Good-bye Chickens

  It's a box.  And inside the box were 19 chickens.

It was quite the adventure. Yesterday was the day when the chickens were taken off to the butcher.  The night before, Kevin prepared this nice box and nailed it to our trailer so it wouldn't come loose during transport (that's the sort of image to keep you up at night!)  He broke some air holes into, it, and lined it with some wood chips.  Then he backed the whole thing up to the chicken coop door.

We waited until after dark to load them into the box.  They were roosting and initially were calm.  Of course, the calm quickly gave way to chicken hysteria.  Kevin and Lydia have much experience with carrying chickens around, but the interruption to their normal lives, plus being thrown into the box, got them thoroughly wound up.  One chicken escaped but Lydia recaptured it.  After a breathless 10 minutes, the guinea hen was the only bird left on the roost. (And what she thought about it, nobody knows.)

Kevin then backed the cart back into the garage, closed the door, and turned off the lights.  The indignant clucking gave way to calm cooing.  They all happily went to sleep.

Yesterday morning, Kevin was up bright and early. He drove off with the chickens to the butcher.

For the most entertaining aspect of his experience, I will link to Naomi's blog post as she describes it beautifully.

http://onegirlinabigfamily.blogspot.com/2011/09/chickens.html
 
  Another little problem was that the box was too big.  When Kevin reached in to grab a chicken, they all ran to the other end of the box.  He punched a hole in the other end, and they all ran to the first end.  It was shaping up to be an Abbott and Costello routine, but a friendly fellow poultry man helped Kevin catch the chickens so all was well. Kevin stood at one end and bugged them and they ran to the other end and were plucked out by the friendly guy.

  After all those adventures, 18 chickens were killed and processed in a few hours.  We picked them up around 1 p.m.  And now we have a freezer full of fresh, organic chicken.

 
Here are six chickens in vacuum sealed bags.  For those who are local and interested, the butcher charged $3 a bird to process them and seal them in bags.

 
Lost in the tall grass is our forlorn guinea hen.  She is territorial and likes "her flock" so is a little bothered that her underlings have disappeared.  She was very clearly at the top of the pecking order.  However, she hasn't wandered off, and we will make her happy by purchasing a new batch of chickens in the near future.