Our property is 22 acres and the back 10 have been a hayfield since we got here 12 years ago…but not, because we’ve had so many issues with finding reliable people to do the hay for us and the field just got in worse and worse condition.
Learning about building soil and carbon farming, we decided we’d turn it over to rotational grazing and just buy hay from someone else. That 10 acres already looks better! You can see how green the grass is in the foreground of the photo above…despite the hot, dry summer we’ve had.
We’ve had the cows on two sections of it, about 2+ acres each. Why didn’t we use the whole 10 acres? Because the north end is in such sad shape, there’s no point in putting them out there. And we only have three cows right now (technically two cows and a heifer), so we had enough grass with only using half of it.
And oh, do they love it! For example, when we moved the cows to a new patch in mid-July, we hardly saw them for several days. They only walked back toward the barn for their morning and evening grain and for water then went right back to grazing…as they should do!
This has meant mowing (brush hogging) the field too, and that alone has made a huge difference. It made us aware of the extent of our tansy ragwort infestation…but more on that in another post on pasture management.
Mowing stimulated grass growth as did the grazing. On the section that is so poor, we will rent a seed drill and borrow a bigger tractor and get cover crop planted that will start the process of building soil which in turn will help the plants we do want to outcompete the weeds. Plus it will provide better, healthier forage for our cows.
I stand in the field and I look at the green grass and the fat cows and I think, “This is right.” We can buy hay. We can’t buy healthy soil.
(And honestly it’s cheaper to buy hay than to go through all the hassle of trying to find a trustworthy person to cut and bale ours for us.)
So this is right. The animals tell me it’s right. The grass tells me it’s right. My gut tells me it’s right.
When we got this place, half of our 22 acres was a dedicated hayfield. However, getting a 10-acre hayfield actually hayed was a problem for us. No one wants to bring their equipment to your place for such a small field until after they’re done with the big fields…so your hay gets put up late. Or you do find someone and their equipment sucks and breaks down. Or the person won’t listen when you explain how you need the hay cut so it’s lower sugar for the insulin resistant horse. Or you finally get all of those pieces in place and you can’t muster up a hay crew so you’re out there until dark bucking bales yourself and thinking, “I’m too old for this sh&^!”
And so on.
And buying our own equipment didn’t make sense because we can’t count on Bob being home when it’s time to make hay, since it is so weather dependent and his job is so demanding.
That meant every year we’d have the “do we or don’t we” hay discussion (and sometimes argument).
But then I read “Dirt to Soil” by Gabe Brown and we decided no more hayfield. That field sucks. It is dirt, not soil. It has been neglected for as long as our falling down farmhouse. Once we recognized we could do something about it, we changed course.
It’s no longer a hayfield. Instead, we will slowly grow our cow herd (which has been the plan all along) and turn our 10 acres over to rotational grazing. That way they can mow and poop and pee, which all helps to build soil, and we will buy a seed drill and plant beneficial plants in the fall that will help build soil…and make for healthier forage for our cows.
Right now with only the three girls, it’s waaaaaay more grass than they can eat before it gets too mature and stemmy. So we will be mowing too. Plus we are doing this with a single strand of hot wire to keep them on a smaller area. (Thank goodness they are good cows!)
But eventually we will have some permanent fencing in that field and a solid plan for moving the cows through. Eventually we will have good setup for winter so we can have more cows (and not have a flooded cow barn). Eventually we will plant trees and shrubs along fence lines for more carbon farming and for wildlife habitat and native insects and birds.
And eventually we will have 10 acres of soil that’s full of earthworms and carbon…and life.
For now, though, those cows are obviously hard at work with their important job. So let’s leave them be.
Bucking bales as it’s getting dark…how we used to use our hayfield
It has been sooooo crazy busy with the two “situations” that took over my life in March 2022 that I didn’t even notice we were one hen short at night. Bob and Emma count chickens when they close up the coop at night. I don’t. So imagine my surprise when late one night–after a veeeeerrryyy looooong day–I heard the cheeping of chicks and found a mama hen with babies outside the coop door. It was too dark to do anything with them, so I hoped for the best and asked Bob to check on them when he got home in the middle of the night. He did and they were still there.
In the morning, I lifted up the hen to find not a few new chicks, but nine! Nine! Every single one of them was perfect and before long they were toddling along after their mama, learning the ropes of chickenhood.
