Meet the Flock, part 2 January 26, 2007

The Goofball Brothers

These handsome White Faced Black Spanish cockerels (young roosters) are very rare, especially in the U.S.  The American Livestock Breeds Conservancy (a group dedicated to educating people about the diminishing numbers of many animal breeds) lists these striking birds as in critical need of preservation.  That means that there are fewer than 500 of them left in this country and that they may disappear entirely without new breeders to increase their numbers.  That is one of the reasons we have chosen to raise them.

(Brother number 1 poses in his formal attire in hopes of wooing the “henfolk.”)

Last spring, when our hens began to go “broody” (decide to “set” and hatch eggs instead of lay them), I ordered fertile eggs from several breeders around the country.  After 21 days beneath their surrogate mother, six White Faced Black Spanish chicks peeked out from beneath her wing.  Unfortunately, predators claimed all but these two siblings before they were even three months old, so we will need to acquire new stock ourselves in order to do our part to preserve the breed.

I’m a bit embarrassed to admit that these identical brothers have never gotten proper individual names.  During their awkward adolescence, they came to be known collectively as the Goofball Brothers, mostly because it took them so much longer than the other cockerels to learn to crow well.  Their early attempts were quite comical.

(Brother number 2 tries out his best cock-a-doodle-doo now that he’s learned how).

Even though they are good-looking guys, they don’t have the commanding presence that Percy does.  While Percy walks regally around the yard with his devoted entourage following him, the poor Goofball Brothers try in vain to impress a few straggling ladies and develop their own following.  It has yet to work.  At least they have each other for company.

Meet the Flock, part 1 January 9, 2007

We’ve been entertained by the personalities and antics of our flock of poultry since we moved here. It’s been fascinating and educational for us to witness “pecking order” in action, communication among the birds, the near miracle of hatching, the rapid development of the little fuzzballs, and the reality of mortality. We’ve become partial to many and given them names. Others blend together and demand little attention, but are good little layers nonetheless. We thought it might be fun to share some of their “stories” with you.

Percy

This is the king of the flock, so it seemed only right to introduce him first. He is the only one of the original chickens that has survived. He, by rights, owns the henhouse since he lived here before us.

(Notice one of the Red Rock hens is hiding out behind “home base” Percy last summer).

Percy is a Jersey Giant cross. The Giants were bred in the later 1800’s as meat birds, but fell out of favor with commercial producers because they take a good bit longer to fill out. The average grocery store chicken is about 7-8 weeks old- imagine growing a bird from hatchling to 4 or 5 pounds in seven weeks! That special strain of bird has been bred and fed to gain weight at a rate so accelerated that most can no longer stand up after a month without breaking their own legs.

Giants become huge birds (in excess of 10 pounds), but at a natural pace and with a balance of bone and muscle. There isn’t any money to be made commercially these days selling meat birds grown as nature intended. Only small farms and poultry enthusiasts raise them today.

As roosters go, Percy is quite a gentleman, too. He carefully watches over “his girls” as they forage and frequently calls them over to show/give them some special morsel he has found. And you’ll never see Percy running down any of the ladies like some of the cavalier youngsters do. He’s always dignified and is well-respected by the “henfolk.” When the ladies are receiving the unwanted advances of one of the younger cockerels, they run and hide behind Percy. That stops the cockerels in their tracks. If he takes even one step in their direction, they turn tail and run. Percy never has to fight- just by sheer size and dignity, he is respected and no one challenges him. We dread the day Percy passes, but he is showing his age- he actually had gray sickle feathers last year after he molted. This year, they are very slow to grow in at all.

Pickle and Gherkin

Our daughter Rachel named a gray and tan Ameraucana hen Pickle. I don’t know if there was an actual reason of if she just liked the sound of the word when she was 3 ½. Regardless, the name has stuck and so Pickle’s daughter was named Gherkin.

(Here Pickle has fluffed herself up to settle down for a nap in the sun on a chilly winter day).

