Six new Pekin ducks.
Mix of meat and egg chickens, four weeks old.
Mix of meat and egg chickens, four weeks old.
Spring time is a busy time on the farm. In addition to two baby goats and two dozen new egg chickens, we decided to give raising meat chickens a try. A meat chicken is a cross bred chicken, whose sole purpose is to grow meat on its body, and then die. They have a different look and temperament than an egg chickens. They grow so fast and so big that they don't move around as much as others, and they don't feather out the same. If you feed them to much or stress them in some way they will have heart failure, so every morning you first check to see if you have any dead chickens. Also, if they grow to fast, their legs will not develop quickly enough and their bodies will be to heavy for the legs to carry and they will no longer be able to walk. We've only had one like this.
We have only a few more days with our meat birds before several friends come to help with butchering. We did buy a plucker to spare us from the task of plucking 60 some chickens, but it will be a busy day none the less. I'll give an up date on how that went.
As for the remainder of our day, after chickens are tended, we have been finishing school work, putting in the garden, and cleaning winter debris from pastures. Yes we are fairly busy in the spring and most of the summer, yes the fall can be busy, and winter brings it's own set of chores, but what else could we be doing with our time? The mall, computer games, or TV? I'll take the farm any day.
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