There’s something about babies, even chicken babies, that makes one’s heart swell.
But what a sneaky (although very good!) mom to have disappeared somewhere, and I’ve no idea where, to hatch these little beauties when I didn’t know she was missing.
And I still don’t know where she hid to do her hatching!
Since Bob is gone so much for work and so tired when he is home, I rely on his two-week vacation every August for tackling the big stuff. Nope. His vacations are not spent traveling to some exotic locale, sipping on IPAs by the side of a pool. They are spent here moving the farm dream forward, poor guy.
This summer’s must-do was more progress on the horse barn which is still also a hay barn. (Yes, I know how dangerous that is, but we do things as we can afford to around here.) The south wall was already decrepit when we got this place as you can see in the picture below from 2012 (with a then quite-young Emma on the swing). And the huge doors were already inoperable:
The horse barn slash hay barn back in 2012…the rotting has started.
Over the years and with all the weather that hits that south side of the barn, it only got worse. And since that’s where we store our hay (and it’s a lot of hay: we got 25 tons off the field this year), having a south wall that lets in wind and rain means hay that rots (or catches on fire).
We wanted to tackle the project but there’s always something that’s a higher priority around here. Our to-do list is an ever-changing one as we adapt to whatever the current emergency is. Cows got out? Fix the fence. Greenhouse blew apart? Rebuild the greenhouse. Time to put cows out on new pasture? Install new fence. And so on and so on.
So back to my story: August 2022 would be the vacation of the south wall and Bob’s best friend Dilsy was scheduled to visit for two days during that time so perfect! We bought all the materials and rented scaffolding and started on the demo before Dilsy arrived.
This was the state of the south side of the barn when we started
You can see in the picture above how much the door had deteriorated in 10 years and all of our sorry efforts to try and protect the hay. Ugh, it’s embarrassing to look at!
Working on the demo, trying to salvage some of the framing
Redoing the door and wall meant we could resize the doors. This won’t always double as a hay barn. Our plan is to have two more horse stalls on this side so we can board two horses in the future. The old doors were monstrous. Our new door is manageable. It’s just big enough to back the truck in should we need to.
Working around the demo to build the frame for the new door.
Thankfully we got some good input from our neighbor Jerry who suggested putting in cement footers for the wall and door. That also helped with framing the new door because we had to install a post for it. And it was a new experience: We hadn’t built footers and put in concrete before. We are always learning around here!
As the demo progressed, we still had to protect the hay.
At the end of each work day, we’d hang Tyvek to protect the hay inside. We were lucky to have a huge roll of it from an earlier project (probably our HOUSE) so it didn’t cost us anything and it worked well.
Most of the demo is done and the metal is going up.
We have been piecemeal working on the barn and when we redid the horse stalls in 2020, we went with a pretty board and batten. But that was not practical at all for this massive area so we went with metal. That was also a new experience, but with a team of three, we went pretty quickly, between measuring, cutting and installing.
We are making progress! And you can see the smaller size of the new door area.It got a little tricky working around the wiring…yikes!Hardworking Bob and Dilsy with lots of progress to smile about!And the metal is up! All that’s left is the door.Bob posting in our new door.
Now, doesn’t that look better! But figuring out how to build and hang the door was a challenge: Again, more learning. Thank goodness for YouTube, sheesh. Later our neighbor Jerry hung a light outside and we added a handle as well as a stopper (catch?) so the door won’t swing with all of our wind.
And when the rain returned, it was WONDERFUL not to have to worry about the hay! (Well, I worry a little. We have roof tiles to fix so we do have leaks.)
What’s next? To Bob’s left is the area that we are going to build out as the tack room. We redid that part of the wall a few years ago, but the wood did not hold up to the weather. So we will make a door in it and add on for the tack room (and I will finally have DRY leather in the winter and not have to clean mold off my tack!). We will add a lean-to over this new door area because the weather is still brutal and we want even more protection. Then we will wrap around to the west side of the barn and start rebuilding that. We are hoping Dilsy will be here for another visit to help, and I am hoping that we are ready to build that west wall with stall doors opening out to runs. As Bob says, “When is enough enough??” Well, with my farm dreaming, probably never. 🙂
Just when I thought Scarlett was not pregnant after all, since her due date came and went, she gives birth to a lovely heifer on a cold, wet afternoon in late October. I was on my way to town to have dinner and see a movie with my oldest and I was trying to get the cows to come in before I left. They were waaaaay at the back of the pasture and Dawn was bellowing at me. Sure enough I took a good look and I saw a reddish lump on the ground. I quickly sent Emma a one-word text “Baby!!!” and she knew what it meant and bundled up to head out to help me. Because it was October 26th at 5:00 p.m. and windy and raining and cold and I was not leaving that newborn out in that weather.