Ameraucanas go by several names, including Easter Egg Chickens. They lay tinted eggs, mostly in the blue-green color range. The eggs are quite beautiful, especially when the birds first start laying. Some people inaccurately called them Araucanas, but those birds are actually from South America and are tailless. They are probably the breeding stock that eventually produced Ameraucanas, but they do look different.

Ameraucanas typically have “earmuffs” and “beards”- fluffy tufts of feathers on their cheeks and under their chins. They do have complete tails. Unlike other breeds that tend to have identical plumage patterns, Ameraucanas come in many different colors, so they are a pretty addition to the barnyard.

(Not a great picture of Gherkin, but the best I could do.  She’s camera-shy and quick on her feet).

All of our “Easter Eggers” are curious birds, prone to flying over their fence when confined, and quick to investigate the dogs’ bowls and preen on the porch. When they hear me open the feed cans, I can count on at least one trying to fly up and into the can itself, too impatient to wait.

An “Eggs”ellent Business Opportunity January 8, 2007

(Okay, that was the corniest possible title we could have given this posting, but it just begged to be written).

(Pictured here is part of today’s egg gathering. The beautiful blue-green ones come from our Ameracauna hens. The small off-white one is from our Frizzled bantam. The dark ones are from our Wellsummers and Penedesencas).

We have a flock of chickens that hovers around 50 or so in number. About a third of them are the (now grown up) day-old chicks we bought from Rural King the first spring we were here. With two exceptions, the rest have been added periodically by purchasing hatching eggs or by hybrid crosses our broody hens insisted on hiding out and hatching. It’s been a lot of fun to raise such variety. Some of the chickens are quite rare breeds, some are rather common, and some are downright silly, but they’ve made farm life interesting, all of them.

As soon as “the girls’” production exceeded our own demand for eggs, we began to give them away to friends at church and elderly neighbors. When we would go to the dentist or doctor, we’d take a carton along there, too. Before long, people began to call me The Egg Lady. (Egg Lady, ChickenMama… there seems to be a theme here).

Though we didn’t really intend to get into the egg business, one kind of evolved anyway. We had never charged anyone for our eggs- we kind of saw it as an opportunity or excuse to stop by and see folks or to treat people to something different and tell them about the rural life we treasured. Before long, though, we had people who refused to take the eggs if we didn’t accept something in return to at least go to the feeding of the birds.

We regularly took eggs to our closest neighbor since he is a country boy at heart. After several months of having a steady supply, he said he couldn’t ever eat store bought eggs again- that he’d even tried the “cage-free, organic, free-range” $3/dozen brown eggs from the grocery store once when our birds were molting and that those eggs just weren’t fit for eating. He said he’d just wait on “the girls” to start laying again. He offered to sell all our excess at work for us if we’d just keep him in eggs. And a little egg business began to develop.

A few months later, we were approached about setting up weekly delivery into Nashville to supply about as many as we could come up with. We were a bit surprised, but delighted to have the eggs so appreciated. So, word began to get out and interest grew. Now we even have a lady who drives 30 minutes to our house just to pick them up because she says they are the best eggs she’s been able to find anywhere.

At present, we can’t keep up with demand, so we are planning to expand our flock soon. We’ve been expecting a baby, so we’ll have to get past the sleep deprivation weeks before we take on the task of tending scores of day-old chicks again, but we are looking forward to getting more fuzzballs.

A number of people have asked if they can buy dressed chicken from us once they know we process our own birds for table use. At some time in the future, we’d like to start doing that, but we’ll need to build a lot more chicken tractors and a Whizbang Chicken Plucker before we’ll be ready. (Always a long list of projects we want to do around here).

We’ve also been working on a “Meet the Flock” insert to go with our eggs. People really seem to enjoy knowing where their food comes from and getting a personal look at the real, live animals that produce their food. Keep an eye out for some “Chicken Bios” in postings to come.