The chickens
What else can I say but that we love chickens. Do not ever let anyone tell you that chickens are stupid or don't have a personality. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Those kind of comments just make it easier for people to live with the atrocious treatment of chickens in factory farming settings. At Nature's Harbor Farm we treat our chickens with all the respect they deserve as a living, breathing creature.
The laying flock:
Brandon and I had both cared for chickens at various times but didn't start our own flock until November, 2007. It started with 25 chicks of various breeds for a laying flock. At the time, I couldn't imagine that we would be getting any more chickens for quite awhile. I thought that would be more eggs than we would ever know what to do with! What a surprise when we tasted the first eggs from those birds and realized how amazing a free range egg from healthy, happy chickens tasted. Our hens and their attendant roosters have the run of our entire farm. Much to the chagrin of my husband, one of their favorite places to hang out is our front porch. They dust bathe in our flower beds (what flower beds?) and sun themselves in the yard. They spend much of their time hunting and pecking through the yards and pastures eating grass, seeds, and bugs. They also have access to a complete chicken feed, whole oats, and cracked corn to ensure that they have everything they need to lay the best eggs ever. We never feed anything that contains medication. Medicated feed is only necessary when chickens are kept in less than optimal, crowded conditions.
There is no comparison between a store bought egg and one from our chickens. First of all, they are different nutritionally. A true free range egg is higher in vitamins and omega 3 fatty acids and lower in cholesterol than a store bought egg. The difference in the treatment of the birds is like night and day also. Cheap eggs in the store come at the expense of the chickens that lay them and the humans that eat them. There are many claims made on egg cartons in stores that can be deceptive. Keep in mind that what cage free means is that the hens are kept inside a building on the floor instead of in battery cages. In either case they have no access to the outdoors. Also, there is much hype around vegetarian fed hens on store bought cartons. This is actually not good for the hens. Chickens are omnivores. Not only do they love grains and plants but they are hunters as well. Chickens love to eat bugs. They stalk and kill small rodents and I've even seen one eat a tree frog. Watching the hunt is like seeing velociraptors in action.
Our birds are closed into coops at night to keep them safe from predators. Chickens have a definite pecking order and they all know how high they can roost in the coop based on that order. When I start hearing squabbling at night over who gets what roost, then I know that the coop is at capacity.
Roosters are not necessary for egg laying. Hens will lay whether a rooster is around or not. Even though this is true, we usually try to keep a couple of roosters with the layers. Good flock roosters add cohesiveness to the flock that is missing when we don't have any. I notice a difference in the behavior of the hens when we don't have roosters. Roosters watch out for the hens. They keep an eye out for predators and will put themselves in between a hen and a potential threat. They will come running if they hear a hen in distress and will also call the hens when they find a tasty treat in the yard. A good rooster gives up all sorts of tasty morsels in order to keep his hens happy. On top of that, roosters are just plain beautiful and are usually bursting with confidence and personality.
The Value of an Old Hen:
Let's get one thing straight right off the bat. I'm a bit of a softie when it comes to my laying flock. That doesn't mean I've never turned an old or unproductive hen into a stew chicken because I have but I'm rather sporadic and sentimental in my choices. I have several old hens that I kept making excuses for and I was having constant debates in my own head (it's amazing how many people live in there ; ) about who should really stay and who should go. Finally, this summer I've come up with some reasons to justify having these old girls around and I actually think they might be paying for the cost of their feed.
Firstly, these old hens are still around because they are smart. They have figured out how to survive on my farm in the conditions that exist here and with the predators that live here. Where young and "productive" hens will get snagged by a fox or racoon, the old girls seem to avoid that fate. I have noticed that once a chicken hits a certain age, they don't seem to fall prey to predators. They also form the basis of a more stable community in the flock. I have much less trouble introducing a new bird into the old girls' flock than one of the other shelters with all younger birds. These old ladies are pretty confident about their place on this farm and they don't feel the need to beat it into a newcomer. Since chickens spend their day out foraging and calling back and forth to each other, the old girls have value since they are most highly tuned into what is normal and not normal on my farm and can warn and teach the younger birds when trouble approaches.