So I picked up Rose and Emma ran interference for me as Scarlett kept trying to get her baby back and we made it to the cowshed and got mama and calf into shelter.
Then I changed out of my clothing now covered in afterbirth and mud and washed up the best I could. I didn’t make it in time for dinner, but I did for the movie, although I think I still smelled like afterbirth.
That’s two heifers in a row! If Scarlett is pregnant again now (and I hope Dawn is as well), we could use a bull calf. Just sayin’.
We start on halter training…and she did really well, despite what it looks like in this picture. 🙂The herd is slowly growing! And that’s fine by us! We aren’t ready yet for the milking part, and goodness knows we still need plenty of fencing and infrastructure!
Today is slaughter day at our fledgling farm–pig slaughter day. And so I am in town at a coffee shop as I write this. Because I hate pig slaughter day. I mean, I was a vegetarian for 24 years! Raising pigs for food is a huge about face for me. And don’t judge me too harshly for staying away and leaving Bob to deal with it alone. Last time I was the one there alone when the mobile slaughter unit showed up.
Raising meat for food is not something we take lightly. It’s not that I get attached to the pigs, that they have names, because I don’t and they don’t. (OK, I do get a little attached. Pigs are just such characters! How can you not get attached??) But we strive to take really good care of these animals, with plenty of fresh air and room to roam and fresh water and healthy food. Unlike the shrink-wrapped pork people buy at the supermarket, our pork comes from pigs that have lived a very good life.
And that’s why we do this, raise pigs and slaughter them. People are going to eat pork. Period. Isn’t it better for all–humans and pigs alike–if people eat pork raised in a humane and natural way? Digging in the dirt and playing chase and stuffing their noses into pumpkins and sleeping in literal pig piles?
As just two people, Bob and I can’t do anything to stop factory farming and the American obsession with cheap food that leads to the inhumane treatment of animals. But we can do one tiny little thing when we raise a few pigs and people buy our humanely raised meat instead of the cheap stuff. And slaughter day is a necessary part of that process…which gives me a little comfort.
We drove for 4 hours each way to pick up bacon bits today, but it was worth the drive. These are Berkshire pigs, an awesome breed, and we couldn’t find a local breeder. Plus we got to explore a new part of the state as we drove, and we had a lot of quality time in the truck for talking. The piglets? They were troopers in a dog cage in the bed of the truck the whole way home! They just slept, one across and the other three using it as a pillow.
Ten days ago, these little buggers showed up in the mail. They’ve been in a pen in the barn until tonight when I moved them to the chicken tractor. I didn’t want to move them to the chicken tractor tonight! The weather has cooled and it was rainy part of the day and windy all of it. But they are Frankenbabies and I couldn’t keep the little eating/pooping/growing machines cooped up (pardon the pun) any longer. Even with adding new bedding twice a day, I couldn’t keep their cage clean, they make so much poop.
See, these are Cornish Cross chickens, monsters bred for industrial ag…bred to grow unbelievably fast in a factory farm and provide cheap meat for our grocery stores at a rapid (and cheap) pace. We grew this breed the first two years we had meat chickens and I swore never again. The last time we raised Red Broilers instead and were very happy with their normal growth rate. In fact, we still have three from well over a year because they started laying eggs. Cornish Cross chickens don’t get to age. They can grow so fast that their legs can’t support their weight. It’s awful. And it’s what you typically find in the grocery store. Yuck.
But I wanted to make sure we had chicken in the freezer for winter eating when Bob gets back from his deployment which meant ordering some summer chicks, and when I placed my order, the hatchery was sold out of Red Broilers and sent me the Cornish Cross kind instead.
Well, at least I know I can schedule the mobile slaughter guy ahead of time, because these birds grow like clockwork!
