Saturday

Well, I missed posting yesterday. Mainly due to the fact that I was exhausted from not sleeping well for several nights and it finally caught up with me yesterday.

Today we are processing the Jenk's Hatchery FryPan Special meaties. I'll tell you what, I'm very ready to get this done and over with. These dudes take a very long time to grow out and my attention span is just over 3 months - the time it takes for the Freedom Rangers to reach harvestable size.

A lot of these dudes have started crowing and I'm not cool with that. Yes, I knew that it would happen, but still they started crowing weeks ago. Most of the time it's entertaining because they aren't good at it yet. There are a couple who I would say were over-achievers and were quite good and loud!

What we have learned about these meaties:

1. They are not especially smart. I suppose that's true for most birds, but it took these dudes to figure out the routine in the evening. The Freedom Rangers caught on fast and would generally be ready to be locked in. All without having to chase a few around the paddock to get them into the Chicken Tractor. 

2.  There are three different breeds in this FryPan special and they are all different. The light colored boys were mostly friendly and allowed us to pick them up and set them on our laps at time. There was one dark gray meatie who was just a bully. He would run around and pick fights with the other ones. And the speckled ones were very skittish. They didn't necessarily care if we were near them, they just didn't want to be grabbed. For any reason.

3. As I mentioned before - they are very slow growing. Today we are at 15 1/2 weeks. We could have done nearly two batches of Cornish Cross in the same time-frame. The Freedom Rangers were not nearly as long, but also were a much nicer meat bird which made it more enjoyable to grow them. 

4. Personality - these birds weren't mean, but they were super curious and would not hesitate to start pecking on your leg or arm or whatever after they saw something interesting. As they grew up with the turkeys, we would spend most evenings trying to console the turkeys because the meaties could be so spirited. The turkeys got over the meaties pretty quickly so it wasn't all that bad. 

We may be processing these guys a little early, but I didn't want to be out at the end of the month doing the job in what would most likely be the typical weather for the Pacific NW fall season - RAIN. It can be done, but nobody wants to be in the rain if they don't need to. So, really, we lucked out today - mostly cloudy with a small chance for rain or showers or misting. 

Today was also going to be the day that we promoted some of the laying hens to Freezer Camp. However, that changed when I took one of the ladies that had spent the evening out (bad girl!) and locked her in with the meaties. They immediately started to attack her. Okay, so I guess they get to stay with us a little longer, not much longer though - they are just hanging around and eating food and not laying anymore eggs! Just a bunch of freeloaders. They are sweet hens though, but have outlived their purpose on the farm.

Just for the sake of curiosity we are planning to grow a batch of Cornish Cross. We want to see how different they are compared to the Freedom Rangers and if it will make a difference letting them out on grass instead of confining them to a small space like those big commercial poultry barns that house thousands and thousands of chickens. 

Okay...I'm not going to get started because this is not the time for this subject. What it is time for is some more prep work for our day today!

Throw Back Thursday

 As we look forward to our next Meatie Harvest in a few weeks I was looking back at the post of our first REAL meat chicken harvest. The actual first harvest was a terrible event. Trying to reduce the number of cockerels from our first flock of chickens. Yet, we still decided to move forward and do a real batch of meaties. Go HERE to see that post.

In a few weeks we'll be getting ready to set up our equipment and process 26 meaties. I'm hoping that we'll have decent weather, but it will be late October and anything can happen. Heck it's 2020 and a hurricane might decide to blow through...hehe...

I'm excited for this next batch of chickens though because we are trying something new. The Fry Pan Special from Jenks Hatchery in Tangent, OR. My favorite place to get brand fresh newly hatched chicks! So easy to place an order and choose the hatch date and have them shipped. Unless you live within driving distance and make the trek to pick them up in person. Which is what we have done with each batch.

There are two reasons why I suggested to my hubs that we try them. The first is that they are different, not Freedom Rangers (which I love) and NOT Cornish Cross. Second, they are all cockerels and very inexpensive. I think they are even less than CC at Wilco - they ended up being $1.40 each and the minimum order is 25, but we got lucky and got 26 :)

The breeds escape me right now, but I think one of the breeds is Blue Sapphire Plymouth Rock. I think the one pictured above would be that breed. Maybe. Our batch is a mix of three breeds and we have probably a dozen of the Blue Sapphire's and a dozen of the lighter colored chickens and ONE all dark roo. 

Anyway, kinda cool to see where we are two years later. That first batch was only 15 and our current batch is 26. Who knew that we would be all in with this food growing attitude?! I really do love it! 

Farm Life Best Life

When Will We Process...

Batch #3 of Meaties? The date that I had on the calendar is June 13.

