Week 9; Day 4

Sitting in our living room this morning, my husband and I both heard a very strange noise. The dogs started looking through the house, trying to find the source of the noise. After a moment, David and I suddenly realized what it was: one of the chickens, trying to crow. I'm sure it wasn't loud enough to disturb the neighbors, but in a few short minutes, it seemed to be getting a pretty good grasp of crowing. So.... late this morning, we began the final step of the meat-bird experiment. To quote the Red Queen: "Off with their heads!!"

First, I will say: we did take some photos throughout the process; however, I have decided NOT to post them. I'm certain that someone would take offense and report it as a violation of terms of use. While I would like this to be a complete account of the experience, I have no desire to lose the entire blog over some photos. So, don't worry, no graphic photographic content here. A somewhat graphic description will be included; however, you will be warned before that begins.

Overall, the experience was not too terrible. I think it's safe to say that, assuming the quality of the meat proves to be superior to store-bought, we will most certainly make this a regular event. I was a little uncomfortable with the actual slaughter, but not as bad as I expected. I'm certain it would have been much easier on me if I had ever dissected anything. Until today, I had never, in my entire life, cut into an animal. It was a little..... unnerving, but tolerable.

From start to finish, the process took about 5 hours for all three birds. It probably would've taken considerably less time if we weren't learning while we worked; however, considering our complete lack of experience, it went very smoothly. There are only a few small points that we need to refine before the next batch. The chickens are currently residing in the refrigerator, to 'age' for a few days. I will then cut them up into fryer-pieces, and serve two of them as fried chicken for dinner on Thursday.

Do not continue past this paragraph if you have a 'weak disposition'; I am not responsible for loss of recent meals, nausea, distress, or revulsion. Continue at your own risk. I will elaborate on some parts of the process; others, not so much. If you want to know more specifics, I recommend reading "Storey's Guide to Raising Chickens". We followed the steps detailed there almost to the letter.

In preparation for the day, we had discussed various methods of dispatching the birds. The most well-known method (an ax to the neck) also turns out to be the worst possible option; it severs the windpipe at the same time as the blood vessels, greatly increasing the risk of blood being sucked into the lungs and contaminating the meat. We opted for dislocating their necks, instead; a quick tug [until you hear the neck pop] and it's done. Quick and easy, right? Well, it turns out that this option is a very delicate one. We discovered this when the 'quick tug' decapitated the first one. However, as we later decided, it was still a good option. It was quick and painless to them, and removed the need to sever the blood vessels.

If you're wondering, yes, they did proceed to 'run around' like... well, like what they were. Much wing-flapping, and running around, for 15-30 seconds, then it was done.

We strung them up by their feet to drain the blood, then began the plucking process. A short dip into a pan of scalding water (to help relax the skin and loosen the feathers], followed by plucking out feathers by the handful. The first one took me 15 minutes (not bad, according to my research), the second [and largest] 10 minutes... and the last one took over an hour. For some reason, the scalding didn't seem to help much, and the feathers would break off, leaving the shaft still stuck in the skin. So I had to keep going over it with a pair of pliers to remove the pieces.

After plucking, we dunked the carcasses into a bucket of cold water to chill them before evisceration. At this point, we removed the feet; this meant a quick cut with sturdy poultry shears for each foot. The actual 'gutting' process only took about 10 minutes or so per bird, and turned out to be much less disturbing than expected. I'm sure this was mostly due to the heads and feet no longer being attached. It made it much easier to 'see' them as food, not animals; after cutting away the feet, they looked like any whole chicken you'd buy in the store.

The kids came home around this point in the process. Most of them wanted no part of it; however, the youngest was thrilled to watch me open up the last one, and remove its innards. She asked questions, identified the organs that she could (pretty much limited to "intestines"), and is still excited about eating them in a few days.

Also, a side note: it turns out that my husband and I were correct about the genders of all three chickens. As part of the evisceration, the testicles or 'mass of undeveloped eggs' must be removed as well. Both are inside the cavity, in the same location. The testicles look much like kidney beans, but white in color; the 'mass of eggs' looks like a sturdy, transparent bubble. The two bigger ones, with the large combs and long, dangling wattles were males; the smaller was a female. [This does not change anything; any meat-birds we raise will still be referred to as 'boys'!]