It is sad, how fast they grow. They are bred to simply eat and eat and eat (which means they also poop and poop and poop). This time around, I am only feeding twice a day, not letting them eat whenever like I’ve done in the past. I am hoping to make their growth at least a little more normal. And they will–unlike their factory farmer counterparts–be out on grass and eating bugs for their short lives.
Our goal as we start a farm is to get as self sustaining as possible and hatch our own chicks. That’s why we got our rooster in the first place. But the farmhouse renovation has been so all-encompassing that the only baby chick we’ve had born on the farm so far was a surprise. Still, it’s what we are aiming for, so these Frankenbabies are like the green beans I bought from a local farmer last week: They get us closer to our goal of being in control of much of our food supply, although our end goal is to do it ourselves.
And we won’t be raising Cornish Crosses, no way! No, our handsome rooster is a Speckled Sussex and when the renovation if done, we’ll shop around for some Sussex hens and take it from there.
For now, I’ve got a night of worry ahead of me as I’m sure I moved the Frankenbabies outside too soon, but… I spent quite a while wrapping the chicken tractor in tarps to keep the wind and rain out, and I put in a block of wood as a step to help them get into the box, and if in the morning I no longer have 16 live chicks, well, that’s farming and a lesson learned. 🙂
See that worried look in that mare’s eye? That’s how Annie came to us, worried and hurting, confused about what had just turned her life upside down, unsure of what to make of us, the other horses, this strange turn of events.
Annie’s eye stopped being worried, but she never stopped hurting. That’s why her time with us was so short, just three months. That’s why we had to finally make the decision to let her cross the rainbow bridge and go the place where horses run free…pain free.
Annie when she first got to our small farm…thin and worried and scruffy.
Annie was a kill pen horse we took in as a rescue. We took her and The Naughty Pony from the same kill pen. They were destined to ship to slaughter and we, apparently, were destined to save them.
Taking in those two was not the smartest thing I’ve ever done given the state of the farmhouse renovation and the husband’s pending deployment. When my brother accused me of thinking with my heart and not my brain, he was right.
But we gave Annie a wonderful three months, I think, and when it was time for her to go, she went willingly, with the trust that was her trademark.
Just the tip of the iceberg…as bad as this hoof was, it wasn’t Annie’s real problem.
As far as we can piece together, Annie was an Appendix who raced at Portland Meadows back in 2001 then sat in a field for over 10 years. She went to auction with her full sister in February 2013, but no one wanted the gimpy mare. We had plenty of hay to spare, and we just liked the look of her and it seemed her gimpiness was only a hoof that required care. Plus she was listed as 15.1 hands so we thought maybe some good hoof care and we’d have a pretty, sound and rightly-sized mare on our hands.
An anonymous donor paid for her kill pen bail and we headed north to get her, an all day expedition for us. She was a sight to see: She was far more than 15.1 hands! She was at least 16.2 and as big and solid as a tank! Sheesh! Plus a mane and tail full of burrs and horrible feet and too much rib sticking out due to malnutrition.
Nevertheless, we loaded her up and brought her home. Our incredibly sweet and wonderful farrier was out first thing to work on that obviously horrid hoof, the result of years of neglect. But we soon realized we had a bigger problem. We had a cripple.
Because of an issue that developed years ago that was never treated, Annie was a cripple, and that was why her hoof was a mess. X-rays showed we could never fix her, all we could do was manage her pain.
Annie two months later, fat and happy and shiny.
And manage her pain we did. At first, she flourished. Her coat got shiny and her eye bright. The worried look went away to be replaced by one of curiosity. She quickly became both Bob’s and Emma’s favorite horse with her sweet demeanor. They fell head over heels in love with her and couldn’t get enough of her. Me? I had a sense from the start that something was wrong, that she wouldn’t be with us long. I already have “love” issues that make it hard for me to love unconditionally. With Annie, I was always holding back. As sweet as she was and as much as I adored her, I also knew I didn’t love her completely. Not so with the others. She was just too easy for them to love. I just couldn’t, not the way I wanted to.
The other horses took her right in too. In no time, she was part of that herd, exchanging wither rubs with Ricky (our first rescue horse) in a way he never does with the others, and being followed like a puppy by Chase.
Chase and Annie love…he loved to annoy her and she loved to nip him in reply.
For our part, we cared for her and groomed her and fed her (a lot!) and she gained weight and got beautiful and we worked on her hoof and we learned what we could and we did what we could. In the end, however, it came down to knowing when it was time. The hoof just wasn’t the problem. There was simply no way to correct the crippling. It was only a matter of time.