Hmmmmm...

For some reason, this year's meaties are on the smaller side. I'm wondering if the Brooder fire may have made a difference in their lack of growth or if I miscalculated processing dates. 

Anything is possible.

So, just to be safe I decided to take this coming Friday off just in case we do decide to do the harvest. I also decided to go ahead and take vacation time next week. Looks like I'll be working on getting the garden planted then...but that's a different task altogether!

When we had picked up the chicks I tried to get the date that we wanted the Poultry Kit on the calendar with the Clark Conservation District. I actually received the email from one of the ladies in the office and as soon as I read it I responded with the date that we were looking at and then waited. Several days went by and pretty soon I was back at work (I had been on vacation then). Then I decided to resend my reply and see if anyone was going to answer. Well the person that responded back to me informed me that the kit would not be available the weekend I had requested and that there were no other weekends available in June. 

OH FINE. 

So now what? After a couple of emails we Tom and I decided that maybe this was the impetus to actually get our own chicken plucker. We each searched for pluckers that might be for sale on Craigslist. Nothing. Then we started to research different pluckers available to buy. There is the Featherman which is what we are used to and there is the Yardbird which I had already looked at months ago. Maybe I was just preparing myself for this situation. Tom did some research, read reviews on Amazon and then said that we should go for it. The question was where would we purchase it from? Amazon? Tractor Supply? Somewhere else? In the end Tom decided to order thru Tractor Supply. It took a couple of weeks for the box to show up at the store, but it did so off we went! It was great because we got to get away from Vancouver for a little while AND new pokemon opportunities!

Before too long we were back at home and BAM - chicken plucker!

We had an opportunity to try this out on a laying hen that had injured itself and even in our chicken ICU was not getting better. If we were to leave her out in the chicken run she would have been pecked to death and there was evidence that the hens were picking at her. However, being isolated didn't really help either. She wasn't eating or anything so the kindest thing we felt was to go ahead and put her out of her misery. It sounds uncaring, but I really wanted to try out the plucker.

It worked like a charm!

Now, when will we process the 15 meaties out in the field?

Stay tuned - an update will be coming.

Why I Take Vacation

In the years before we started our farm we would take vacations - like to places. For a football or baseball game or one year we flew across the country to participate in a running event. Other times we used vacation time for church missions trip to Tijuana.

These days my vacation time is spent hanging around home and doing farm projects. Whether is starting seeds or planting the garden or getting ready to add some feathered critters my time is spent here at home.

Today, March 5th, we are heading out to pick up our Freedom Rangers at Jenks Hatchery near Albany, Oregon. I choose to pick-up because today is the actual hatch day of our chicks and I know exactly how old they are and how long to let them grow-out before they graduate to the freezer.

Last year was our first time growing Freedom Rangers and it was successful - for the most part. We ended up losing 9 chicks in the process, but there has to be loss and learning at the same time. Otherwise we would get too full of ourselves thinking that we got this down. Farm life is not like that. We learn something new everyday or every week at the very least.

Choosing to grow our own food isn't easy, but we can't always rely on commercially grown food for good quality, nutritious food. We do subscription meat via Butcher Box and we do get a few organic vegetables from Imperfect Produce. But to make up the rest of good food we have to grow it ourselves. Well, we don't have to, but we choose to.

Since we raised our first batch of meat chickens I don't think that we have purchased chicken at the store very many times since September. We make do with what we have and really...a whole chicken does go pretty far when it is roasted and eaten in a couple of different meals during the week.

So this week, while I am on vacation, I am working on farm projects and will be setting up a couple of seed trays in the Living Room. If our morning temperatures are in the 20s our seeds will never germinate outside! The pig palace will be worked on some more and garden spaces may get worked over with the broadfork.

Today though, we are going out of town to get our chicks!

25 Meaties!

Farm Life is the Best Life!

Less Than One Week

The Freedom Rangers all smooshed in the box.

The hours old chicks in the big brooder

The Meaties are coming back to the farm in less than a week! Actually, we are going to Tangent next week and will pick up our second batch of Freedom Rangers. As soon as that happens and we get them home, the countdown starts.

This year we are letting them grow out for just under 14 weeks. Our last batch was right around 11 weeks and the smallest was 3.5 lbs and the biggest may have been 4.5 lbs. I would like the smaller ones in this year's batch to have a chance to get just a little heftier by harvest day.

My other goal is to get to harvest day with a whole lot less loss than we had last year. Due to our inexperience we lost 9 chicks around week 4-ish. We should have started withholding food and keeping them to only daytime feeding. It was a huge lesson learned and now we know better.

Farm Life!

Less Than A Month...

In less than a month we'll be heading back to Tangent, OR to pick up...

