Friday, July 17, 2009

More Chickens

Wandering around my farm right now, you would run across three different sets of chickens. The adult layers, recently minus two hens, the not-so-wee chicklins (pullets and two cockerels) in their pen, and a tractor for the wee cockerels. You would think I had enough chickens.

But you would be wrong.


Today, the 20 Rangers day-old chicks arrived via mail. They will grace this farm for 10 short weeks before they are processed to grace our table. I opted not to take on the much maligned Cornish X this time around, but to opt for a chicken that acts more... chicken-like.


Day-Old Ranger Chicks from Eventing Percheron on Vimeo.

I will be tracking their progress here, including food consumed and eventual processed weight. It's important to understand all that goes into the production of a single pound of meat, to really understand the impact that factory farms have on the environment. Chickens are easy. Pork is much, much harder.

These little guys are eating non-medicated organic chick mash at $22/50 lb. It's quite expensive, but it is organic and made relatively locally, over the border in Vermont. It's also made with real grains, not byproducts or waste.

Considering the poor performance of the wee cockerels we processed at 10 weeks (a little over 2 lbs dressed), I am excited to see how these chicks turn out in the same amount of time. I am hoping for 5 lbs dressed. It will be a grand experiment!


6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Can I make a suggestion? I love your blogs. Started on you and Brego because of the horse radio people, then came to farm. LOVE them. Do not mean to sound judgey AT ALL.

But you could make all your book links to an independent book store in your community (or any community) instead of the Amazon behemoth. I realize Amazon is sooo easy and huge, but it really is sounding the death knell for funky little book stores all over the country. And many of those stores have web sites, and many, many of them can do exactly what Amazon does for you; let you make a link to a place to mail order a book (or get it in stock to pick up at the counter), and also give you a little cut of the take, if you like. If a store has a Booksense logo on their site, they can set it up, if they haven't already. It's EASY. It's a great thing to do.

Love your stuff, not wanting to sound righteous here at all.

Daun said...

Honestly, I would love to do this. Can you recommend a non-affiliated site? Sort of an imdb for books that has just the facts and not the sell?

Sorry if this sounds completely silly, but I don't really have a bookstore in my community. In fact, we don't even have a traffic light. So if you could recommend an online site which lists book information, I will update all my links. ASAP!

Thanks!

Anonymous said...

Take a look at http://www.indiebound.org/affiliate

Indiebound (used to be called Booksense) is a program run by the ABA (that's Booksellers Association) to give independent book stores some comarketing strength-in-numbers against the chains.

Daun said...

Thanks so much! I have updated the links to purge references to Amazon. I will use IndieBound from now on!

Sarah Henderson, BCCDC said...

Damn! Doesn't work in Canada.

AareneX said...

Another suggestion: link to the book at your local library! Or, barring that, link to it at MY local library.

Here's an example (sorry the link is huge, I don't know how to embed a link in comments, because I am LAME):

http://catalog.kcls.org/search~S1?/Yraising%20goats&SORT=DX/Yraising%20goats&SORT=DX&SUBKEY=raising%20goats/1%2C6%2C6%2CB/frameset&FF=Yraising%20goats&SORT=DX&1%2C1%2C