Where the boys are

As all flocksters know (or learn very quickly), girl chickens lay eggs and boy chickens, well, crow. A lot. Unless you are breeding your own poultry, or enjoy the surround-sound farm experience, roosters are often an unwanted byproduct.

Some people ‘solve’ this problem by ordering pullets only from a hatchery. This doesn’t change the roosters’ fate, just moves it up on the calendar and into industrial hands. A quick search on sexing day-old chicks brings up some very graphic and disturbing videos of standard industry practice in culling unwanted male chicks.

Male chicks awaiting disposal at a commercial hatchery.

Like other industrial livestock practices, this one seems to shock and overwhelm people to the point of disconnect. No one wants to be responsible for the cruelty perpetrated on our food animals, but on the flip side, not many want to pony up the cost of ethical meat. Sadly enough, more searching on this topic brought well-intentioned but misinformed claims that buying sex-linked or auto-sexing hatchery chicks would somehow ameliorate the unwanted (I almost said ‘excess’ but nature intends the male/female ratio to be about even.) rooster issue. Sex-linked breeds take advantage of chicken genetic quirks to create cross-breeds where males can be told apart from females at hatching by down color. Feather-sexing is another method used to sort hatchlings, but takes skill to learn.

A chick sexor at Welp Hatchery works to separate the males and
females using the feather sexing method.

Again, while convenient for producers and breeders, this still moves the responsibility for dealing with chick culling to the hatcheries.

Generally speaking, egg-laying breeds and most dual-purpose breeds don’t make the most productive or edible broilers/roasters. They aren’t as efficient at putting on weight as their freaky cousins, the Cornish Cross, but are very tasty when butchered right about crowing age. For profit-oriented producers (including so-called pastured poultry and free-range eggs), feeding these boys, even to this early stage, hurts the bottom line.

But a backyard/small-flock keeper can utilize these guys in a humane and respectful way by planning to raise and butcher them as part of the cycle of responsible, sustainable livestock management.

Four young roos that didn’t make the cut as breeding stock.

Not sure if you can make the leap from flock keeper to flock eater? You have options…

With the rise in popularity of urban chicken keeping has also come the realization that most people are far enough removed from our agricultural roots that we have a hard time killing a food animal. Luckily, organizations are stepping up to fill the educational gap with hands-on culling classes. It’s also possible to connect with experienced people via Craigslist or a county extension class.

These guys went to auction this week.

At Seven Trees Farm, we are raising some of our extra cockerels for dinner and the freezer. We also take advantage of our local auction yard to sell unwanted chickens without much hassle. Most of these are purchased for meat by bargain-hunting foodies, so it’s not a reprieve for the birds, more of a convenience for buyers/sellers who want to avoid Craigslist shenanigans.

This roo will be around for awhile since he’s cute, friendly, and most-likely has the genes for olive eggs.

 

June blooms

We’re finally getting a few sunny days in a row, warming the soil and waking flora and fauna. Underneath the rampant weeds, signs of intentional planting are beginning to manifest.

The kitties need a full pantry of dried nip for winter.

Foxgloves and bees at the edge of the garden.

A week-old Oliver chick.

A native bumblebee working over the lupine.

A pretty posey from practical plants – rose, lavender, chives, valerian and calendula.

Bismarck inspects the catmint harvest.

Wildflowers attract pollinators.

We have a last batch of New Hampshire eggs in the incubator, with a hatch date of June 22. The next time we set eggs, it will be from our carefully-selected breeding stock, in early winter.

Strawberries are coming ripe, and it’s a daily battle with the robins to pick them intact. Raspberries, blueberries and black currants look to be setting a bumper crop this year, so a little sharing won’t hurt.

Some of the new greens we’re trialing are a hit – Beedy’s Camden kale, Winter Wonderland lettuce, Donkey spinach to name a few. We’ll update in more detail as soon as we can turn our backs on the weeds for longer than a few minutes.

 

Expect the unexpected

We just finished up the second hatch of the year, and it was a bit disappointing. There are so many variables involved when incubating eggs, especially ones shipped across the country, and many people end up with no viable chicks at all. We started out with 28 New Hampshire eggs and 3 homegrown Olivers and ended up with 4 New Hampshire chicks and all 3 Olivers.

Four New Hampshire chicks and 3 Olivers.

Shipping distance, temperature of eggs before incubation, time of year, parent’s nutrition, incubator flucuations and operator error can all play a part in how each hatch turns out.

A second generation Oliver chick with Marans coloring.

Needless to say, 4 chicks isn’t enough to start a breeding flock, so another dozen from a different breeder will arrive this week. Most poultry breeding literature advises that only the best 10% of chicks hatched will be worth keeping, so we have a lot more work ahead of us in building up a quality flock.

Pale yellow New Hampshire chick.