There was one day we had the vet out because I thought it was time. But when the vet got there, Annie seemed better. I was embarrassed and the vet was so kind. She said, “If I showed up here and saw a mare with a dull coat and dull eye and of low weight, I’d say we need to put her down. But I am looking at a horse with a bright eye and shiny coat and perky ears and obviously good weight so this is your call.” That was it with Annie, she was HAPPY despite her pain, so my call was “not today.” The vet kindly coached me through some pain management techniques and recommended I keep a daily journal so I could recognize a downward trend in Annie’s condition.
Two weeks later, that trend was obvious. I didn’t want to wait for the decline everyone spoke of. I didn’t want to wait until she was bad and listless and not eating. I wanted to do this while she was still somewhat good and happy. And that day came. Although her appetite was still good and her eye still bright and her demeanor still loving, she got to a point where she was in so much pain, it was painful to walk even a short way…and painful to watch.
One day right after Bob left, I watched as two of the horses headed to the upper pasture without her and she followed suit, walking a few steps then stopping to rest, walking a few more, then stopping to rest. It took about 10 minutes for her to get where they were. And all that time our sweet Chase was by her side, nibbling on her butt because he’s Chase, but not eating grass, just slowly making his way up the field at her pace, being by her side.
That was the day I scheduled the vet. It would have to wait two days, but it was scheduled.
That morning the vet was due at 10 a.m. At 9:30 I headed out and I thought about giving Annie a good grooming. By now Bob was in the Middle East and I was managing this alone. A good grooming to get off the mud she loved to roll in, it seemed appropriate for cleaning her up for her send off over the rainbow bridge. Instead, at the last minute I decided to turn all four horses out onto new grass, which always gets them goofy. And sure enough, they took off running and kicking their heels up in the air and tossing their pretty heads and there was Annie, right there with them, just slower and with a pain-induced head bob the others didn’t have. But her last 30 minutes on earth were spent with her buddies, chomping on green grass and feeling like a filly.
When the vet arrived, I went to get her and she came willingly. We slowly hobbled our way over and the vet explained what to expect. I won’t go into the details because typing this is making me cry and I don’t want to go there. But let’s just say Annie was ready. She loved life. She loved green grass. I think she loved us and the other horses…as much as horses can. I think her last three months were a joy for her. But she could barely walk and she was done.
She was one big huge horse. When she laid down that last time, it was something, all that bulk. But I got to hold her head and stroke it as she took those last breaths…OK, maybe I did love that friggin’ horse after all, because later that day, after the vet left, I bawled like a baby. For longer than I will admit.
Then the darndest thing…the horses all watched this happen but her buddy Ricky and her buddy Chase…they took it all in stride. Then my horse, the one I never saw her buddy up to, my Alvin started to go ballistic. The vet and I watched him for a while and it finally got to the point where she told me I’d better get him and bring him over to see Annie and smell her. I did and he wouldn’t get any closer than 5 feet. He sniffed in that way horses do, with big nostrils and big exhales. He did that, then seemed to calm down. He let the vet love on him and he seemed okay after that so I put him back with the others.
Sadly, the man who was supposed to take Annie’s body away called to say his truck broke down so her body lay in the orchard for six hours before someone else could come. All that time, Alvin called and paced and called and ran in circles and called again. At first, I stayed with him. I stayed with him for an hour. He’d come up to me and relax for a minute as I stroked his neck, then he’d tense up again and be off. I had a tarp over her body but it didn’t matter. He was crazy. He wore away all the grass along the fence line. He wouldn’t stop. Except for coming to me every few minutes for a calming stroke, he was a wreck. He was making me a wreck.
When the second man came to get Annie, it was almost six hours from when she laid down. Just before he arrived, I took Alvin out to see her again. I pulled the tarp from her head and this time he went close enough to put his nose to hers. He touched his muzzle to hers and kept it there, sniffing and sniffing and sniffing… Then the man with his truck and trailer showed up and I pulled Alvin away and we opened the gate for him and I put Alvin away again.
