Eggs and animals of the Happy Hour Farm

[John in CR]

We got some hens a couple of months ago, 3 already producing and 5 young ones 2 of which just started laying...nothing exotic, just plain ole production Reds. I've never been around chickens before, so maybe it's normal but I've never seen an egg this size in the store. Even the one in the middle bests what I've ever seen in a carton called Jumbo. For reference the one on the left is about a typical medium egg from the store, but the one my old girl Skinny laid is just a monster.

 

[NeilP]

I've never been around chickens before,

you sure you have got chickens John? Just check what happens when you chuck them in a pond? do they swim and go quack quack ?

 

[John in CR]

I've never been around chickens before,

you sure you have got chickens John? Just check what happens when you chuck them in a pond? do they swim and go quack quack ?

LOL! I think I've been duck and goose hunting enough to know these are neither, and as much as I'd like to have an emu or ostrich they aren't them either. Here's a pic. Maybe you can tell me what they are. That's Skinny closest and Fatty right behind her. Both are good for a nice jumbo egg almost every day, though Skinny lays eggs with a rough thin shell, that you'd never see at a store. They taste just fine and that's all that matters to me.

 

[Harold in CR]

They need some bare ground to gather minerals and grit. Oyster shells are fed to production hens to make strong shells. Them are Rhode Island Reds, them are. That big one is above any grade and have no store value. No packing is large enough. I have eaten hundreds of that size. My Mom's cousin had a laying operation for as long as I can remember. All hand fed and gathered.

That big one could be a double yolker.

No telling how much C-s$it I have hand loaded and spread on his fields.

You must need a rooster or 10 ?? I have WAAYYYYYYYYYYYY too many here. I will mail you down a few. :lol: :lol:

 

[John in CR]

You must need a rooster or 10 ?? I have WAAYYYYYYYYYYYY too many here. I will mail you down a few. :lol: :lol:

No thanks, I don't need any more chickens, nor do I want to hear the noise. Costa Rican roosters can't tell the difference between night and day.

I had a feeling it wasn't out of the ordinary. Being a noob, I couldn't resist another pic to show the scale with it racked up in the cooking queue next to a medium and a row of jumbos behind.

 

[spinningmagnets]

Although you have a fence around them, I'd still call them "free range" chickens. Mass production egg-farms limit the chickens to living in a poorly-ventilated box. You are feeding them well, and they are happy = big eggs.

 

[The fingers]

That could be a quadruple yolker! Post pictures of it please when you crack it open. The carton label on the eggs at the store says "free range eggs". The chickens might not be free range, just the eggs? :lol: Who is going to march over hill and dale to search for nests? :? Maybe I'm confusing it with "open range", a term used for cattle.

 

[salty9]

Although you have a fence around them, I'd still call them "free range" chickens. Mass production egg-farms limit the chickens to living in a poorly-ventilated box. You are feeding them well, and they are happy = big eggs.

More nutritious also. Probably taste better too.

 

[ohzee]

I love egg's. Pretty cool to make dinner with stuff running around in the yard..

We as a society are mostly spoiled.. I know I am.

 

[John in CR]

Although you have a fence around them, I'd still call them "free range" chickens. Mass production egg-farms limit the chickens to living in a poorly-ventilated box. You are feeding them well, and they are happy = big eggs.

Yeah, they eat well and now that all are getting along finally they have free range in their own little fenced yard and places to get out of the rain, so they're happy. I just need to add 1 more piece of corrugated roof for a bit more shade and dry area and put a nice perch there for more comfortable sleep accommodation than they chose for themselves. Feed just went up, I guess due to the drought affecting corn prices, so the other 3 better start laying. 8 should average 7 eggs a day, so the $1/day in feed and vitamin supplements (including the recent feed price increase I guess due to the drought affecting corn prices) makes them a net $ saving pet after a sunk cost of under $150 including the hens, a bit of fencing, and food for the 5 young ladies before they started producing.

The best part is that they're not much trouble, since that, as usual, fell to me. I don't mind though. Feeding chickens is relaxing but quick, and giving treats entertaining. But I'm glad we don't have 30 and growing like Harold's wife has. We'd lose too many to our dogs, so we can't free range them, though I doubt I'd put up with droppings on the walking areas and patio for long. I barely have enough tolerance of the droppings from the parrot that chose to come live with us a couple of years ago.

