On buying chicks from a feed store............

Uh...........did anyone out there think this would be HARD???

No?

Good.  Because I didn't either.  Get ready for a bit of a rant.  :P

So, we have been planning to order chicks through a hatchery.  Some for meat, some for eggs.  I poured over my favorite catalog and carefully underlined important information about each breed I was interested in.  Then, I circled the breeds I wanted to order with a red marker.  You know, so I wouldn't forget.

Low and behold, now we are ready to submit our order, and the hatchery is out of meat chickens.  As in, totally out.  Not backordered.  Argh!  Then, I notice several of the laying breeds we had chosen were backordered by at least three weeks, some for two months!

Bummer.

After looking at some other hatcheries online, I realized this is a common problem right now.  In February.  Who knew hatcheries started selling out of chicks so early?  I didn't.  This was our first time to order from one.

I thought I was ordering early!!!

So, we thought we might just get some from Tractor Supply.  We called every day for several days hoping to hear they had received their shipment of eggs.  Finally, they did.  I dropped everything (I left rising bread in the oven for this!) and loaded up the kids and headed to the store.

No meat chickens like they were expecting.  Bummer.

Lots of Rhode Island Reds.  We already have several of those and wanted some different breeds.

Lots of Gold Sex Links.  Hmmm.  I wasn't particularly fond of getting "mutt" breeds.  We have some mutts and they're not real pretty.  I want old breeds.  Heritage breeds.  Breeds that can reproduce for us, if we want. 

Then, there was a bin full of fluffy little yellow chicks with two reddish stripes down their backs.  What were they?  Nobody knew.  The sign just said, "Pullets".  I even took my hatchery catalog into the store with me, and Ava and I couldn't find these chicks anywhere in it.  I asked several employees.  They didn't know.  They told me their "chicken guy" was out to lunch and would be back in a bit.

Then, a customer reminded me of another feed store just down the road that she thought had chicks.

They did!  However, bless his heart, this nice old man couldn't tell me much about them either.  I thought they looked like a bunch of Buff Orpingtons (because we have two) and a couple Barred Rocks (of which we also have two).  He told me, "No, no.  There's a bunch of 'em mixed up in there.  There's Dominickers, Buffs, Rhode Islands, and Brown Leghorns." 

Um.........okay............

When he got back there to look, he changed his mind.  "Well, we must have sold all the Leghorns.  But the rest of 'em are there."

Hmm..........I wasn't sure he knew what he was talking about.  We have RIR chicks and they don't look anything like what he had in that bin.  So, then I asked him if he knew if his Dominiques were male or female.  He said there was no way to tell.

*Sigh*

Ava and decided we thought they were both males, based on what we remembered about the head spots on our Barred Rock chicks we' ve been raising.

We passed on those and tried our best to choose four Buff pullets.

Then, we went back to Tractor Supply and found said "chicken guy".  Turns out this guy doesn't know what breed ANY of the chicks were.  Huh?  They have signs on two of the tubs that say what breeds they are!  It was the third tub that didn't tell me what breed was inside.  He was clueless.  So was I.  And frustrated.  These people didn't know what they were selling.  How helpful is that?  I even asked him if he happened to have the packing slip that came with them that afternoon.  Perhaps that would have an itemization of what breeds were sent.  I could tell he was losing patience with me.

Mixed in with the RIR were supposed to be some New Hamshire Reds.  He couldn't tell which were which, so Ava and I decided to try two of the lightest chicks.  We also got three of the "mystery" breed and one little rogue fella roaming around with the Gold Sex Links.  This chick appears to either be an Ameracauna or Brown Leghorn.  We're not sure.  We're not even sure if it's pullet.  This "chicken guy" held it upside down by the feet and declared it was a rooster because it struggled.  Um.....okay.  We kept talking for a minute and he did it again.  This time, the poor little chick just hung there.  "Yep." he said, "I think that one's a male."

Uh, huh.

Anyway....................we brought home 4 Buffs, 1 Ameracauna/Brown Leghorn, 2 New Hampshires (I hope), and 3 "mystery" pullets.  10 new chicks, in all.  Hopefully 10 pullets.

By the time I got back home, I was mentally exhausted by the frustration I felt.  Then I remembered my bread.  It fell.  I baked it anyway.  It's meh.

All of that was just to remind myself next winter to order my chicks from a hatchery before February.  I don't want to go through that again!  I'd like to just order what I want and get it.  On the other hand, if you really don't care what kind of chickens you get, go to a feed store and they will likely save you money on shipping.  And you will not have to buy 25 of them for shipping safety.

Oh, by the way, the "mystery" chicks have been found out.  You may already know.  Do you?  If you do, you're smarter than me!  We believe they are Golden Comets.

I really didn't want mixed breed chickens because I want heritage breeds.  However, they do appear to be excellent layers, which is also important to us.  I'll let you know how I feel about them in 5-7 months.

Ok, rant over.  I feel better.  :)

Our First Butchered Chicken....

**********WARNING**********

What you are about to view is not for the faint of heart!

There are graphic images of a perfectly healthy chicken being butchered for our dinner table.

Be aware there is blood and a headless body.

