Chicken Harvest Time!

We were blessed with cooperative weather and an enthusiastic and quick learning crew of friends for our first annual spring chicken harvest at our new farm. We started the process at about 08:30 AM and were completed with all 49 birds just before noon.

One of our meatie roosters trying to seek cover from our catching crew....

The killing station

The scalding pot and plucker in the background, which we rented from a wonderful lady again this year from Rougemount, NC.

The eviscerating station....

Terry was our chief chicken catcher, an important job which keeps the overall flow of the process going. This keeps the eviscerating station supplied, but not over supplied with plucked chickens...he did have some occasional help...

Curtis is a friend from work who joined us and helped out pretty much at all stations of the process...

Ethan would help fetch one when he wasn't busy warding off predators with his "Airsoft' rifle!..

Terry developed a calmer, gentler way of transporting the chickens to the killing cones...

This is Andrew who quickly caught on to the killing station and did an awesome job, it is not for the faint of heart, though he had the patience of a saint all day, and even helped our seven year old son do the deed...

Aki, Andrew, and Curtis at the scalding station...

The plucker is perhaps the biggest neccessity for doing this many chickens as quickly as we did, it can pluck up to four chickens at a time in less then one minute!!!

Beautiful,..... no muss, no fuss!!

Karen, Tracy, and I worked the eviscerating table.

Our friend Tracy claims she never gutted a chicken before, we are not so sure, as she seemed all to effiicient at it for a rookie. With a little experience one can gut a chicken in about 5 minutes or so.

The following day Mike gave them all a quick final going over and rinse. We bagged them up in shrink wrap bags that gave them a nice compact professional look.



Next we will try turkeys, which we moved out to the land the following day. I was worried they were too young and might not be able to handle the night time temps, but so far so good! They are now just about 3 weeks old, but quite fiesty! Not sure how we will handle them in October when they weigh 20-30 pounds! But we have some time to figure that out.

Junk in the Trunk!

Just a quick reminder to folks with cats... if you leave your windows or trunk open and don't check for extra baggage, you might find out that you brought something along with you that you did not intend to.

This happened to us last weekend. James likes to take a nap in our car or trunk whenever the oportunity presents. In my tiredness at the end of a long day, I came home, opened the trunk, and who should appear....

The Green Mile

So if you ever saw the movie you would understand the meaning of the "Green Mile" In this case you can see the chicken tractor at the end of the trail which is advancing twenty feet closer to the execution site every day. This Saturday the meaties are going to be processed just in time to beat the impinging summer heat. They will head to the comforts of our cool deep freeze. They grew very well this year and are ready for harvest at 7.5 weeks. I honestly have to say I will be glad to see them go, as once again it meant two trips out to the land every day to feed, water, and move their tractor. Below you can see that their brief time on this earth was days of relaxing in the shade ... and eating and sleeping.

Our young layers are enjoying their lives of leisure foraging about the yard (when we are around) and hanging out in their deluxe accommodations.

Our turkeys are doing well, about 2.5 weeks old, we lost one to a STD (No, not ghonorrhea....sudden turkey death syndrome!) Fine one day, dead the next... the others seem to be quite vigorous and I hope to get them moved out to the land soon.

The house.. still putting along...supposedly we will be in by the end of the month. I will post some reveal pictures when it is done...don't hold you breath.

Turkey Time!

Our 15 + 1 (just in case) baby bronze breasted turkey poults arrived early Wednesday AM after their 24 hr. plus journey from Ohio in a small box. I was happy to see they were all alive and well upon opening the box. They are quite comical as poultry babies go. Very curious and always come to check out your hands, and seem fine with being picked up and offer no resistance. From what I have been told and reading they are pretty fragile the first 2 weeks of their lives. We have made it 48 hrs. with no losses thus far. There are a couple little guys I am a bit worried about though. One seems on the weak side with an eye pasted shut, and another seems to like to sleep on his back, and then cannot figure out how to right himself when he wakes up, kind of like when you put a turtle on his back. The first time I discovered him on his back I thought we had our first casualty, but he seemd fine when I flipped him over. The next few days will be telling in regards to how things will go.

The meaties are doing OK. Sad to say we have lost 3/52 thus far. They seemed to have developed splayed legs and thus could not get to food and water well. I had to cull two, thankfully Mother Nature took care of the third. Ah, the joys of farm life. The rest look robust though, and I have my eyes on some big breasted hens! Ha!

Camping with Chickens...

We had a pretty crazy weekend. We finally got the chicken ark competed and moved the laying poults out to the land. They were quite happy to get out of the cinder block dungeon and wading pool at the rental and to get their first really taaste of sunshine and fresh air. It was a beautiful weekend weather wise and we planned a get together and campout at the land. It was in the 80's during the day, and a comfortable 60's at night. We had about 10 friends show up and had a nice evening and food around a bon fire. The kids really liked camping out.

One of only two tents in our backyard, kids playing boomerang catch with one of the adults...

The luxuary chicken ark... that weighs so much I am not sure how we are ever going to move it more then a few feet at time, which is luckily generally the idea. Roosts and nesting boxes are on second floor.



The meaties are doing pretty well. this was their first day out of the tractor they did not wander far. They like to stick around the food. We just found out the lady we rent the plucker from was booked for our planned harvest weekend of May 20th, we are tentatively bumping it back a week... I hope they can take the heat an extra week! They are just a little over 4 weeks old now. Baby turkeys arrive on Tuesday!

Chickens, tractors, and lots of rocks...

Thsi is going to need to be quick, as thnigs have been busy! If I was a good Blogger, and had the camera with me at all times I should have several amusing entries prior to this. Spring is a busy time. The meaties are growing well, crossing our fingers and knocking on wood, we have not lost any yet, and they are growing well. We had to move them out to the land and the big tractor, as the daily cleaning of the wading pool filled with wood shavings and chicken poop was getting to be a smelly, time consuming chore. It might be a little cool in the evenings, but they have got to be enjoying the fresh air and extra space of the big tractor. This is Shalo the chicken farmer keeping them company last night...

They have probably quadrupled in weight since they arrived 3 weeks ago.

This is my latest chicken tractor (ark) for the housing of our laying chickens until we get the big coop built this summer or fall. It got a bit bigger than anticipated, and is pretty heavy, even without the roof on it yet. It will be semi portable, and should be adequate size for the 11 chicks we have so far. When they reach maturity hopefully the main coop will be done. Still needs a roof. I am going to recycle some metal roofing from the barn as we dismantle it in the upcoming weeks.

And this is my current favorite part of the house... our stacked Tennessee field stone free standing fireplace and woodstove insert...

Meaties have arrived, it must be spring!

As a sure sign of spring, our 50 meaties arrived at the post office this morning. All appear to be in good health after their airplane ride from Mnt. Pleasant, Ohio. Our goal is no more then 3-5 losses. We are needing to house them on the back little porch of the rental. It is crowded, but will do fine. Now we can open the back door and eat and watch them from the kitchen table just three feet away.

We are hoping we move out to the land within four weeks but that might be optimistic. We will certainly be ready to get them in the chicken tractor by then. The house is nearing completion. They are painting this week inside. (Mark, your idea about the extended jambs turned out to look quite nice!) Next week the stone mason might start on the fireplace. Then it is flooring, cabinets, finish electrical, and a few things outside.

The turkeys are scheduled to arrive on April 26, right about when the meaties will be moving out to the tractor.