Cookin' Roosters

   This spring we hatched our own chicks in hopes of replenishing the chickens that eventually die or get eaten by predators. We thought the ratio between hens and roosters would be around 50%, but it seems like we have a lot more rooster than hens. Every time we think “that hen will be a neat to have in the flock” the hen turns out to be a rooster. We only need one rooster in the flock, and only one rooster crowing all the time. So what to do with all these roosters?

   There was a time when thinking about butchering a rooster was out of the question, but after raising meat birds and other animals its gotten easier to deal with. The reality is that our family is going to eat meat; it’s hard enough getting the kids to eat as it is and taking meat away would be even harder. If we are going to eat meat I would rather know that the animal lived a good life and had a quick death, not lived in a confined little area and never seen the light of day. It’s not easy to do, but some animals are born on our farm and some animals die here. I don’t think I would want it any other way.

    I only butchered two of our roosters, I’m waiting tell the rest get older to make sure they are roosters. I also did two roosters for someone that I sold six chicks to this spring. Someone else heard I was butchering roosters and asked if I would do four of his roosters as well. We ended up with eight roosters here waiting to be butchered, that’s a lot of crowing going on. I butchered them the same way I butcher the meat birds, so there was no problems to speak of. I bag them up, and gave the other people their roosters back to go live in their freezers. After a couple of days we roasted one of them to try it out. We found that it tasted great, but was a little bit chewier than a normal meat bird. We’re thinking that we might make chicken sausage with the rest of the roosters in the chicken coop. I also butchered one of the turkeys to see how big they were getting, 17.5 lbs. He is living in our freezer right now, but we’ll see him again on Thanksgiving.

Homemade Chicken Plucker II

   After last year’s failure at making a chicken plucker, I decided to try again this year. I went with the tub design, sometimes called a whiz-bang plucker. I’ve been working on it for awhile; slowly gather parts and looking up ideas on the internet

   First thing I started with is a squirrel cage that came from an old furnace blower. Someone gave it to me a long time ago and I’ve used it in different projects along the way. I used it to hold the plate up and give me something to mount the motor to. On one side of the squirrel cage I attached a 16” pulley that I had to order. On the other side, I took the original pulley off and used it as a template. I routed out a circle in a piece of plywood that was the same diameter as the pulley. Then I attached the pulley to the piece of wood with some screws. Using the pulleys edge, I used the router to cut the piece of plywood in a perfect circle. This will make sure the plywood is balance and won’t vibrate when spinning. I reattached the pulley and plywood back on the squirrel cage.

   Next I mounted a motor that I had kicking around the shop on to the squirrel cage . It happened to have the right pulley on it already. You want the plate to spin around 190 RPM, and most motors spin at 1750 RPM. I had to buy the belt that goes in between the two pulleys. Once the belt was attached, I used a piece of wood cut in the shape of a wedge and slid between motor and squirrel cage to adjust the tension of the belt. I then bought a plastic 55 gallon drum, that happen to hold Mnt. Dew before I got it. I cut the bottom off and cut then cut the top third off. To install the rubber fingers, which I ordered off EBay, I drilled 13/16” holes in the bottom of the drum and on the side of the drum. I then pulled the fingers through the holes and they stay there because they have a grove in the end that the edge of the barrel slides into. 
The fingers are ribbed to pull the feathers off as the chicken spins around barrel. Once all the fingers were installed I screwed the bottom to the plate which also helps hold the fingers in as well. I then used laminated plywood I had in the shop to build a box around the motor and squirrel cage, and then wired the motor up to a switch and then a plug. I turned the motor on and used a power planer on the plastic edge of the barrel to make sure it was perfectly round and centered. Next I attached the barrel on and used 2 x 4’s and plywood to support it. Put some old wheels on I had from an old barbecue and some legs and handles, and I was done.