Chicks from our previous hatch are getting closer to full-grown, and we’re starting to evaluate them for breeding potential. We’ll keep all the pullets until they start laying so we can decide which have the conformation and egg color that we’re looking for. But we only need one roo from each breeding group, and we won’t wait too much longer to make our choices.

Young roosters awaiting their fate.

It’s been raining off & on for most of the past week, and many projects and chores are on hold until the sun returns. Even though it’s almost June, sometimes an evening fire in the woodstove is just the thing to burn off the damp. Bismarck especially likes the heat, and usually relaxes in the rocking chair by the hearth.

Otto von Bismarck, his serene highness.

 

 

 

 

 

Small fruits are a big deal

Diversified subsistence farming is the guiding concept at Seven Trees Farm, and small fruits have become a critical part of our food cycle.

Small fruits include blueberries, raspberries, elderberries, blackberries, currants, gooseberries, kiwis, grapes, strawberries, and so on. Pretty much any fruit that doesn’t grow on trees - apples, cherries, peaches, pears, etc. With such a wide variety of fruit families, the chances of a successful overall harvest are greatly increased, even in adverse conditions. Another benefit is that, unlike fruit trees, these plants can often be tucked in odd corners of a growing space.

One part of our garden is usually a bit cooler and shadier than many garden crops prefer. Cool season plants do well here, and we’ve grown lettuce, cabbage, kale, broccoli, chard, peas for years. But the new tiller has allowed us to easily expand into areas with better sun exposure for vegetables, and we have repurposed the upper garden into a berry patch.

Another factor in this direction is that we now use about a pound of berries nearly every day in our kefir smoothies. In previous years, the wild blackberry patch in the front yard, plus berries purchased from local farms, provided 80-100# in the freezer. Now we’re planning for about 400# (leaving a bit extra for cordials and wine).

Our current small fruit yard includes two 25ft rows of raspberries, one 25ft row and a 5x5ft patch of strawberries, 7 blackcurrant bushes, 2 blueberry bushes (we’ll add 6 more this season), and a giant rhubarb that we’ll split into two this fall. Other small fruits on our stead are a 25ft row of thornless blackberries along a fenceline, numerous elderberry bushes, and a big brambly feral blackberry patch in the front yard. We hope to phase out the wild berries in favor of more thornless varieties, but the persistence of those stickerbushes are a comfort when other fruits succumb to heat, cold or bugs.

Our climate is wonderful for small fruits, and the county extention program from WSU has some helpful publications on the topic. Our favorite reference, Growing Small Fruits for the Home Garden, is worth buying in paper, but a PDF version is available online.

WSU extension also hosts a Gardening in Western Washington online library with a page of links to more small fruit growing information.

If you’re in our neck of the woods, Cloud Mountain Farm Center has workshops, online info and plants for sale. Their fall fruit festival in October is a great opportunity to taste many of the small fruit varieties that do well in our climate, including some not usually available elsewhere.

Burnt Ridge Nursery, in Onalaska, WA (near Mt. St. Helens) has a wide selection of small fruits, common and exotic, for sale online. We’ve ordered from them multiple times and the plants arrive in good shape and grow well once planted.

But this year, since we have some thriving and tasty varieties to work with, we are jumping into the wonderful world of plant propagation to expand our stock. Check out the links and publications above to learn more about this nifty ‘trick’ and stay tuned for future posts about our own briar patch adventures.

 

Work in progress

Busy times here at Seven Trees Farm, but no dramatic pictures or videos. We have eggs in the incubator, seeds under grow lights, fruit trees in blossom, and a chore list growing by leaps and bounds. One thing we are tackling is the transformation of goat shed to hen house. The process has taken about 8 years, and it was fun to look through the various blog posts and photo albums to find these pictures.

Posts going in, April 2006

Roof and siding girts on, May 2006

Overhang and sidewalls added from 2007 – 2013

Another view…

Basic run-in shelter, May 2006

Adding space, May 2007

 

Hen house, May 2013 edition.

We’ve made changes in other areas too. Goats, Dexter cattle, and Gemini, our 11h Shetland pony, all fit fine in this little outbuilding, but Kate needed a bit more headroom.

Looking east, March 2006

Looking east, May 2013

The hedgerow at the south end of the property is starting to provide shade and habitat.

Looking south, April 2006

Looking south, May 2013

Back in 2005, Seven Trees Farm was just a real estate listing, with a few pictures on the realty’s website.

Looking a bit neglected, April 2005

April 2006

 

Making ourselves at home, May 2013

We’ll share more pictures as other projects come along. Right now we’re working on the hen house interior, adding a grow-out pen for babies, and two breeding pens for our New Hampshire and Oliver experiments. Nevel a dull moment

 

Going a-Maying

Reblogged from Seven Trees Farm:

This weekend marks one of the most important times of the Celtic year, Beltane. In our early ancestors days, this was the time to move cattle from winter holding grounds up to summer pastures in the hills. As noted in the fascinating site, Legendary Dartmoor:

The Celts knew that seasonal transitions were times of heightened supernatural strength, even danger. Beltane and Samhain were the year’s two great fire festivals -- they divided the year in half and marked the time when the portals between the spiritual and human worlds were at their most vulnerable.