I may get myself a cat skin out of the deal if the cat sneaking around at night making the dogs bark gets one of my hens....I'll turn the poodle loose to catch it and the Akita/Husky to polish it off. If that doesn't work, I've got a box trap left over from my possum war at our previous house. Don't worry cat lovers, I won't kill the darn thing though a nuisance cat deserves it.

Since we did a garden too this year and now have farm animals, I've dubbed the house the Happy Hour Farm, which I coined after scrounging a happy hour sign to use as the gate into the chicken yard. 8)

John

 

[John in CR]

I love egg's. Pretty cool to make dinner with stuff running around in the yard..
We as a society are mostly spoiled.. I know I am.

We got some meat chicks too at the same time we got the hens. Without the proper equipment, harvesting chickens sucks, and since most of my help whimped out there's no way I'm doing that again. At least they were quite tasty.

Maybe get a pig next year to coincide with the mangos falling out of the trees and mostly going to waste, so some of the fattening is free. I haven't roasted a whole pig over a fire in way too long, and have never grown one myself to do it with either.

The house we had up on the mountain 9 years ago had a concrete footer at the bottom of the fence, and the wife and kids got a few bunnies. That turned into 30 pretty quick. We had a big yard, so they were a pleasant to watch self-feeding pets. We lost almost all of them during rainy season though. They're just not a tough enough animal and have skin too thin for the bugs in the tropics. Good thing though, otherwise they would have taken over the world long ago. Those were a tasty easy to clean pet, but the rest of the family wasn't much on eating rabbit except when I fooled them.

John

 

[neptronix]

http://www.vh1.com/celebrity/2010-06-15/meet-harriet-the-hen-with-the-worlds-largest-chicken-vagina/

Looks like your lady's got some competition, John.

 

[Harold in CR]

Did them self pluckin chikkens ever shed the plumage ?? :lol: :lol:

 

[John in CR]

Did them self pluckin chikkens ever shed the plumage ?? :lol: :lol:

Most of the front, but there were still plenty left. Like I said, never again.

 

[Harold in CR]

MUCH easier to just skin 'em. :lol: :lol:

 

[Dee Jay]

Ooh, day's fresh eggs.. nothin' better!

Without the proper equipment, harvesting chickens sucks, and since most of my help whimped out there's no way I'm doing that again.

funny...:lol:

ever thought about building a carbon dioxide gas chamber? Sad but not brutal.
http://nwco.net/0531-stepthreelethaltoolsandtechniques/5-4-0-CarbonDioxideChamber.asp

Just remembered the claymation film Chicken Run.. Mel Gibson was hilarious, I tell ya... :lol:

[youtube]1jzgBgFqr_s[/youtube]

 

[John in CR]

MUCH easier to just skin 'em. :lol: :lol:

Very true, but I wanted to roast some and fry some. Plus I wanted to do the full experience, especially since the only family member to declare no participation up front, my teenage daughter, was the only one to hang throughout the process. My wife found some excuse to get out of plucking fairly early. Mama's boy ran off quick, so of course Mr. "I'm gonna be a doctor", the 8 year old, followed his older brother's lead. I was proud of my daughter though, who fully immersed herself in the process after being given no choice but help hold them for the throat slitting, since we had no chicken funnel. She even volunteered to butcher the one she plucked perfectly.

Skinning would have made the process painless, and that's how we buy our chicken. I'm just not really interested in scaling up that whole operation for it to come close to chicken on sale. I might give it one more shot with a small chicken trailer and a killing funnel, but definitely skinning, not plucking. We have plenty of back yard, and it would be interesting to see how much lower the feed cost would be with plenty of grass and bugs to eat instead of the cage I moved just twice. Moving the chicken trailer every day and give them food and water makes it an easy no mess, no smell deal. As long as it doesn't attract snakes, the dogs will protect them from predators. I don't think it would work well during full on dry season though.

John

 

[John in CR]

Ooh, day's fresh eggs.. nothin' better!

