Chicken Rookies
Ever since we moved to the wilderness 18 months ago, chickens have been on the radar. According to my friends who grow chickens, they're one of the easiest animals to take care of PLUS they return the favor with meat or eggs, depending on why you're raising them in the first place. We've been reading and watching YouTube in preparation for chickens and made a last minute decision this weekend to take the chicken plunge because, not unlike the decision to have kids, if you wait until you're ready you'll never do it.
We're now the proud owners of six Cornish Cross chicks for the next seven weeks, at which point they'll be humanely butchered and provide our family with meat for future meals.
So, what went into our decision to go with the Cornish Cross breed? According to The Google, this is a fast growing, easy breed to grow for meat, typically being ready to harvest around eight weeks and weighing in at anywhere from 6-12 pounds. We initially only wanted two chicks but the minimum purchase was six, so here we are.
We're total rookies in this situation. I've never touched a living, breathing chicken and I was more confident bringing home a living newborn human child than I was bringing chicken babies to our house last night. The good news is after getting the brooder set up with straw, water, food, and a heat lamp they were all still alive this morning so we have a perfect record of poultry survival with week old chicks.
According to everyone else, they'll be ready to transfer to an outdoor protected coop around 3-4 weeks. Rob's working on building that now and we plan on using the Joel Salatin method of a mobile chicken tractor so they can eat fresh grass and forage for bugs while free-ranging during the day once they're big enough. Since they'll be harvested at eight weeks, they won't have a lot of time to do this, but as responsible owners of livestock, we want to contribute an excellent quality of life for them so they can in turn contribute to ours. That means free-ranging and eating lots of untreated grass and bugs in the most natural environment possible. If we treat our animals well, they'll treat us well.
I'll update our chicken adventure each week with pictures so you can see how they grow and what we go through as we work toward the inevitable Harvest Day.
I can't believe we're chicken farmers!
We're total rookies in this situation. I've never touched a living, breathing chicken and I was more confident bringing home a living newborn human child than I was bringing chicken babies to our house last night. The good news is after getting the brooder set up with straw, water, food, and a heat lamp they were all still alive this morning so we have a perfect record of poultry survival with week old chicks.
According to everyone else, they'll be ready to transfer to an outdoor protected coop around 3-4 weeks. Rob's working on building that now and we plan on using the Joel Salatin method of a mobile chicken tractor so they can eat fresh grass and forage for bugs while free-ranging during the day once they're big enough. Since they'll be harvested at eight weeks, they won't have a lot of time to do this, but as responsible owners of livestock, we want to contribute an excellent quality of life for them so they can in turn contribute to ours. That means free-ranging and eating lots of untreated grass and bugs in the most natural environment possible. If we treat our animals well, they'll treat us well.
I'll update our chicken adventure each week with pictures so you can see how they grow and what we go through as we work toward the inevitable Harvest Day.
I can't believe we're chicken farmers!
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