Additions to the flock this year: buff orpingtons, which I like for their friendliness and inclination to be broody, and a couple Plymouth Barred Rocks. Looks like the lighter colored Barred Rock is going to be a Rooster!
Our first try at hatching chicks at home with an incubator was successful. We saved the best looking eggs from our flock for a few days in a cool dark room, then put them in the incubator which holds them at 100F. 12 out of 15 hatched. I got a Genesis "Model 1588 Hova-Bator " with the automatic egg turner and am very happy with it. The large window on top let my kids get a great view of the hatching action. You can see one starting to peck out the shell, above the damp chick that just hatched.
Advantages of hatching your own chicks instead of buying or ordering are that you avoid some expense, can choose the timing, and are not limited with seasonal availability or large minimum quantities. You’re going to get a mix of boys and girls though, and a mix of breeds depending on what’s in your flock. My rooster is a RI Red and we have RI Red, Plymouth Barred Rock, and Buff Orpington hens, and we got chicks of all combinations judging by their colors.
Hopefuly we’ll have some good layers in about 24 weeks or next spring, to replace some of my older birds.
I wrote a long post about my experience harvesting chickens over on the definitive agriculture/permaculture thread. To find it, just use the search box on the home page and key in “chicken harvest”. Viva – Sager
Following up on Sager’s post above, I got some experience in processing chickens for meat this past week top. It was a bit of work but very rewarding in both the quality of the product and in the satisfaction of learning another skill for resilience. I did several few birds alone but it went pretty smooth with some up front preparation and planning and not really unpleasant at all.
here are links to a couple great guides with photos on butchering chickens I used to figure out what to do.
girlsguidetobutter.com/2010/08/chicken-butchering-101/
Most of the chicks we hatched out 18 weeks ago turned out to be cockerals (boys), and as I primarily wanted hens for laying the others had to go. Early on butchering day I put the chickens to be processed in a separate coop with water but no food to give their digestive tract about 12 hours to empty out. I made a killing cone out of an old 1 gal milk jug and screwed it to a support. I did bleeding and plucking outside since these were the messiest operations. I started in the evening after the birds had gone to roost, so they were calm and easy to handle. After bleeding, to loosen the feathers I scalded it in a big pot of 130F water for 30 seconds, dunking several times. A simple plucker rig I got from Ebay mounted in a drill took off almost all of the feathers quickly then I plucked the rest by hand.
Since it is wintertime in Maine, I did the rest of the steps outlined inthe links above in my garage workshop, which has a heater and a big tub sink. I spread out newspaper on a temporary bench to make cleanup easy. I’ll skip the details since it’s described well elsewhere, but after I did the first bird I got the hang of it quickly.
I aged each chicken in the refrigerator about 24 hours before freezing. I actually eat very little meat normally but one bird roasted so far came out great. These were dual purpose breeds, not meat birds, and free ranged so the meat was different than commercially produced - firmer, more flavor. At 18 weeks these dressed out to about 3.5 to 3.8 pounds, mostly dark meat which I prefer anyway.
More good info here about heritage birds for meat and cooking methods here…
www.albc-usa.org/documents/cookingwheritagechicken.pdf
In summary, not only can one raise chickens specifically bred for meat, one can raise straight run dual-purpose birds as well, keeping the pullets for laying eggs and processing the excess cockerals for meat that is much better than from the supermarket.
I’m a new reader and when I saw your blog post this morning, I was really excited, since I’m from Iowa myself! All the poiints which you mentioned in your article about Raising Your Own Chickens are wonderful. Thanks for sharing us.
Meat Trading
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