Without the proper equipment, harvesting chickens sucks, and since most of my help whimped out there's no way I'm doing that again.

funny...:lol:

ever thought about building a carbon dioxide gas chamber? Sad but not brutal.
http://nwco.net/0531-stepthreelethaltoolsandtechniques/5-4-0-CarbonDioxideChamber.asp

Just remembered the claymation film Chicken Run.. Mel Gibson was hilarious, I tell ya... :lol:

The killing wasn't the hard part, or should I say murder since they had names. LOL. I tried snapping the neck like I always did with wounded ducks, but it didn't work. Maybe I'm just out of practice. The funnel is the way to go, and you gotta drain the blood anyway.

Skinny couldn't match yesterday....just her normal jumbo today, though this one has good color and better than usual shell, so I think it's market grade, which her's rarely are. As long as they taste good, who cares what the shell looks like.

Duty calls, time to feed the animals and finish the chain alignment on the mid-drive for Wahoo. Maybe I can get batteries and a controller on a get a test ride in today.

John

 

[John in CR]

Here's the rest of the animal crew:

Buran, our gay Akita/Husky mix, with his through the fence boyfriend the young horse next door. Darnedest thing I've seen. They play chase along the fence, and this is during a mutual french kissing session.


Here's Oso, our poodle, who gets to wear a thick wooden collar so he can't get through the fence to the girl dogs next door or the medium traffic road in front.


and Rickie, the small parrot called a perico here. She/he??? chose us as a family a couple of years ago. I'm standing in the drive thru carport and something swoops by me, close enough to instinctively duck a bit. Then another swoop and lands near the edge of the roof and starts squawking. I go get a bowl of granola and Rickie flies right down and has been our pet ever since. She's not like a tape recorder, but she does talk. I never had any kind of pet bird before, and it was interesting to discover how much personality they can have. Her small nips are enough to tell me that as cool as a large real talker would be, there's no way, because a big one can cause serious damage and you never know what might set that bird brain off. Rickie is gentle for a parrot, but the coolest thing is that she chose us. Of course it helps that she like me best.

 

[dingoEsride]

Those look like the Hi line brown variety (http://www.hyline.com/) or Isa brown, very similar to the ones I had, from a mate who runs a chicken rearing farm, these are the lucky ones that didn't get to be caged

Chooks are great, would still have some if my dog wasn't so curious and playfull

 

[Dauntless]

Sometime in the next month, my local community college will celebrate it's 100th anniversary as one of the 3 original 'Junior Colleges." The book about that time is named for the farm animal the town was most known for. Are you sure you don't have an ostrich in there?

 

[Kingfish]

John those are some purdy ladies there :wink:

I always wanted laying chickens and fryers and ducks and geese:

• Laying for eggs
• Fryers (44-48 days) for BBQ
• Ducks cos I like’m as critters
• Geese as watchdogs.

Ducks and geese eat slugs; no shortage of them here in the PNW. But I never got to it; Big-D got in the way and we is splitzville. No more farm on the range.

- - -

When I was younger, my Unc had a real nice homestead next to the River. He had a bug zapper next to the big flood light, and a large cookie tray beneath it. Every morning there would be a pile of wingless bug bodies in the tray, and he’d toss that into the chicken coop. Sometimes when the river got low we’d go crawdad’n, and the shells were fed to the chickens. Sometimes we’d through in one live ‘Dad and what him fight it out before being pecked away to nothing. Kinda reminded me of Monty Python’s Holy Grail “It’s only a flesh wound… come back here… chicken! I’ll bite yer legs off”

[youtube]dhRUe-gz690[/youtube]

Yeah that was fun to watch.

In the fall my Unc would put on The Great Chicken Kill – which really meant he had way too many young roosters so we’d place the roosters’ head between two nails on a stump and gave it a whack. Every now and then we’d get a runner and this was fun trying to keep them upright… The womens ran the cleaning department which consisted of big 55-gallon drums full of boiling water. Dunk the fresh kill into the boiling water and the feathers come right out. Messy work. Not near as fun as playing with runners.

If I had made good on getting them fryers, I’d have raised 4 dozen, then call out the guy with the trailer and let him process the lot, then freeze the bodies. Gods I love BBQ chicken! I could eat a whole one once a week.

Dinosaur for lunch, yum! KF