The necks, hearts, lungs, and livers were all set aside to make chicken stock. The gizzards are usable, too, but by this point, I was simply not up to taking the necessary steps to use them, so they were tossed into the 'offal' bag with the feathers and other unusable parts. [I re-used a large cat food bag for this; it worked great, so we will be saving feed bags for this purpose.] The newly-cleaned chickens were put into a fresh bucket of clean water, to lower the temperature further. After soaking in the water for about an hour, I transferred them to paper towels to dry. Each of them was then wrapped in an old dishtowel, and put in the refrigerator to 'age' for a few days.

Being ridiculously over-emotional, I fully expected to cry, or feel sick to my stomach. I'm happy to report that I did not cry, and didn't have any nausea whatsoever... until it was all over. I'd already scrubbed my hands 4 or 5 times, and was sitting down to relax for awhile. I brushed my hand across my face, and caught a whiff of something that my brain could only identify by saying, "Oh, nice. You smell like death." And enter, stage right, tears, nausea, and general disgust with myself. Hmph. Well, at least I wasn't trying to work through tears. It could've been worse.

And, that pretty much wraps it up. As I said, I'll cut them up into fryer pieces in a couple of days; one of them will go straight to the freezer, while the other two get prepped for cooking that evening.

As always, if you have any questions, comments, or would like me to elaborate further on anything, feel free to leave a comment below.

Week 9; Day 1

My daughter's adventures with the camera. The is the
chickens favorite place to rest during the middle of the day.

I will never again tell anyone that the chickens won't bite. One of the 'boys' bit me the other day. I was giving them some wilted lettuce from the fridge, and they didn't seem terribly interested. So I would pick up a piece at a time and hold it out for the chickens to take. The girls took to the idea immediately, and would run up to me, grab a whole piece, then run away and drop it, just to run back for another. Two of the boys would actually peck at the pieces I was holding; they would pick off a small bit, eat it, then peck off another little bite. Then, the biggest of the boys decided that the little flesh-colored thing underneath the lettuce looked more interesting. So he tried to take a bite. Of my finger. OUCH!!! It didn't break the skin, but it left a mark for a few hours, and for the first few seconds, it felt about like having my finger slammed in a door. For not having teeth, those things can be vicious when they choose!

The rubber mat on the door to the coop is turning out to cause a slight problem: the chickens love to poop on it, so it gets coated pretty quickly. Luckily, I attached it to the coop using a door hinge. So, when it gets soiled, I can just pop out the hinge-pin, remove the door from the coop and spray it off. Clean door, without having to soak the chickens' pen and risk them getting wet and possibly sick.

Other than that, the coop arrangement is still working wonderfully. I didn't think any of them were even using the roost that I'd installed. But a few mornings ago, I went to let them out earlier than usual, and peeked in through the window before opening the door. Isa was perched up there, sound asleep. But the second I unlatched the door, she jumped down, anxious to get out to the yard. I really need to get their nesting box built, but I've been busy the last few days, assembling a shed that's been begging for my attention. That should be done tomorrow, though; if I have enough energy left, I'll try to put together the nesting box.

Today, we borrowed the 'tarp' from the coop for a little while. Then the rain started, so I had one of the kids rush over and put it back on, to make sure rain didn't get in through the windows. He threw the tarp across the top, and when it thudded onto the roof, the chickens all came running out of the coop, scared silly, and huddled on the other side of the pen. It was a few minutes before they calmed enough to brave the coop again, but I found it rather amusing.

Rushing to the fresh grit in the can.

