Our friend Dallas started a new project this spring when he built a little hen house out behind his home. He added a lot of nice decorative touches. It has electricity and running water and he has begun fencing in the yard on both sides of the house. Here's a picture:
Last Friday his mail order chicks arrived. He invited us out earlier this week to see them. They had already grown and some were even trying to fly a little bit the evening we visited. He has quite a variety of chicks and it will be interesting to see how they change and develop as they grow.
The company that shipped them included one "exotic" chick which will look like this when it is fully grown:
My only experience with chickens occurred when my sister and I were teenagers. My dad was given a live chicken that had been someone's Easter chick. It had grown rather mean and the family no longer wanted it. My dad butchered it and had us scald and pluck it. He said "No woman is educated who doesn't know how to pluck a chicken." Can you tell he grew up on a farm?
Do any of you dear readers have any interesting chicken stories to share?
Becka
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on Jun 11th, 2009 at 11:04 pm
When I was a young adult, and still living with my parents, we found a chicken on the side of the freeway (likely from a truck taking it to be chicken dinner!
). My dad stopped off the exit and caught it. We had it in our back yard for a while, and it even laid eggs.
At our church’s annual White Elephant Christmas gift exchange, my dad wrapped up the chicken as his gift. As it happened, it was one of the first gifts opened, and my dad was one of the last people to pick a gift. So the lady who opened the chicken was stuck with her chicken till the very end, when my dad decided to reclaim the chicken.
After a year or so, the chicken was sent to one of my grandparent’s neighbors. Probably ended up as chicken soup or something….
on Jun 12th, 2009 at 12:51 pm
I have a chicken story though not of the kind you might expect. Years ago, a friend had taken a package of chicken out of the freezer to thaw for dinner. After several hours, she realized that the package of chicken had disappeared. She asked her toddler if she knew where the chicken was. The little one said, “Hide, Mommy, hide.”
“Where did you hide the chicken, R?” R took her mother by the hand, took her to the bedroom, and pointed at the closet door. When D opened the door, she found not only the package of chicken, but also a cantaloupe! I told D that she should feed her kids once in awhile, so they wouldn’t have to be hiding food.
Since R was so little, she would have had to make two trips to get both chicken and cantaloupe to her room. I wish I could have watched her do it
BTW, R will be getting married in December 2009.
on Jun 12th, 2009 at 3:24 pm
When I was a young girl, we had one particularly mean rooster who always managed to fly over the fence and “take over” the rest of the yard. He could spot any other moving creature (cat, dog, human) from all the way across the yard and would charge at us in a 7lb. fury of feathers, beak, and spurs (sharp nails on his feet). I decided to fight back one day and wielded a broom to meet his attack, nearly sweeping him into the next county. He ended up in a soup kettle soon after.
on Jun 14th, 2009 at 1:17 pm
I grew up on a hobby farm, and we kept chickens. One year Dad decided that we would butcher them ourselves. After Dad struck the blow to one chicken, it ran around the yard spurting blood, seeming to chasing my oldest brother, who was terrified (of course!). We took them to the processor after that.
It is a nasty process! The smell of scalded chickens, and the plucking of the feathers — not for the faint of heart. I’m so thankful not to be a pioneer woman.