Twenty-five Freedom Rangers

I'm so excited!! We are down to 4 or 5 chickens in the freezer right now so it's time to fill it up again!

This year will be better and we'll reach processing day with more meaties. Last year we ended up with 16 after losing 9 of them due to our inexperience. We are in the know and I'm confident that we will have more on processing day than last September.

I do love me a project and so I'll be posting their progress here weekly and by then we'll be in full swing getting gardens planted and more chicks and a couple of goslings as well. It's almost go time!

Farm living is the life...

Thursday, July 5, 2018

Not a lot happened at home yesterday...so we are skipping to today's update.

Last year I decided that I wanted to raise meat chickens. I'm not 100% sure when I decided that or what my inspiration was. If I'm honest, I'm guessing that it may be because of Justin Rhodes and when he did a big ol' meat chicken harvest that probably happened during their 2016 100 Days of Growing Food challenge. I believe that harvest was in late Spring possibly early Summer.

Anyway - I had it in my head that we would raise some meat chickens in 2017. It didn't happen not in the way that I had in mind. My vision was to get a batch of chicks in the mail (?) and bring them home and do what all the cool people are doing. Well, the Rhodes family and other homesteader types around the US. As it happened, last year was not the year of the meat chicken. Which is just was well I'm not sure that the timing was right. We did process our unwanted roos though, so we did do a super mini harvest last September.

Still, if this was going to be a thing, we would need to build a house of sorts.

Enter the Stress Free Chicken Tractor by John Suscovich. Not long after watching the  GAFT video that featured Camps Road Farm I ordered myself the book and totally got excited about starting on a new adventure.

Fast Forward to March of this year - we built the Chicken Tractor! It's about time right?

Then in April I went to the Jenks website to workout the ordering of the birds. We decided to go with the Freedom Ranger - a slower growing bird (around 3 more weeks) than the Cornish Cross. My other reason for going with the Freedom Ranger is based on the fact that these tend to be a little more active and don't have nearly as many physical problems as the CC might have. Also, because they are a little more active I have read that they might have better thighs and legs and a more lean breast. Which is fine with me as we prefer thighs and legs.

Today was pick-up day and since the hatchery is not terribly far away - less than a hundred miles - we drove to pick them up. If they were shipped they would not arrive until the weekend and if I can avoid the post office, that's okay by me.

We left Starbucks at 9:30 and arrive a little after 11am. The gas station had food so we grabbed some lunch and waited for the chicks to arrive.

The Jenks van snuck in...we got our chicks and then we went home!

In the box and ready to go home.

After an uneventful drive home we got them all set up in the brooder...

The new babies all settled in!!

My understanding is that they were hatched this morning - so they are still just a little fragile. They all had their little beaks dipped into the water and they are curious enough to figure out the food. 

After letting them settle in a little bit they seemed to be all happy and zipping around in their temporary home. In a month they will be going out on pasture!

Operation Grow Your Food...

Farm Life is the Best Life!

Things Just Got Real

OH.

MY.

GOODNESS.

What have I done?! Check it out...

Shopping cart

Product image	Description	Quantity	Price
25	Freedom Ranger07/03/2018Pickup time: 12:00 PMDelivery: NoAdd Coccidiosis Vaccination: NoAdd S.E. (Salmonella Enteritidis) Vaccination : NoShipment Temperature Recorder (100°F +): NoShipment Temperature Recorder (50°F -): NoWithhold Marek's vaccination: No	25	$58.50

Scroll for more items 

Cost summary

Description	Price
Subtotal	$58.50
Shipping	Free
Total	USD $58.50

Come July 3 we will be starting to raise our first real batch of meat chickens! This is something that I have been wanting to do for a while. However, now that I have actually placed the order - I'm only freaking out slightly. I mean I'm excited, but wow, 25 little chickies is a huge deal! I was worried about keeping 10 chicks alive...but 25?! AHHHHHH!!!!

I'm seriously feeling all the crazy feelings right now. For REAL!

The video that started off this whole grow your own food thing would be THIS video. We probably watched this a bazillion times just to get ourselves ready to do the little roos last September. Also, this video will be helpful to review when we do this batch of chickens HERE. Danelle is very thorough - she explains each step as she is processing the chicken.

The good thing is that we have a little bit of time to get all mentally prepared for this - is it just me? Maybe. Once I get over the shock that I actually have done this all will be well. Then it will be business as usual. The only difference is that these chickens will only be with us for 9-11 weeks. I'm sure that the time will go fast and that processing day will be long, but I think of all the food that we'll have in the freezer. From chicken to veggies (hope, hope) we'll be set for a while. That will be worth it!

We can and will do this!