   I had 47 chickens to process this weekend and hadn’t tried it out yet. We are going on vacation soon and had to process them before we left. I was very nervous after last year’s failure and didn’t have a plan B if this didn’t work. After dipping two dead chickens in some hot water to loosen the feathers, I put them in the plucker. Turn the switch on, and after thirty seconds of spinning around the birds came out with no feathers except for a few pin feathers on their tails, which is normal. I was very excited that it actually worked the way I planned it. I was able to process 24 birds in about four hours on Saturday, and finished the rest on Sunday in the same amount of time. I might make a few adjustments later on, but it worked out great and can’t wait to see if it will handle the turkeys this fall.

  

   

Chicks and Baby Goats

  It's been really busy around here down on the farm, between chicks hatching and catching kids as they come out of goats. A couple of weeks after Leroy started crowing, which means he is sexual mature, we decided to try to incubate some eggs and see what happens. We didn't put a lot of effort in to it because we weren't sure that he was making the rounds. We just grabbed some the eggs that looked like the came from the other Buff Orpingtons and put them in the incubator. Sometime we remembered to flip them, sometimes we didn't, we even forgot when we put them in there. My wife told me to go head and throw them out because she didn't think anything was alive in the eggs, and she stopped turning them three days ago. I never got around to throwing them out luckily  because as she was chasing the kids around the house getting ready for bed time she heard a strange peeping sound coming from the kitchen. A bunch of chicks were pecking they were out of the eggs. 

My wife has a very good maternal extinct, you are supposed to stop turning the eggs three days before they hatch and that's what she did, accidentally  We ended up with thirteen chicks all said and done which we will use to replenish the flock as the older ones pass on.

  When we brought over a buck to breed with our does, we didn't think Aspen ever mated. Then she started to develop an udder to our surprise. We thought she would kid after Montana but on Monday she started acting weird. I was outside doing some work on the pig pen and she was screaming really loud at me and pawing at the ground. She seemed really restless,so I went inside and told the wife to get ready for some more kids. Three hours later I went to check on her and she was lying on the ground with a little bubble starting to come out. I yell for the wife and told her to hurry or she was going to miss it. This time the baby came out front feet first, like they are supposed to, but as the the head started to come she seemed to stop. Being new to this we thought we should help and pull with her. I wasn't come easily, so I put my fingers inside and could feel the head kinda face backwards causing the log jam. I tried to re-position the head a little bit and we both pulled as she pushed. Eventually we got the kid out. After doing some research, I found out that had we just given her time she would have probably pushed it out just fine by herself. We thought she would only have one, due to this was her first time having babies and she looked on the smaller side. As we dried the first kid off one more popped out. She had one buck and one doe, not bad for a first freshener.

   

Three days later Montana started to act like she was getting ready to have her babies. Being pregnant was hard on her due to the fact that she looked like she swallowed a kitchen sink, so she was more then ready to get those kids out. I put her in the kidding stall and let her have some alone time. Nothing was really happening so we put the kids to bed and I did some work in the shop. As finished up at 10:30, I checked on her one more time thinking that it probably wouldn't happen tonight, but I found her lying on her side starting to push. I called the wife out over the monitor and she came running out. We let her do her thing and she pushed out one kid and then another, and then another, and then another. Two does and two bucks, very good for a first timer. We dried them off and got them under the heat lamp and then waited for the placenta  to come out. When I went into work the next day, I told everyone "I was pulling out a placenta at 2:00 in the morning. How was your night?"

The older bucks are starting to get mischievous.

Leroy The Rooster

   This past summer we ordered six buff orpingtons along with our meat birds. They also threw in one extra bird of their choice. As the birds grew up we noticed that one of the buffs started to look a little bit different. It started to grow taller than the rest and have different types of feathers. After about six months of growing we came to the conclusion that the hatchery had given us a buff orpington rooster by mistake, something that does happen from time to time. Also, our free chick turned out to be an araucana rooster as well. Knowing that two roosters in a hen house is not a good thing, I quickly found a new home for him. He's with some other araucana hens and is very happy.
   Leroy seems very happy with his flock too and watches out for everyone. He hasn't shown any aggression toward me, or the rest of the family, and is now just starting to practice crowing. We'll see how that goes... We're hoping that he will help in guarding the flock against any predators this summer.
   We chose the buff orpingtons because they are easy going, have the ability to hold up to Maine's winter weather, and are good egg layers. Now that we have a rooster their other characteristics are going to help us out as well. The orpingtons also tend to be broody, which means they will hatch their own eggs and take care of their young. They also are big enough birds to eat if we have to cull out the roosters.
   The new plan is to try and hatch only the buffs' eggs and eventually cull out all of the other chickens as they get too old. Miss E can't wait to start hatching chickens this year and have a bunch of new chicks to take care of.

