When Farming/Homesteading Ain't Pretty

Sometimes you walk outside and all seems right with the world.  Birds are chirping, animals frolicking, plants growing, a gentle breeze blowing and rainbows are overhead.

And then...  Then there are times that things aren't exactly that pastoral and nice. There's mud, poop, foul smells and disappointment.  We believe in the 9th Commandment which states, "Thou shalt not bear false witness," so today we're posting the truth.  Life is a learning experience.  Just when you think you have things figured out, events have a way of coming along and humbling you.  I firmly believe that it is when you are in the midst of situations like that, character is built, resolve is tested, and faith is strengthened.  It's not fun, though.

Let's talk about it a bit, shall we?  We've posted in some "By the Numbers" posts we've done that we get on average 60 inches of rain each year.  My rain gauge has shown that in the past 9 days we've gotten over 8 inches of rain.  Yep, almost 14% of our annual rainfall in 9 days.  That's not all. The next two days show > 80% chances of getting more of the wet stuff.  It ain't over!

I walked slogged out to the chicken tractor yesterday through the mud and gathered up 3 dead birds to add to several more that had gone to the great chicken ranch in the sky just a few days before. These birds were 2 weeks away from butchering and they 'up and died' on me.  Why?  In a minute, we'll talk about it.  This isn't "our first rodeo" with raising meat birds.  We haven't changed our process materially from prior years, but we're certainly having, um, challenges this year.

Dead Meat Birds - Not Pretty

In a great ACRES USA article I have, entitled "Creating a Farm Life Your Children will Treasure - Family Friendly Farming," Joel Salatin writes:

"A farm has to be beautiful.  Here is a little rule of thumb.  If you take people around your farm an you have to apologize more than three times, you've got serious problems.  If you're embarrassed about it, think about what your kids feel like when their friends visit.  Our farms have to be beautiful, aesthetically pleasing places where our children love to entertain.  If it is smelly, dirty and noisy, and a dead animal gets hauled out by the barn, and the tomatoes have blight, it's a problem."

Further in an interview with The Sun Magazine, about his book, The Sheer Ecstasy of Being a Lunatic Farmer, Salatin goes on to state:

"If it smells bad or is not beautiful, it is not good farming.  A farm should be aesthetically, aromatically, and sensuously appealing. It should be a place that is attractive, not repugnant, to the senses. This is food production. A farm shouldn’t be producing ugly things. It should be producing beautiful things. We’re going to eat them.  One of the surest ways to know if a wound is infected is if it is unsightly and smells bad. When it starts to heal, it gets a pretty sheen and doesn’t smell anymore. Farms that are not beautiful and that stink are like big wounds on the landscape."

Ouch!  That hurts.  I understand exactly what he's saying and I try my best to keep things beautiful, but animals produce poop and poop is going to stink.  8 inches of rain in 9 days produces mud and wet, smelly animals, and ultimately, death.  And it's not pretty.  Here is a flock of wet, miserable, stinky meat birds.  Look at the water, mud, and poop beneath their feet.  If you could smell their aroma, you would be the first to admit to me that it is not sensuously appealing.  We're trying our best, but things aren't working like we anticipated this Spring.

Foul Fowl

Now these birds can roam and they are on grass.  In fact, here they are outside of the chicken tractor, still wet and smelly.  They have heat lamps they can get under. Even though the temperature range right now goes between upper sixties to low eighties, the Cornish Cross chickens get wet and cold in the rain and, I assume, get hypothermia.  Very frustrating!

Mad as a Wet Hen!

Just look at the two pictures above of how miserable they look.  In the next couple of pictures, I'm panning across the same pasture, on the same day, at the same time. Look at the laying hens and roosters.  They are running around, eating, oblivious to the weather conditions.  None of them die.  In fact the laying hens are thriving.

In fact, they still look beautiful.  They are pretty, even in nasty circumstances (while the ugly meat birds look on).  There's a lesson for us, right there, that we can learn from a hen!

And this is just my opinion, but this is one of the major drawbacks of a Cornish Cross Meat Chicken. They are a hybrid 'monster' chicken, bred to put on a lot of weight, real fast.  They are the plump birds you are used to seeing in the grocery store.  Trouble is, even if on pasture, they don't seem to me to be a 'natural bird.' They are a freak of nature.  Because of the genetics that allow them to put on rapid weight gain, their bones can't maintain the weight on their frames and they often have leg problems. Even when they are fine, unlike a laying breed, they primarily eat, sit down, and poop. They don't move very much at all.  Birds that eat, sit, and poop aren't aesthetically pleasing.

Additionally, with this batch of birds, there are wide ranges in growth with some chickens being in excess of four and a half pounds and some only one and a half pounds.  Some of this is because these are straight run birds, meaning they aren't sexed.  A rooster will grow faster than a hen.  Also we've noticed with this batch of birds, and this is REALLY not pretty, is that about 5% of the birds have a prolapsed vent (rear end). Think hemorrhoid, but uglier!  This is a problem prevalent in Cornish Cross birds, but we've never had the problem before this year.  In fact we haven't had a meat bird crop that has gone this badly before.  Was this just a bad batch of birds? Genetic problems?  I don't know.

What I do know is that we are re-thinking things.  In Our "Where did the Roosters Go?" Post we showed you how we butchered our young Barred Rock roosters a month or so ago.  Barred Rocks are a dual purpose (egg layer & meat) breed of chicken.  While the cleaned carcass isn't as plump and doesn't have the fat breasts we've become accustomed to seeing on a broiler, the flavor is incredible!  We had a homemade chicken noodle soup the other night using one of them that had such a rich flavorful broth, it would make Campbell's shut the door in embarrassment if they tasted it.

We're looking at our current production system and we may raise a small batch (25 birds) each year of the Cornish Cross birds, but move toward a combination of hatching our own eggs and butchering the roosters of the hatch or switching to the Red Ranger breed.  Red Rangers forage more and seem to be a more 'natural' bird. We're not giving up!  Not by a long shot.  We're just adjusting our strategy.  I guess with the Cornish Cross, I keep waiting for "the ugly duckling to turn into a swan" and it's just not meant to be!

Why are we having such problems?  I think it has something to do with this:

Then to Adam He said, "Because you have listened to the voice of your wife, and have eaten from the tree about which I commanded you, saying, 'You shall not eat from it'; Cursed is the ground because of you; In toil you will eat of it All the days of your life."  Genesis 3:17