Ya know it's a sad day when you're sitting around pondering the lineage of your rooster. But alas, here I am. Sitting around pondering the lineage of my rooster! Big Red is a big boy. I had thought he was a Rhode Island Red, but now I'm thinking maybe not. I'm trying to remember what chickens I bought last year and I'm coming up blank. I *think* we might have had some of those little Easter chicks... ya know... the cute colored ones that all grow up to be roosters. Big Red might have been one of those, in which case, he may not be the Rhode Island Red rooster mistake out of the batch of pullets I bought! Any guesses on what he might be? He's a real nice, mellow rooster. He's wearing out my hens backs though because of his size. poor girls!

Freedom Rangers Arrive!!

The much anticipated (ok, well the anticipation was driving me crazy anyway!) Freedom Ranger chicks arrived via USPS this morning. All 50 babies looked great and were peeping their little heads off. Odin, Soren and I unloaded them into the brooder and showed each one the waterer. They drank a considerable amount, rested, then found the feeder.

In the case of this poor little fellow, the excitement of the trip caught up with him mid-meal. He fell asleep right on top of the feeder! How cute is that? And on the subject of cuteness, it seems really wrong to me that meat birds should be so darn cute! I ordered red and bronze Rangers, and as you can see in the picture above the colors are pretty and variable from bird to bird. Pretty neat!

As we do with most things, raising the Rangers will be a learning project for the kids. We're going to keep track of the cost of feed, how quickly the birds gain, cost of processing, etc. I'm curious to see what the total cost per bird will turn out to be. We're raising the Rangers naturally. They're on a non-medicated commercial chick starter right now. Once they're bigger they'll go outside into bottomless cages called chicken tractors where they can 'free range' in safety. The cages get moved every day to give the birds fresh ground to range on. We will not be using any chemicals, hormones, antibiotics or coccidiosis meds. The end result will be birds that have had a good life, were butchered humanely, and will provide extremely healthy high quality meat for my family. As a breed the Rangers have been bred specifically for organic/natural farmers that need a hardier, healthier bird. If you'd like to learn more about Freedom Rangers visit: http://www.freedomrangers.net/

Cause and Effect: Death of Mr. Evil

We used to have two big Rhode Island Red roosters. We really didn't need two rooster, but I figured as long as the two boys were nice and didn't cause my family or the hens too much hassle then they could just do their thing. Well, a few weeks ago one of the roosters attacked Bella. It pecked a hole in her leg and left a huge bruise. Because both roosters are red, she couldn't tell me which one had done it. The offender got a temporary stay of execution because I didn't want to off the wrong rooster! About a week later, she got attacked again and that time I knew Mr. Evil had done the deed. He got locked up in the coop awaiting butchering day. Which finally came this past weekend.

Kendal got the honors of whacking his head off, mostly just because I couldn't bring myself to do it!

Once that was done, I plucked and dressed him. This was my first experience butchering a chicken all on my own. Honestly, it wasn't anywhere near as bad as I thought it would be! It was slow going as I fumbled around getting everything done. But I did a pretty darn good job of it if I do say so myself! Here are a few pictures.

This is poor Bella's leg a few weeks after the fact. It STILL has a red welt! Darned rotten rooster.

I guess you can say I showed that rooster though! Here he is plucked, all ready to butcher. I didn't completely pluck his wings. The feathers are tough and didn't want to come out. There's so little meat on a wing tip, it wasn't worth the effort. So, I cut them off at the joint. Cut his feet off at the joint as well. I showed the kids how to pull the exposed tendons with a pair of pliers and open and close the feet. That was pretty cool!!

Here is my crew of butchering helpers. So much for herbivores being spooked by the smell of blood. I could hardly get them to leave me alone! Butchering outside was nice though. I threw the scraps over my shoulders to a whole herd of eager recipients that made them quickly disappear (cats and chickens). Thankfully the horses were just being nosy, they didn't actually want to eat the chicken. Ya never know with my horses though...

And here is Mr. Evil today enjoying his

nice hot bath! I figured I'd let him boil a while, then I'll make soup out of him. He's a little over a year old and should be pretty darn tough. Hopefully that'll be enough prep work to make him edible. He dressed out like a typical dual purpose yard bird... huge thighs, not much breast. He's boiling away as a type, sure smells good!

I tell you what, the other rooster has been mighty well behaved lately!!

Trip to The Park

Thursday we went to park day at Johnson Park in Marble Falls. The weather has been gorgeous. Highs in the 70s, lows in the 40s/50s. It actually feels like spring, which is something of a rarity in Texas. People joke about how we have two seasons in Texas: Summer and something horrible (hurricane or tornado or sleet or pick your other miserable extreme event!). Now don't get me wrong, I love Texas and can't ever imagine leaving. Just wish it wasn't three degrees hotter than hades 9 months of the year!! While the weather's nice, we take advantage of it.

Here's Soren playing on a little playscape

designed just for kidos his size. He could climb the stairs, go through the tube, and down the slide all by himself!

Bella had fun playing, she is such a little monkey of a child! She can climb anything. She loves park day because she gets to see other little girls. As the only girl amongst three brothers she starts feeling like the odd duck out. She's taken to reminding me on a regular basis that she wants a baby sister. Hmmm....

Magnus up a tree... as usual! Notice that cute little gap toothed grin. He lost one front tooth, and the other is so loose it should fall out any day.

Last but not least, here's Odin looking entirely to grown up. Did you know he's almost 11? Which means that in just two years he'll be 13! And then three years after that he can DRIVE. Just in case I didn't know all this he reminds me almost every day. I get a running list of what Wii games he wants for his birthday too. That birthday that's in three months and counting.... when he'll turn 11... and then in two more years he'll be 13......... Ugh!!!!

