Butchering Day

When you wake up at the end of April, after most of your garden is planted, and there's 3 inches of fresh snow blanketing everything and it's falling like a storm, you can't help but wonder if you really are awake.  I was really awake. So on with the to-do list....It was butchering day for some of the chickens, so I got the outdoor butchering table and chopping block unburied and drug the hose over.  I got a huge pot of water simmering on the outdoor propane cooker. I grabbed the hatchet, knife, and a couple of buckets. Ready to go.                                        

Chopping a chicken's head off really isn't as hard as it seems, both physically and emotionally. I have two nails pounded part way into a wood round. They're just wide enough apart for a chicken neck. When I have a bird ready for the block, I grab it by its feet and  hang it upside down. The bird becomes completely calm and it's easy to lay it on its side on the block and fit its neck into the nail hold. I keep backward pressure on its feet so that it can't wiggle it's head  out of place. Then it's just a solid whack with a sharp hatchet.

The chicken definitely has a few headless seconds of instinct to flee, so I hold the bird around the back, clamping the wings to it's body. If you don't do this, or aren't quick at getting a sure hold, the chicken will frantically flap in attempt to flee. It makes a mess and its just not a good, peaceful feeling when this happens. I just clamp the wings and hold the bird upside down over a bucket to collect the blood. When the chicken stops moving (20 seconds?) I put it on the butchering table and give it a few minutes before proceeding.

I used to skin a chicken out like a rabbit, where you make a slit along the underside and literally reach in and pull the meat out of the skin. It's quick and effective, but after doing the hot pluck method a few weeks ago I am completely sold on plucking. The skin has a nice clean layer of protection for the meat. The skin also adds a lot of flavor to soup and makes for a juicy roasted chicken. To make the plucking easy, I heat up a pot of water until it is simmering and dip the bird in by holding it by the legs. I swish it around for maybe 15-25 seconds. I test a wing or tail feather, and when one comes out easily, I bring the drained bird to the table. When done right the feathers will come off easily. They go into a bucket at the foot of the table. 

To gut the bird, I start by making a slit down it's underside, then cut around the cloaca, which goes into the slop bucket. All the guts then get pulled out, with care not to rupture the intestines. Sometimes there will be an egg ready in its shell, so I carefully cut those out and save them. Getting all the guts out is the hardest part of the whole process. I find it real ly challenging to get all the guts scraped out of such a small chest cavity. Gutting a deer and gutting a chicken both take me about the same amount of time. 

Next, I wash the carcass thoroughly with the hose, then put it in a bucket of cold water to cool the meat down. Today I just stacked the carcasses in a huge strainer and layered them with heaps of fresh snow. I bring the meat into the house and rewash each one and pull out any straggling feathers. I cut the neck for ease of wrapping and put them inside the body cavity. I pat everything dry then wrap the bird whole in plastic wrap, label it, and put it in the freezer. 

 Yum, yum, yum! Chicken recipes to come next!

Chicken Housing

In light of the Juneau Chicken Summit tomorrow, I thought I'd write about my chickens. I've had chickens for four years and have gone through a few different set-ups for them.

The first year (2009) I had 9 birds. I had started to build a coop out of pallets when I got a call from my husband's uncle. He was on a construction job out at the Silverbow Bakery and said he had to haul off their old dumpster cover. It was a three-sided house-like structure painted pastel yellow. It had a purple bagel painted on one side and "Order here" (with an arrow) painted on the other. It had seen better days. It got fork-lifted into the back of our truck, we drove into our front yard, tied it off to a tree, and drove away. Where she landed she lay, for it was too heavy and wobbly.

We lifted a corner at a time and set bricks around the perimeter to keep the wood from rotting on the soggy ground. I knocked out the rotted cross braces and replaced them. I added a fourth wall, a second side to the roof, a short person door, and a chicken door. In my naivety, I dropped the cash and added ridgid foam insulation between the studs and sheathed the inside. I had a gallon of electric yellow paint laying around (a 70's-themed kitchen gone bad), so I used it to brighten up the inside. Atlin wanted outside to be barn red, so seven coats of paint later, it was red! I added a couple of perches and a light, ran an extension cord and a gutter, built an automatic feeder, and voila!  It's about 3x8 feet and is probably my favorite coop.

Automatic refilling feeder and the third generation of nest boxes (these finally worked)

It was a great coup that got used for one full year before I expanded my flock and moved my chickens up the hill and gave their cozy quarters to the turkeys. Eventually it became a rabbit coop, at which point the fence was added. When the birds where there they were completely free-ranging all the time. They knew where home was and kept themselves safe. Most of them roosted in the huge spruces above the coop at night.  It sat empty for a while, and now it's the annex chicken coop. I put three chickens in it so we can enjoy watching our birds from the window again. 

(stock photo--I wish I had a flat space like that!)

Chickens can take a lot. The second year I had chickens, I moved them up the hill near our newly-built barn. I put them in....a Shelter Logic. I didn't even realized until I got home that it was an ugly yellow one either. I wish I had photos of the sorry scene, but you'll just have to believe me that the chickens thrived in it, even through a cold winter. This is my proof that chickens don't need insulated coops or heat lamps.

The barn

In 2011, after a year of milking goats, I passed them on and space opened up in the barn. I turned the chicken tent into a composting tent and moved the girls into the vacant stall. The stall is 3x8 feet. It worked well enough, but when the sheep got passed on, a bigger spaced opened up, so they moved again. They now resided in the main stall of the barn, which is 8x12 feet.  It's a nice space for them, and it's easy to clean with a pitch fork. They are fenced into a big (Juneau-big) "pasture," which is divided into two sections. They fed in one section last year and they'll feed on the other section this year. More on rotational grazing, creating pastures, and foraging to come later....

  

The perched chickens. (on 2x2s)

Australorp in a crate--the chicken-preferred nest box

 So the moral of the story is, work with what you have and it will probably work out!

Sustainability in the Barn

I mentioned many months ago that I wanted to stop using purchased straw in the chicken coop. At $25 a bale, I tend not to keep the barn floor as clean as I'd like. My current floor space of 8x12 feet requires quite a bit more straw than my old 3x8 coop. I also wonder about where the straw comes from--what kind of pesticides am I adding to my compost pile by using this mystery straw from down south? Is it from GMO wheat? Also, the thought of having something trucked and barged up here just so my chickens can poop on it seems a little extravagant if you really think about it.

Thanks Nicole!

When you need to find something it seems like you can always count on Freecycle! I posted an add for bulk shredded paper and had a response within a day. A friend at the Dept of Labor has been graciously calling me when their "file consolidation" pile stacks up.

Of course I'm always skeptical--even of my own ideas. I was worried about the shredded paper matting in the coop. And when on the first day the chickens had paper sticking to their legs, I envisioned them eventually becoming entirely covered in paper mache. But, after a month of using solely paper for the bedding, it's worked out even better than straw!

Over-flow

A couple of times a week I fluff things up with the pitchfork and occasionally toss in tote-fulls of new paper. The only down side is that it is a little unsightly in the pasture. Like straw, it spills out the doorways when it sticks to chicken feet and boots. Another concern is the toxicity of ink and bleached paper in the compost. In my research on composting paper, it's hard to find definite answers. In some instances it seems as though the composting process has the ability to cleanse toxins from the heap, which would be desired when using either paper or straw. For now, I'm simply hoping that is the case.  I plan on getting my finished compost tested for toxins and for nutrient content in the near future.

To me the pros of eliminating straw from the barn far out weigh the cons. 

If you need bedding for your critters, consider networking with a local office for their shredded paper!