Read more… 984 more words

Happy May Day!

 

Hatchery vs. heritage breed hens

We usually replace our laying hens in the fall of their second year. They are still laying enough to be a good addition to a backyard flock, but not economical for us to keep over the winter. Some might end up in the freezer, since mature hens make excellent soup. Some will end up at the auction yard, which doesn’t net as much cash as selling on Craigslist, but given our recent chicken stealing experience, we plan to limit ‘visitors’ for a while.

 In any case, it’s time to shop for some spring chickens.

 We’ve relied on Barred Rocks as our main laying hens for a number of years. They are hardy, good foragers, good stewing hens, and lay well in winter. But this year we decided to look at higher quality heritage breeds instead of the usual hatchery or feed store chicks. Being able to hatch our own means we can research and choose from a wide variety of breeders that specialize in chickens bred to a “Standard of Perfection” – a detailed and exacting description for each breed recognized by the American Poultry Association.

Hatchery vs. Heritage Barred Rock roos.

Color, size, shape and more for each breed have been standardized over the years, and breed aficionados take great pride (and show ribbons) in maintaining and improving their birds. Most retail hatcheries limit themselves to selling stock with a basic resemblance to the breed standard – colors match, egg shell colors, comb shape, etc. – and this is usually just fine for most backyard flockists.

In fact, as we found out while looking at heritage Barred Rocks, sometimes hatchery stock are better layers. Since most people get into chickens to have a steady supply of eggs, it makes sense to sell birds from productive strains of the various breeds. This often means getting away from the dual-purpose origins of many farmstead favorites. Smaller, lighter weight birds put more energy into egg-making than developing a meaty carcass, and people interested in meat birds usually buy hybrid chicks specially developed to put on weight fast and efficiently.

Many heritage poultry breeders are working with exhibition lines – birds that emphatically meet the breed’s standard of perfection. And while they are very lovely, aren’t usually selected for egg production in tandem with more readily observable characteristics. What this means to our search for replacement laying hens is that the Barred Rocks we found were probably not a good start for our heritage flock.

The breeder we contacted (Jeremy Woeppel of XW Poultry Ranch) mentioned that his New Hampshire hens were his best layers, and might be a more suitable alternative. This breed had come up in our previous research as a good homestead hen, and a couple of years ago we ordered 6 from the hatchery to try. They were decent enough, and did well in our 4-breed egg trial in June 2011. But our rooster at the time didn’t like them, and they didn’t really stand out, so we cycled them out of the flock.

Hatchery-bred hen sold as “New Hampshire Red”.

What we didn’t realize then was the difference breeding makes. After digging a little deeper into the history of New Hampshire chickens, investing in 2 dozen hatching eggs made sense. The first part of the 20th century was all about chicken-madness. Hundreds of books and journals were published, every farm it seemed was developing its own breed of chicken, and dual-purpose was the name of the game. An informative article in Mother Earth News says:

Beginning about 1910, poultry raisers in New Hampshire deliberately selected for early feathering, fast growth, and maturity as well as large egg size and good meat conformation. Certain strains were also noted for their vigor and hardiness. 

By 1935, this specialized offshoot of the Rhode Island Red was accepted into the APA as a distinct breed. Not long after, war broke out in Europe, eventually leading to the German people eating most of their farm animals. To help them rebuild breeding stock after the war, New Hampshire chickens were sent over, and while Americans became enamored of all the new hybrid poultry strains, the German people kept working with the New Hampshires without interference from other breeds. A number of these beautiful birds were imported back to America recently, and dedicated people are working to reestablish them here.

Heritage New Hampshire hen.

We’re still learning about breeding our own chickens. The Olive-egger project has kept us on our toes in terms of color genetics. Taking on a rare heritage breed will be another learning curve for us, but very rewarding.

German-line New Hampshire rooster.

Naturally new interests mean new projects, and we are working on our chicken infrastructure with the goal of a practical and comfortable breeding set up for multiple lines of stock. A big change from our usual hodgepodge of hens, but we are looking forward to taking our game to the next level.

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For more information on the New Hampshire breed, and the chicken mania of a hundred years ago, check out these links:

• History Worth Repeating – an essay on the history and possible future of heritage poultry.
• German New Hampshires – a post from the always-informative Scratch Cradle blog.
• K & S Chicks and Eggs – beautiful pictures of heritage chickens (including the rooster in our post). Also a source for buying your own.
• Taylor Hobby Farms – another site with beautiful photos and stock for sale.
• German New Hampshires – a subforum on Backyard Chickens with pages of pictures and discussion from experienced breeders and interested novices.
• New Hampshire Chicken – on board the Slow Food Ark of Taste.