The Chicken Coop

   Our first chicken coop was built along the woods edge away from the house. This was alright in the summer time, but turn out to be a pain walking through the snow just to get some eggs to make breakfast. We also had problems with predators getting into the coop being so far away from the house.
   My wife came up with the idea of making a new coop off the side of the garage, I don't know why I didn't think of that. The coop is roughly about 8' by 16' big.I made the coop out pallets for the base and then put some plywood over the pallets. I then built some walls and a roof. I was able to salvage the pine board siding off the side of the garage and reuse them. I also had some old pine boards to finish up the rest of the walls. I still haven't got around to putting shingles on the roof, one of these days I will.

   I put the nesting boxes on the wall that is against the garage, so all we have to do is go out to the garage and lift the cover to the boxes and get our eggs.I then put the gravity feeder I made out of plywood on the the same wall so I can fill it up from the garage, it'll hold 150 lbs of grain. I also put the reservoir to the automatic water dish inside the garage and use a tube from the reservoir to the bowl to fill it up. This helps cut down on it freezing, but not enough. I had to break down and get a little pipe heater to keep it from freezing. I also put the light that goes into the coop on an automatic timer to keep them laying through the winter. I keep the light on for about 14 hours and that makes them think it's still summer, so they lay eggs right through the winter.

 

Waterer and Feeder for the Meat Birds

   We're using our old chicken coop to raise the meat birds this year, and the layers are in the new coop. The birds are going to be little tight on space as they grow but still within the amount of space you're supposed to have for them. I've got plans to make a new coop next year, but that's next year.

   I wanted to do a post about the waterer and feeder so people can see how easy it is to raise them. The feeder is just a box with an opening at the bottom and a angled piece of wood in the back to move the grain forward. I put two 50 lb. bags in it, and that last for a couple of weeks or so. I bought an automatic waterer for them and hooked it up to a trash can. I fill the trash can with water once a week or so and the waterer will automatically fill up the bowl when it gets low. I check on the birds every day to make sure they're ok, but with these systems it makes it very easy to raise meat birds.

Cute Chicks

   Our order of baby chicks just came in from McMurray Hatchery. We ordered 50 meat birds, 6 Buff Orpingtons, and they put one extra mystery bird in the box that we won't find out what kind it is until it grows up.
    We raise the meat birds, which are called Jumbo Cornish X Rock hens, in a separate coop and feed them an all natural diet. After eight weeks they're ready to be butchered. All though they look cute and fuzzy now, in eight weeks they won't look like anything you want to wrap your arms around and hug.
   We ordered some Buff Orpingtons to offset the age of the rest of the flock and add a little different color to it. The first chickens we ever ordered had a couple of buffs in it, and one of them who was named Buttercup turned out to be my wife's favorite. We're excited to see if these girls have the same temperament as Buttercup, and one of them looks different from the others meaning we might have a rooster. We never had a rooster before, so we'll see what everyone thinks of the crowing sound if she turns out to be a he. It would also mean that we would be able to incubate our own chicks.

   The mystery chick could turn out to be any breed or any sex. It's something fun that the hatchery does to each of their orders. The chick stands out from the rest of the flock, it's the only one with a strip down its head.

When A Chicken Has A Bad Day

When you think you're having a bad day, just think how this chicken's day went when she had to squeeze this egg out.

The egg on the right is the an average size from our chickens, what the stores would call "extra large". The egg on the left is from a chicken, it's just a double yoker.