The Chickens and the Eggs

A week before Miriam was born we got chicks.  Over the summer these chicks grew up and a lot died.  We started out with 21 hens and 4 roosters.  We thought that would be a good ratio of hens to roosters.  Well we had 2 hens die as little chicks, 4 more drowned in the water as teenage looking chicks.  Then we let them out and the suicidal hens kept going under the fence and getting eaten by our bird dog.  And then the hens got big enough to fly over the dog fence and more flew in to be eaten by the dog.  Now we were reduced to the 5 smart hens, but we still had 4 roosters.  These roosters decided they should start protecting the hens and the hens obviously needed to be protected from the kids.  One rooster in particular was quite aggressive, he had a twin and we couldn't tell them apart so they were both slated for slaughter. 

Our neighbors had some roosters they needed to slaughter too, and they graciously let Brian come and have help slaughtering these two and learn how to do it in the future. 

Here is Brian with the two (alive) roosters. 

 

They are pretty birds, you can see them a little better in this picture. 

 

 

So Brian left with two roosters like this and came home a few hours later with two roosters ready for me.  He was most worried about the plucking, but said that wasn't too bad, but he did not like the gutting.  He was glad we didn't give them anything to eat for the 12+ hours before hand, it was less messy.

 

One rooster went straight to the stock pot to make chicken broth and shredded chicken for future meals. 

 

 

The other rooster was dinner for Monday and Tuesday.  Here is Brian putting it in the roasting pan.

 

 

 

We thought the flavor was pretty good with the birds, but then Brian said we had the fattest birds there, probably because I feed them all the kids leftovers.  The texture was a little tougher than store bought chicken, but it wasn't too bad.  It was also a little smaller than a store bought chicken, but they were only 5 months old when we slaughtered them.

 

Around the same time the hens started laying eggs.  They are darker and a little smaller than store bought eggs, but the hens are still really young, and the eggs should get bigger. 

 

The store bought egg is on the right.

 

 

The yolks are a nice dark color, again the store bought egg is on the right.

 

The kids love the "real chicken eggs" and prefer them to store bought eggs.  I told Brian that they are turning into egg snobs.  We average 2 eggs a day right now, so the kids still have to eat some store eggs.

 

As soon as the chickens starting laying, some other random bird, whose type has not been determined starting laying her eggs with the chickens eggs.  They are super tiny, I wonder if they are a dove or something.  We have been eating them too, when they show up.  This picture shows a store bough egg on the left, one of our chicken eggs in the middle, and the mystery egg on the right.

 

So we were feeling bad that our garden didn't happen with Miriam being born this spring, but with us growing some of our own protein we will slightly more self sufficient.