I went in the house while Annie’s body was loaded. I couldn’t watch her be just a carcass. Then the man came to the door for his check and I said my goodbye to him and walked out to the orchard to shut the gate. As I walked toward the gate, Alvin watched the truck and trailer pull onto the road and drive away. He called to Annie, then looked at me. Hard. Then he watched as the truck drove away, watched it for as long as he could. Then he watched me…without moving…for as long as he could. His eyes, they were both confused and accusing. I will never forget that look.
After Annie was gone, he kept calling. For 9 ½ hours I listened to him calling for her. Then I finally shut myself in the house and had Emma turn on the TV so I couldn’t hear anymore. My heart already hurt. Alvin’s agony was breaking it.
In the morning, he didn’t call, he only looked. His head kept popping up and he was on his guard, looking, looking, looking for her. But by 11 a.m. he was okay. He stopped looking, he calmed down. Annie was finally gone.
Alvin convinced me I don’t have the stomach for rescue horses. Or the heart. I still have yet to figure out The Naughty Pony and for now she has been foisted onto someone else, and I need to remedy that. Our first rescue horse is a sweetheart and we adore him. He is geriatric and his age was quite apparent this winter, but he seems okay for being my bullet proof horse for the summer. We love our Ricky. But I can’t take on another horse destined to only cross the rainbow bridge. Annie was a delight and we will never regret the short time she was with us. We are thankful that we could make that amazing mare’s last few months so good and that we got to enjoy her sweetness at all. But I can’t stop being mad about the abuse and neglect that made her a cripple when she could have done amazing things, that huge, beautiful, sweet, athletic mare . I can’t stop hurting, knowing I had to make the life or death decision for her. I can’t get Alvin’s agony out of my head.
I know 8,000 horses a month go to slaughter in Mexico every month. I wish I could do something about that, I really do. But I don’t think I have what it takes to take in the kill pen horses with all the gamble that involves. I really don’t.
We haven’t had eggs in 5 weeks. We’ve finally deduced the crows are going into the chicken coop to eat the eggs. It’s time to finally do something about this now that we’ve identified the culprit(s). Emma’s idea for a scarecrow seemed like a great way to fight those dastardly birds, and she worked hard yesterday putting something scary together. This morning, however, when I went to let the chickens out of the coop, two crows were on the ground in the chicken yard, right near the scarecrow.
Now, I think it’s scary! Since she set it up outside the coop yesterday afternoon, it has given me a fright at least a half dozen times. Every time I go around the corner to go into the chicken yard, I jump, thinking someone is in there.
Not so much for the crows.
My idea didn’t fare any better. My idea was to hang baling twine in the doorway, just above the floor so the chickens would still go in and out, but in the way of crows “flying” in, because I assume they fly in. And we had to have some baling twine, because the whole endeavor just cries out for a redneck touch.
However, my idea didn’t fare any better. I still found broken eggshells in the coop today. The only reason I got any eggs was my audacity in reaching under the girls as they sat in the nesting boxes. And that only netted us two eggs, as well as some serious squawking as they complained.
Next up is killing the crows, I’m sorry to say…not sorry because I feel for the crows. I don’t. They are taking our food. But sorry because before Bob left, he made sure I was proficient with the shotgun, but not the 22. And I really don’t want to go out shooting shot all over and possibly hurting one of our chickens
So next on the list? Getting a tutorial on the 22 from the neighbor, or else asking the neighbor to simply pick off the dang crows!!
Five weeks without eggs is definitely five weeks too long and my patience is all used up. If it takes a 22 to be a success when starting a small farm, I’m all for it.
This is Mel, our beautiful Speckled Sussex rooster…the first of what has turned into three roosters!
While trying to start a farm and figure out the poultry part of it, we’ve realized we’ll need two different chicken setups: one for our laying hens and one for raising our own meat chickens.
Now when I say raising our own, I mean by having a rooster and hens and eggs and nesting and chicks…the whole old fashioned farming way. I don’t mean by heading to the feedstore every spring for chicks to raise, although that’s likely the way it will be for at least the next year.
This is one of the surprise Plymouth Barred Rock roosters we ended up with…instead of a layer!
When we are to the point with starting a farm when we are raising livestock, we hope to be raising heritage breeds for our chickens, pigs and cattle. So part of my starting a farm research into poultry has been into the heritage breeds best suited to provide both laying and meat chickens.