The boys are now officially old enough to be 'dispatched'. We're pretty much waiting for both of us to have the energy and motivation to finish the job once it's been started; hopefully that will be by the end of the coming week. I have to fine-tune a few details for the procedure, but we've pretty much got it planned out [official translation: we've got a vague idea of what to do, and will adjust our ideas as we go. This doesn't always work out well, but sometimes it's the best way to do things. For us, anyway.]. I was considering taking photos during the process, but I don't really know about that. I don't want to take photos of the actual slaughtering, draining the blood, etc. *cringes*

"Hey, I think you dropped a piece. Don't worry, I'll get it.
And that piece. And this one over here."

Hmmm... chicken bites, chicken poop, nesting box, roost, blood, amusement... yeah, I think that's about it.

Essay

Our 7-year-old daughter is absolutely thrilled with us having chickens. When her teacher gave an assignment to write about a farm animal, she -- of course -- chose chickens. Her essay was so funny, I wanted to share it. Typos are included.

"I'm going to tell you about chicks.  There are 2 reasons that I'm going to tell you about them, that go together.  One, I got a prompt that said "write about a farm animal".  Two, I have them at my house.  They are furry, they have wings, and some are called different things than others, like Bramm, Cornich Rock, and Easa Brown.  Some are good for different things.  Some could be good for meat.  Some could be good for eggs. But you can't  let the meat ones get to big because if you do, they'll explode from heart attack.  I know this because my brother's friend had some chickens and his mother couldn't kill them, and then they exploded from heart attack."

Week 8; Day 2

Feeding time!!

Another long break, but there's been really nothing note-worthy going on. But a few new photos, and short updates today....

Whenever I refill the feeder, they push and
shove to try to get the 'best' of the feed.

The chickens have stayed outside since the first time they were put in the pen. It hasn't been too cold; the rain has been fairly steady for the last two days, but the coop seems to be working wonderfully at keeping out the water. Last night, I completely forgot to close up the coop. This morning, all was well; the chickens were thrilled with wandering out for a moment to scratch for worms, then rushing back inside to get out of the rain.

A few days ago, I went outside to open up the coop in the morning. It was already open; apparently, they managed to push against the door hard enough to pop the catch loose. I remedied the problem that day, with a spring-loaded hook-and-eye set; I installed another one to secure the gate into the pen. So far, they seem to be just what it needed.

Both ISA Browns are getting what one of the kids referred
to as "Amish beards". They look funny, but still cute.

The chickens need to eat grit for digesting anything beyond the bagged feed, so I salvaged an empty can [think the short cans from bean dip] from the recycling bin. Add a short length of dowel driven into the ground, and a screw to fasten the can to the end of the dowel, and voila! a grit feeder. It collects rain, but it takes only a second to pull the dowel from the ground and empty the water. They seem to love eating the grit almost as much as a fresh worm or a freshly-filled feeder.

The first night that it rained, the hinged roof-board warped horribly, but once it dried out, it flattened out again. We then salvaged a section of an old pool-liner to drape over the roof; my husband used a ratchet-strap to hold it down so that the wind can't blow it away. Problem solved.

Mama [the black tail feathers] knows she can't fit between
the boys, so she shoves under them to get to the feeder.

It's hard to believe, but there are only a few days left before we can plan the first slaughter. Depending on how well it goes, we may do all three 'boys' the same day. They're absolutely enormous; I can no longer pick them up easily -- they're simply too big around to get a good grip. The girls are getting big, as well, but nowhere near the same size, as you can see by the most recent photos.

All the chickens seem to be getting a little anxious about not being handled at all. I hope to be able to remedy that issue soon, as well. If we can put up more fencing along the back of the yard, we might be able to let them out into the yard for short periods. This will ONLY work with fairly strict supervision, though, as the girls will almost certainly be able to fly over the fence, and I do NOT want to have to climb fences into neighboring yards to rescue them.

I'm sure there were other small items I wanted to mention, but I can't recall any more at the moment. So, until next time....

Week 6; Day 4

The chickens spent their first night outside last night! I was nervous about it: not knowing if they'd be warm enough, the knowledge that there are raccoons around, etc... but I knew it would have to start sometime. I am pleased to announce that all is well; all six chickens are accounted for, and they were happy to wander out of the coop and start exploring their pen again this morning.

