Love Those Chickens!
I love chickens! From those cute, fluffy, yellow baby chicks, to plump Barred Rock and Rhode Island Red hens, to those strutting roosters with their iridescent tail feathers waving in the breeze--I love them all. It must be hereditary--Dad loves them, too.
I enjoyed walking with Levi and Victoria through the small animal barn at the Scotts Bluff County Fair last week. The rabbits were cute and cuddly, all except the Flemish Giants, which were just big. I wouldn't mind having another mini-lop or Netherlands dwarf, like Meagan raised for 4H several years ago. Levi might be ready for a rabbit of his own by next summer--we'll see.
But, we were surprised to find that the chickens seemed to be the stars of the small animal entries, since they greatly outnumbered the rabbits at the fair this year. And they were beautiful, award-winning examples of poultry, from standard barnyard fare to exotics that barely resemble chickens at all.
I confess that I've been thinking a lot about chickens lately, even before the fair.
I really don't remember life before chickens. Mom and Dad raised white Leghorns on the farm, just as my grandparents did. I remember going with Mom, at the age of two or three, to gather eggs, which were sold in town. And I remember butchering chickens. I watched, wide-eyed, as Mom caught the chickens she wanted with some kind of chicken-catching device--I think it was just a curved wire on the end of a stick. Then, she chopped off their heads with an ax. After those unfortunate fowl stopped flopping around, she loaded them up in the trunk of the car, loaded Dan and me into the backseat, and drove the mile into town to Grandma Wegner's house.
Grandma always helped process chickens. My great-grandma, who lived with my grandparents, enjoyed helping, too. She was the reason we took the dead chickens to town, since it was easier to transport chickens and kids, rather than one cantankerous elderly woman who was confined to a wheelchair.
Processing and packaging chickens was a rather involved procedure. First, each chicken was dunked into a kettle of boiling water; then the chicken's feathers were hand-plucked, one by one. I'm told that my great-grandma was a quick chicken plucker. Then, all of the innards had to be removed, but the liver, gizzard, and heart were saved as delicacies to be fried up and eaten later. (The heart was my favorite when I was very young, but I won't touch those giblets now!)
As a preschooler, I was fascinated to see the eggs, both with and without shells, that were removed from the chicken carcasses. These were carefully saved and used, just as conventionally gathered eggs were.
Last of all, the chickens were cut up (or sometimes left whole), packaged in white butcher paper, and taken to the meat locker downtown. At that time, most people rented freezer lockers, located inside a brick building, because few people owned their own freezers. It was several years before Grandma and Grandpa, or my parents, bought their first chest-style "deep freezes."
Store-bought chicken can never compare to homegrown chicken for freshness, tenderness, or flavor, just as store-bought eggs don't begin to compare with farm-raised eggs. That's why Bill and I decided to raise our own chickens in Michigan. To start with, we were given two layers, a Barred Rock and a Rhode Island Red, by a friend of ours who discovered that his chickens didn't get along well with his new flock of turkeys. The hens lived in our chicken house and provided two light green eggs every day, except in the dead of winter. They fared so well that we decided to expand our chicken venture, purchasing three or four dozen baby chicks. Our friends, Ron and Bev, joined with us in raising those chicks to the ripe old age of six weeks, when we butchered all of them, one chilly Saturday morning, and added them to our respective freezers.
I've always assumed that we couldn't raise chickens here in town, but I recently learned that the city of Gering allows chickens as backyard pets. I would love to get a couple of layers again, so we could have all the fresh eggs we need. I know just the place to put a small chicken coop. And, maybe, we could add another rabbit or two, right next door to the chickens. (I can already hear Bill yelling at the computer screen as he reads this, but I think he'll come around. After all, he liked raising chickens, too.)
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| Maybe I need one of these exotics! |
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| A tired Rhode Island Red hen |
But, we were surprised to find that the chickens seemed to be the stars of the small animal entries, since they greatly outnumbered the rabbits at the fair this year. And they were beautiful, award-winning examples of poultry, from standard barnyard fare to exotics that barely resemble chickens at all.
I confess that I've been thinking a lot about chickens lately, even before the fair.
I really don't remember life before chickens. Mom and Dad raised white Leghorns on the farm, just as my grandparents did. I remember going with Mom, at the age of two or three, to gather eggs, which were sold in town. And I remember butchering chickens. I watched, wide-eyed, as Mom caught the chickens she wanted with some kind of chicken-catching device--I think it was just a curved wire on the end of a stick. Then, she chopped off their heads with an ax. After those unfortunate fowl stopped flopping around, she loaded them up in the trunk of the car, loaded Dan and me into the backseat, and drove the mile into town to Grandma Wegner's house.
Grandma always helped process chickens. My great-grandma, who lived with my grandparents, enjoyed helping, too. She was the reason we took the dead chickens to town, since it was easier to transport chickens and kids, rather than one cantankerous elderly woman who was confined to a wheelchair.
Processing and packaging chickens was a rather involved procedure. First, each chicken was dunked into a kettle of boiling water; then the chicken's feathers were hand-plucked, one by one. I'm told that my great-grandma was a quick chicken plucker. Then, all of the innards had to be removed, but the liver, gizzard, and heart were saved as delicacies to be fried up and eaten later. (The heart was my favorite when I was very young, but I won't touch those giblets now!)
As a preschooler, I was fascinated to see the eggs, both with and without shells, that were removed from the chicken carcasses. These were carefully saved and used, just as conventionally gathered eggs were.
Last of all, the chickens were cut up (or sometimes left whole), packaged in white butcher paper, and taken to the meat locker downtown. At that time, most people rented freezer lockers, located inside a brick building, because few people owned their own freezers. It was several years before Grandma and Grandpa, or my parents, bought their first chest-style "deep freezes."
 |
| Barred Rock hens |
I've always assumed that we couldn't raise chickens here in town, but I recently learned that the city of Gering allows chickens as backyard pets. I would love to get a couple of layers again, so we could have all the fresh eggs we need. I know just the place to put a small chicken coop. And, maybe, we could add another rabbit or two, right next door to the chickens. (I can already hear Bill yelling at the computer screen as he reads this, but I think he'll come around. After all, he liked raising chickens, too.)
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| A Rhode Island Red rooster |
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