Some of these older ladies just love to go broody as well. I used to find this aggravating when I was more seriously concerned about egg production only and would tell myself that these birds were not productive at all. In my quest to become more sustainable the summer of 2011, I used some of the old broodies to incubate eggs. While they were first time moms, they did a great job teaching their foster babies because these hens had their "farm smarts" to pass on to the new little ones. I allowed a 4 year old australorp, a cochin, and a silkie to hatch out several guineas.
Another use of a broody hen is to eliminate or reduce the need for heat lamps for shipped hatchery chicks. The little silkie hen noticed the new turkey poults and bantams that I had just received from the hatchery on my porch in a cage. She parked herself next to them and "asked" to be allowed in. She spent the next week keeping 5 turkey poults, 18 bantam chicks, and her two 3 week old guineas warm and safe.
And finally, there is the cameraderie and entertainment value of older hens. If you're like me then you keep these girls around because they have personalities that have made an impression on you. Here we have "Whitey" a California white that came in my first batch of chicks. She allows my children to pick her up and carry her around and she always follows me out to feed the horses because she knows that I'll smack a few tasty horse flies for her to eat. We also have "Brown Chicken" (who comes up with these names ?), a 5 year old Ameracauna that gets into everything. She is always underfoot or in the feed bins while I'm measuring out everyone's foods. She is a pain but she looks at me with eyes that say she knows things that are important. Our flocks need to be productive but if you aren't entertained as well then you are missing a big part of having chickens around.
I'll still continue to use hatcheries for the time being. I can't maintain enough separate sets of breeders to have the number of breeds at my farm that I currently keep. I love the variety of 20-30 different breeds running the farm but I'm building up a small flock of experienced broodies that I can use to start moving away from the unsustainability of hatcheries while using the smarts of these birds to keep the entire flock more structured and safe.
A Sustainable Meat Chicken:
My husband and I started raising pastured chickens for meat in 2008 (the first batch arrived the same day I gave birth to our second daughter. Oops!). I already had a laying flock of a number of heritage breed chickens so we started with Delawares, Buckeyes, and Naked Neck roosters for meat. We have since tried a number of meat bird crosses including red broilers, Freedom Rangers, and the commercial Cornish Cross. After much soul searching, we have come back to our roots and are once again raising a heritage breed for meat.
A bit of information on the breed of chicken I've chosen to raise for meat and why. I have settled on the white laced red Cornish. This is a heritage breed that is in need of conservation. Please check out the wonderful website of the American Livestock Breeds Conservancey to learn about endangered breeds of livestock and the reasons for saving them. http://www.albc-usa.org/ Also, the link to the description of the Cornish. As you'll see, they are the source of the large amount of breast meat in the commercial meat chickens. http://www.albc-usa.org/cpl/cornish.html
I am no longer interested in raising any commercial hybrid chickens for meat. The cornish/rock cross and the Freedom Ranger are both 4 way crosses. It takes two particular line crosses at the grandparent level and then a cross of those offspring at the parent level to result in the chick that is raised for meat. These birds are only produced by a small number of hatcheries that maintain all the proprietary lines and must be shipped through the mail to farmers like us. A farm that uses a heritage breed chicken for meat can breed their own stock and provide food for the farmer and the community even if hatcheries stop servicing small farmers or USPS stops shipping live chicks. I see this as a more sustainable farming model. I am trying to establish my own breeding flock of white laced red cornish.
Heritage breed birds grow a lot more slowly, forage more, produce a smaller but more flavorful carcass, and do not have any of the health problems such as bad legs and hearts that the commercial birds can have and they can be reproduced on your own farm. The downside to this is that they are much more expensive to raise. This is why most pastured poultry producers stick with commercial crosses. I think many homesteaders hope that if they raise heritage birds for meat, they will have a lower feed bill but this just is not the case. It takes a lot more feed to get a heritage bird to a decent size for processing (at least 15 weeks old) than it does for a pastured Cornish cross (8 weeks old).
After raising hundreds of crosses of various types, I’ve come to the conclusion that the extra cost is worth it. I find no joy in watching the overly heavy commercial crosses trying to deal with the heat of summer, foraging little, and struggling to walk any distance. At least on our farm, we’ve made the decision that the most sustainable and beautiful option for providing chicken for our family and customers is to get away from the industrial and back to the meat chickens of yesterday.