Now, to move backwards with news: the pen and coop are basically done. We still have a few kinks to work out, and minor details to deal with, but I can (hopefully) finish up with most of those today.


The door on the front is hinged, and acts as a ramp when open, so the chickens don't have to step up to get through the door. I attached a section of a rubber mud-flap to the ramp; this serves to help clean debris off the chickens' feet upon entering and exiting, and will also help give them a better grip to climb the ramp. Come winter, it will help seal off the entrance, and prevent drafts at their level of the coop. Ventilation is good (yes, even in winter); drafts are not.

Inside the coop is a wooden platform for the waterer, to hopefully keep bedding in the water to a minimum [so far, it looks promising!], and a support made from a wire hanger to suspend the hanging feeder [which can be raised as needed].

The roof is hinged, to allow us access to the inside, and slanted to ensure no rainwater collects on it. The backwards slant should also ensure that the rainwater runs off the back of the coop, rather than into the pen, possibly flooding the chickens' foraging area.

I used the location of the coop to help build the pen, attaching chicken wire to the deck, the clothesline pole, and the coop itself; I only needed to add a few fence posts to complete the task. It's not exactly a work of art, but it looks pretty damn good, if I do say so myself.

Within minutes of being placed in the pen, they were busy flapping their way from one side to the other, picking up little pieces of yard debris, and happily scratching at the ground. The 'boys' [as we've taken to calling the meat birds] aren't going to be able to fly up and out of the pen; the 'girls' are another story. So I used them as my motivation to get the pen done quickly. With the predatory birds always flying overhead, I didn't dare let myself get distracted and leave them with no covering to the pen.

Using plastic garden fencing, and a length of thin wire, I attached the cover to the top of the pen. It seems to work wonderfully, and the chickens [hopefully] have no chance of finding a way out. This doesn't guarantee that a predator won't be able to find their way in, unfortunately; but that's something we'll have to watch for and try to prevent.

Immediately after finishing the cover, I moved the waterer and feeder to their places. The chickens either were too nervous about being in the coop, or simply weren't hungry or thirsty. They waited a full hour or so before they braved the inside. I'm sure it was partly the lack of bedding in the coop, too; I remedied that shortly after.

David and I had previously discussed the idea of putting up a few roosts around the pen for their use during the day; after some consideration, I decided this would not be a good idea. I don't want them to get the idea of sleeping out in the pen at night.


Just after dusk last night, we went out to get them settled in for the night. They were already in the coop, huddled together [for comfort, I'm sure, not warmth; it wasn't very cold out, and they had no problem wandering from the huddle to eat or drink]. We moved the heat-lamp out to the coop for the night, just to make sure they stayed as warm as they should be. After the first few nights, we'll see how they do without the lamp. At last check, there's a frost advisory for tonight [?!?!], so we may bring them in for tonight, but for now, they're enjoying the outdoors.

As a temporary measure, we attached 'mug hooks' to the door and the front wall, using a twist tie as a closure for the time being. We're discussing pros and cons of a couple of different permanent ideas for this, but for last night [and a few nights to come], the idea worked great.

And now, items that still need to be dealt with. These include: set up a roost inside the coop for the girls; build a nesting box [not necessary until they're ready to start laying, but good for them to be used to beforehand]; add the shingles to the roof [these are being salvaged from the old roof, so I need to dismantle them carefully]; decide on a permanent closure for the door; arrange a way to fasten the roof closed [it's highly unlikely that a predator could open the roof, but I'd rather be safe than sorry]; and the last item: correcting an idiotic problem caused by poor planning.

At the moment, the only way for anyone to get into or out of the pen is THROUGH the coop. Seeing as how I have no desire to climb into the coop and climb through the little tiny door just to get into the pen, I need to design and add a small gate to the pen. Granted, whoever enters will still have to crawl inside the pen; since the only solution to that would be putting forth the expense and effort to double the height of the walls... yeah, crawling will be just fine.

I have a few ideas in mind for the gate; the biggest part of it will be implementation. And, that being said, I should probably be working on that, rather than updating here, huh?