers). We also built the brooder with hardware cloth on the front so that the chickens outside of the brooder are able to see the chickens inside the brooder. It can be a challenge to introduce new chickens into an established flock, especially when you just try to join them together out of nowhere. This brooder has helped a LOT with that problem. This way, the outside chickens are able to see the other ones the whole time and it is not such a shock when you let the little ones out. The big chickens still sometimes peck at the littler ones to show them who is boss, but they aren't trying to attack them like we have seen before.

This is the barn - aka the garage that we turned into a barn - aka the chicken house/coop.

The chickens have a really large area to roam in, which is great for them. They have tons of access to fresh grass, weeds, bugs, etc. - they LOVE it! You'll notice during almost every season except winter that the egg yolks of a free-range chicken are dark orange. That is due to the beta-carotene in the plants they eat. Humans typically get beta-carotene, a pigment (which will turn into vitamin A), in our diets from yellow-orange fruits and vegetables... hence the reason the yolks turn orange when the chickens get more beta-carotene in their diet! So you can actually get vitamin A from eggs! 

Aren't those so pretty? Eggs are also a source of riboflavin (vitamin B2), pantothenic acid (vitamin B5), biotin, vitamin B12, vitamin K, vitamin D, iron, zinc, phosphorus, sulfur, choline, and protein!

And you can use the shells too! You can feed them back to the chickens for calcium, grind them up and put them out to kill unwanted snails, or put them in your compost!

That is all probably more than you wanted to know about chickens but we hope you have a greater appreciation for these amazing creatures and are maybe thinking about trying to raise some yourself!

Meat Bird Processing

Sam and I spent last Saturday processing our chickens we were raising for meat. 

And when we say processing, we mean slaughtering, plucking, eviscerating, and cleaning the chickens. So we can eat them.

This was our first time raising chickens for meat. We have had our egg-layers for over a year now (and LOVE them!!!), but since we moved to a larger property we thought it would be the perfect time to try raising chickens for meat.

The standard meat chicken is called Cornish Cross - this is what you buy at the store. They are a hybrid chicken (not an actual breed) and have been selectively bred over time to get big, FAST. As chicks, they are cute, fluffy, yellow things...

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By 4 weeks they look like this...

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And at 8 weeks you have a 5-6 pound chicken that is full grown and ready to eat... crazy!!

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Since these chickens have been bred to get big so fast, they often have leg problems or will die of heart failure if you let them live too long past the time you would slaughter them. They are very lazy birds and do not like to move very much. 

Sam and I decided to start with 10 Cornish Cross chickens since this was our first time raising chickens for meat. We made -- and by "we" I really mean Sam -- them a pen (to protect them from predators) and raised them on pasture for the last 3-4 weeks of their life, once they were big enough to be outside and could keep themselves warm at night. We chose to put them in a pen outside instead of letting them stay in the barn with the other chickens because they would have stayed in the barn all day and would have only eaten chicken feed (because they are too lazy to move very far). By raising them on pasture, they were able to have access to bugs, grass, weeds, etc. that they would not have gotten otherwise. Grass-fed meat has been shown to have less saturated fat and more omega-3 fats than purely grain-fed meat. (Hey, I'm an almost Registered Dietitian, I have to throw nutritional information in there every now and then...)

Unfortunately, 2 of our chickens died prior to processing day, so we only processed 8 birds. And boy, what a long day of processing it was! In all honesty, it was a rough but good experience. It is never fun to have to kill something, especially something you have taken care of for a good chunk of time, but we thought it was important for us to be able to raise our own meat and to be able to know where our meat came from. Truth be told, Sam had to be the one to actually kill the chickens because if it were up to me, they would still be outside right now. Together we plucked the chickens and I did most of the evisceration (removing all the internal organs)... which was actually kinda cool. We watched quite a few YouTube videos on how to do all this and then just went at it! And I think we did a pretty dang good job if I do say so myself!

This was our final product... minus one chicken (not sure where it went, in the fridge maybe?). Once all of the chickens were done, we put them in these nifty shrinkable bags! For the bags, you put a chicken in a bag, zip-tie it shut, cut a small (like 1/2 inch or so) slit in the bag, submerge most of the bag (at least up to the hole) in ~180-degree water, and the bag just shrinks! Then you put a label over the slit and voila - you have a chicken ready for the freezer. We ordered the bags (they come with the zip ties and labels) from Herrick Kimball.

Sam holding the finished product!

My I-can't-believe-I-just-did-all-that face.

After all was said and done, we were exhausted. We were originally going to do another batch of chickens and sell some to those who were interested, but after all the work we did (and because it is not terribly fun to kill chickens) we decided to keep the chickens and hold off on raising more for meat until next season. So, if you are interested in farm fresh meat, we will be raising more next year and may ask that you come help with the processing... to make it go quicker and also to help it be more cost-effective to you! And let me tell ya... speaking from experience, the chicken is MIGHTY tasty :)