This is basic elementary stuff, people, but all new to me! So new, I don’t know a single person who does this…raising their own chickens “from scratch” (pardon the pun). I have, of course, turned to the Internet for information. For information about the heritage breeds, I’ve contacted the American Livestock Breeds Conservancy. They sent a chicken chart: five pages of heritage breeds with information on origin, egg production, meat quality, rate of growth, and more.
Another shot of Mel. Maybe we choose to keep him because he’s the prettiest?
Using that, I narrowed our selection down to five possibilities. One of these was the Sussex. So when a Sussex rooster showed up on Freecycle.org, I jumped at the chance to get him for three reasons: 1) it made our breed decision for us by default, 2) we knew we’d have a rooster as opposed to buying chicks and not being sure, and 3) he was free and full grown.
And he was a beauty when I got him home and opened that taped up box, oh my! (His owner was so anxious to get rid of him, he essentially shoved the sealed box into my arms before I was hardly out of the truck!)
Now, getting this rooster is admittedly jumping the gun. We don’t have housing for our meat chickens. We don’t even have any Sussex hens yet or plans to get them any time soon. Still, it seemed the right thing to do.
We named him Mel, but then had some issues with him attacking the step son and hubby. He can be very aggressive. I heard the stories, then finally experienced it myself twice. He’s a fraction of my size but when he goes on the attack, he’s quite a scary sight! I started carrying a stick each time I went into the coop or the chicken yard, as did the guys, and his aggression seems to have subsided. I think in part because he got whacked a couple of times, and in part because he only got aggressive when someone was picking up the food buckets.
And the Plymouth Barred Rock again…pretty but mean! Should he be dinner??
But it could have also been the fact that he was in horrible pain! He limped from the day we got him. I’d watch him hop and I could see there was something weird about one foot. Finally I caught him to get a look. He had a string tied around two toes, so tightly, that it cut into his skin to the bone! Not only that, this string was tying his BACK toe to one of his front ones! I felt soooo bad for him! He must have come that way. We don’t have any string like that around our small farm and it was obvious that the string had been digging into the bigger toe for weeks if not months. He held perfectly still while Bob cut the string and he seems to be feeling better every day as the limp lessens. Now, that would have made ME grumpy and aggressive!
OK, enough about Mel. Now here’s the dilemma: Of the six layer chicks we bought this spring, two are roosters. Not only are two roosters, both of our Plymouth Barred Rocks are roosters. What are the chances?? When buying the chicks, we bought two Rhode Island Reds, two Buff Orpingtons, and two of the Barred Rocks. And both Barred Rocks grew up to be boys. Not just boys, but aggressive, bratty boys. They don’t attack us the way Mel did for a while, but they attack the hens in a very mean way.
At first I thought we had two roosters. I knew we had Mel. But then I heard two roosters crowing one morning. The step son already thought one of the Barred Rocks was a rooster but I didn’t because it looked exactly like the other one…and if one were a rooster and one a hen, they would look different. But then I not only heard him crow, I saw him crow. So we knew for sure: We had two roosters.
Now what to do? I checked the chart and the Rock was a suitable breed for us too. Keep the Rock? Keep Mel? One had to go. But why, oh why, did the two Barred Rocks look the same, I wondered? Could they both be roosters? No way!
Yes way. A few days later, I heard three roosters crowing!
So now we must decide which one to keep. I still like Mel. He’s beautiful and although we have had issues with him coming after us, he doesn’t bully the hens the way the other two do. As for those two, they are beautiful…too beautiful to eat, although that’s a possibility. Or we could take them to the weekly poultry auction and get some money for them.
Or we sell Mel, and keep the Barred Rock roosters. Or one of them.
Not sure yet just what we’ll do. And for now, it doesn’t matter since we don’t have the hens we want bred anyway. It’s just one little thing—one more little thing among hundreds—that we have to sort out as we work on starting a farm!
But really, what are the chances that both our Plymouth Barred Rock chicks would grow up to be boys??
Today is slaughter day at our fledgling farm–pig slaughter day. And so I am in town at a coffee shop as I write this. Because I 
Raising meat for food is not something we take lightly. It’s not that I get attached to the pigs, that they have names, because I don’t and they don’t. (OK, I do get a little attached. Pigs are just such characters! How can you not get attached??) But we strive to take really good care of these animals, with plenty of fresh air and room to roam and fresh water and healthy food. Unlike the shrink-wrapped pork people buy at the supermarket, our pork comes from pigs that have lived a 