Morning Chores

I love mornings! I know, it's disgusting... but I'm such a morning person! I love the peace and quiet first thing in the morning as everyone wakes up. Today we're going to try to make it to the homeschool park day and then later game day, so I have to hustle (and I'm blogging because I'm nursing Soren, might as well multitask)! Got up and put in a load of laundry. Fed the chicks brooding in the garage and the chicks in my make-shift brooder outside. Baked some cupcakes to take as a treat to the park. Made 1/2 a gallon of humming bird food (1c of sugar to 4c of water), we have tons of hummers this year! They are drinking my 3 feeders dry every day. Odin got up and unloaded the dishwasher for me, so I reloaded then left for the outside chores hoping I could get everything done before Soren woke up!

Threw out scratch grains for the hens, then wondered why only half showed up. Hmmm... something is afoot!

Fed the horses... Snotty is the chestnut in front, Freedom is the big bay, and Honey is our rotten little pony (actually, she's a pretty darn sweet pony, but she still has a bit of the pony attitude, and she's a mare!). We actually have grass up in the pasture so I'm just throwing out flakes from a square bale instead of giving the horses their usual big round bale. More work for me, but it saves a little money.







Taf gets her 'Old Lady Feed'. She's well beyond being able to eat hay, so she gets her bucket of beet pulp and high fat pellets every morning. At 34, she's doing amazingly well! A little wobbly and her vision isn't great, but she's happy.




Then it was off to water the garden. I discovered where a few of the hens were!! rotten birds were destroying the mulch rings around my veggie hills! Thankfully they weren't interested in eating the little sprouts, but in their enthusiasm to sort through the hay mulch they were starting to tear up some of the hills. I ran them out with the garden hose. Chickens don't seem to enjoy getting wet! Imagine that! Some of the flock was out in the pasture just beyond the garden fence foraging for breakfast. A few were in Taf's paddock (which is the front half of the garden, the back half is fenced off for the garden) eating scratch.

Bella woke up as I was just about finished watering and came out to tell me good morning, and to let me know Soren was awake. I showed her the baby bell pepper, and she was so excited! The kids have helped me in the garden since the start and are really looking forward to home grown veggies. We talk so much about healthy food and try so hard to eat organic. I guess it's sinking in because the kids are very dedicated to our all organic garden. We even used certified organic seed! The tomatoes are growing great guns as well and are flowering!

Well, it's about 9:30am and I have plenty left to do today! Soren has since wandered off and I'm sure is up to no good. Odin is finishing off the days school work (oh the power of a bribe... 'Finish your school work today guys and we'll go to the park!!' Suddenly the kids find motivation!). Magnus is still asleep, and Bella is grumbling about how she wants scrambled eggs for breakfast, not cereal. Wonder how many of the cup cakes sitting on the stove to cool have disappeared....

Chickens!

My 1 year old hens are laying wonderfully. So, despite what critics say you can have a wonderfully successful 100% free range home layer flock. I have 14 hens and 2 roosters right now. The hens are: Rhode Island Reds, Barred Rocks, Americaunas, a Buff Orpington and a Jersey Black Giant. One rooster (Mr. Evil) is in permanent lock up until we get around to butchering him. He kept attacking the kids... so that's the end of him! I'm getting more eggs than we can use, and finally sold some today! First time I've sold any of my home grown goodies!! I'm pretty excited about that. The girls are 100% free range, get scratch grains in the AM and all our household food scraps. They get no commercial feeds, no medicated feeds, no 'yucky stuff'. The eggs are fabulous!

Part of maintaining a free range flock is backfilling any hens that go missing. Hey, it happens, and I figure the health benefits to me and the birds are worth a little attrition. I have 19 chicks brooding as replacements for my laying flock. 3 are home hatched babies from the homemade incubator the kids and I built (now that was a contraption! I can't believe we got anything to hatch. Will have to make a post on that). The picture above is of my home hatched babies. I literally hatched them in my hands as they were having a hard time getting out of their very tough shells. The little runt in the back is one of my feed store chicks. Mean little bugger had to go in with the bigger birds as she was picking on the other babies her size. They are a Rhode Island Red (daddy) x Jersey Black Giant and Buff Orpington (at least I think that's what their mommas are!)

Here are the other babies. I have 6 Black Australorps, 6 Rhode Island Reds, and 4 Barred Rocks. Soren and I changed out their shavings tonight and they had so much fun taking 'dust' baths in the new shavings! Soren LOVES watching the chicks.

Here's my little chicken farmer hamming for the camera. We had a whole discussion tonight about many things chicken related. Such as, the heat lamp right behind him is hot (ouch! he says), the claws on the chicks feet are sharp (ouch! he says), when I catch the chicks at his insistence so he can pet them they squawk up a storm (ouch! he says in sympathy). Ah one year olds, it's amazing how one tracked they are and how well they can make life fit their frame of reference.

Taking the Plunge!

Well, I always thought this whole blog concept was kinda silly. I mean really, how egocentric can you get? Post your ramblings and think anyone else is going to want to read them? Then it occured to me... I always seem to have people asking me questions about what we're doing, how we're doing it, and of course... if I have pictures. Since I'm puttering along on the net at a smokin' 28.8K connection I thought a blog might actually present a practicle solution to my lack of time and lack of speed. I'm going to post all the happenings and pictures here in one spot, and anyone who's interested can come and look. Phew... finally... I only have to upload pictures once! Course, my ego can take it if no one gives a rats patoot and doesn't come visit. :)