The Great Chicken Masssacree - Part 1

I'm going to lull you with pretty pictures while I tell you that I spent most of yesterday butchering chickens. (Ah, the glamorous life of a writer...)

This was our first time to do this in quantity -- a dozen birds -- and it went amazingly well, due to John's advance prep. We took our time, cleaning everything after each bird with a good wipe-down of bleach and water solution and keeping everything covered to avoid attracting flies and yellow jackets.

And then in the  evening we sat on the porch, listening to an NPR report about salmonella  and the recall of a billion eggs and the not-so-great conditions on factory farms. As we listened and sipped our gin and tonics, we enjoyed the tantalizing aroma of roast chicken.

There's a web album below for those of you interested in picture of the process.  Click on the picture to view.

And here's a LINK to a website with very complete instructions, should you want to try this at home.

The Great Homegrown Chicken Harvest

Growing Chicks

Three weeks ago our "Freedom Ranger" chicks were fluff balls. Now they are partially feathered out and ready for the move from the brooder box to the elegant accommodation of the pasture chicken tractor.

 

Their rate of growth and those outsize legs make it clear that these are broiler chicks, destined for the table.

For now they're confined in the tractor but John will string an electrified netting to make an adjoining paddock.  In a few days, when they've gotten used to the chicken tractor, the door will be opened and the chicks will have a much expanded area to scratch and peck.

 Kate the donkey is watching the whole operation with interest.

The Freedom Rangers Have Arrived! (Probably Not What You Think)

The post office called Friday morning just before seven to say that our chicks were there. John swallowed down his coffee and went to retrieve them.

They'd hatched Wednesday and been packed and shipped right away. Baby chicks don't have to eat or drink right away and they are packed in boxes small enough to ensure that they stay warm during their travels but the sooner they can be gotten out of that shipping box, the better.


All twenty-five seemed healthy and lively. Hoorah!

This is something new for us. We've always had laying hens but, aside from one unpleasant incident involving eleven over-age cockerels, a hot August day, and far too many yellow jacket wasps, we've not butchered any of our chickens. 


That's about to change. In an attempt to be better custodians of our  food, we are giving this a try.  These are our future chicken dinners.


The biddies are a special breed from France. Over there they qualify for the appellation Label  Rouge; over here, they're marketed as  Freedom Rangers.

(I sincerely hope this is not an Francophobe maneuver like that stupid Freedom Fries thing, back when France declined to follow us into the shaky ground of Iraq.)

The biddies have been decanted into a brooder box in John's workshop until they've grown a bit and added some feathers. Then they'll be shifted to their pasture home below.  It will have a tarp over on end and probably some roosts and it will open into a daytime yard surrounded with electric poultry netting. The chicks will get commercial feed but they'll have the advantage of weeds and grass and bugs and worms as their home is shifted about the pasture.

And in ten weeks . . . they'll meet their end. But we hope it will have been ten very good weeks. It will certainly have been better than the life commercial broiler chickens lead..

 Elora's got chicks too, and turkey poults as well, over at her place Just Off the One Lane Road