So, we've been on this chicken adventure since around March 2011 and it has been fun!  We began to desire to raise our own food and read everything we could get our hands on concerning chickens and gardening.  You see, we like chicken!  :)

We started out with a few mixed Bantams (one rooster) and a few Rhode Islands Reds.  We mostly wanted to start out by raising chickens for eggs.  It was going great!  So great, in fact, we decided to hatch some of our own!  We are homeschoolers, after all!  What better science experiment can you get than watching your very own eggs hatch!
It was awesome!

The kids (ok, me too) were just glued to the incubator windows!

We only had one hatchling!  But we are so thankful to have that one!  What an experience!

So we decided to do it again, this time with more eggs.

Well, that was a success, however, we ended up with a lot of little roosters.  Too many roosters, to make myself clear.

No worries!  We'll just eat 'em!  After all, we want to be more self-sufficient, right?  RIGHT??  Yes, yes we do.

We read blogs and watched videos on how to butcher a chicken in the most humane, efficient way.  The Deliberate Agrarian has a great blog post on butchering, and lots of great general info. for newbie homesteaders like us. 

We also found a couple youtube videos that were especially helpful to us:

The first video covers killing, scalding, and plucking.

The second video covers cleaning/gutting.

 

Then, the opportune time presented itself.


Meet Cheep-cheep.

Cheep-cheep was............well.............a little cocky.  He became the most agressive rooster we had.  You couldn't go near him without him wanting to fight with your feet.  Not a problem if you have pants and shoes on.  A pesky problem if you are in shorts and/or sandals.

He got to go first.  :)

 Being strung up by the feet.

Making the cut.  Do you see that he closed his eyes?

The chicken, not Matt.

 It took a few minutes for him to bleed out.  I think we need a sharper knife.  I was worried about this part, but there was no squawking.  Only a little flapping about (which is what you want to pump the blood out).  He made one little half-hearted cluck right before he went limp.  We knew it was over.

Then, Matt cut off his widdle head. 

See, his eyes are still closed.  He didn't see a thing.

The chicken, not Matt.

I warned you about the headless body.



Scalding for easy feather removal.

We used a portable camp stove and just made sure the kids stayed clear of it.



Pretty easy.  Says the one who stood by taking pictures.  ;)



Wearing rubber gloves helped alot.  The seem to grip the feathers and help pull them out easier and faster.

Ok, enough watching.  Time for me to get my hands dirty.  Gutting was a little difficult since the bird is so small and it was my first time.



All clean!  This little rooster weighed in at a whopping 1.25lbs!!!

Some people might not think a bird that small was worth the effort to butcher, but believe it or not, he actually made a nice pot of chicken and dumplings, which we ate two meals from.

That was such a learning experience and gave us such a satisfying feeling, we felt confident enough to proceed with the other four "extras" a few weeks later. 

This time, Grandpa (my dad) came to help.  That was nice for me, as he cleaned two chickens and I cleaned two chickens.  This aspect is done in the kitchen sink, and it definitely has a "distinct smell" when you get to a certain point.  It was nice to have help.  :D

This experience also gave us the confidence we needed to raise meat chickens.  We have 20 on the way, along with some laying hens of various breeds for lots of eggs.  We are starting with a relatively small number, so as not to overwhelm ourselves.  If all goes well, we will order again in late July/August for another round of harvesting in September/October.

Some people were concerned with how our kids would take this.  We certainly told them ahead of time what was going to happen, and these mean little roosters weren't exactly beloved pets, so it's not like we just went out into the backyard and killed our puppies. 

I'm happy to report they were thoroughly excited, fascinated, and wished they could take part in it!  As soon as Matt was done with the first chicken, they immediately began asking if we could do the rest!  To date, not one of them has had nightmares or felt bad in the least that we killed and ate our chickens.  I love that they are learning where food comes from.

Do you raise meat chickens?  Ever butchered one?  I'd love to hear your stories!

I'm linking up to the Barn Hop at Homestead Revival!  Her site and her Barn Hops are a wealth of information for sustainable living.  Go check it out!

Baby chicks!

My, oh my, are baby chicks cute!  This is the 5th time we've incubated our own eggs, and it never ceases to amaze us when hatch time arrives!

This time, we incubated 8 Rhode Island Red eggs.  I've not been successful at candling in the past, but we tried again later during gestation.  Success!  We spied 5 live chicks inside our 8 eggs.  1 of them appeared to be unfertilized, the other 2 were just dark, without movement.  I marked them with an 'x', and two '?'.  The rest got check marks.  I wanted to see how accurate the candling was.

In our experience, Rhode Island Red chicks have always hatched on day 20, instead of day 21.  This time was no different.  It took all day, some were quick and some were very slow, but all 5 of the expected eggs hatched!

They are so cute with their tiny pink feet!  My niece was also able to witness one egg hatching, and she enjoyed that.  The kids took turns holding an egg (being careful not to turn them/disorient them) to feel the chick moving inside.  That was so fun!

You aren't supposed to be able to sex RIR at hatching, but based on the markings on the back of their heads, I predict we have one male and four females.  Our rooster rate has been too high in the past, so I'm hoping for hens!  We need eggs!

We will also be purchasing chicks from Murray McMurray later this week.  Both for meat and eggs.  Our back yard will be bustling with chickens soon!

And, just for fun, my pet:  "Sheriff" Andy Taylor

This is my first link up to Amy's Barn Hop over at Homestead Revival!  There's always neat things to see...................head on over and check it out!