When I was in 4th or 5th grade my parents shoved me into the world of calf showing. I became a part of the Harrison County 4-H in Marshall. I was introduced to strange kids that I didn’t go to school with, or know. I was given a heifer to raise, and then I learned all that I could about taking care of, raising and showing cows. We traveled all over the surrounding states with a group of kids that would become my forever friends.

One of the regular spots on the cattle show schedule was the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo. At the time it was held at the Astrodome and I have enough stories about that show alone to keep you shaking your head. The point of THIS Astrodome story is that the cattle stalls were in close proximity to the broiler cages. As a cattle person I was raised around cow smells, they had no effect on me. Those chickens however, gagged me every day. I hated having to go in every morning to take care of my animals because of the smell of those nasty chickens. I hated chickens…I was pretty vocal about how much I hated those smelly beasts when I was gagging and trying to enjoy one of those amazing tiny donuts they sold near our area.

Fast forward a few years.

I came home from school one day and there were 2 large cardboard boxes on the pool table where I normally spent a lot of time playing 8 ball. There were 2 heat lamps strung up over the boxes and the constant chirping and tweeting and the slight ammonia smell stunned me into silence.

“Surprise!”

Bart (my step-dad) had decided that he wanted me to raise chickens. Not only that, he had decided that he would purchase enough for the neighbor kid to raise chickens also. Just in case you don’t know, when you participate in a broiler project you purchase 25 chicks. 25 for me, 25 for Albert for a grand total of 50 chirping, stinking fluffballs.

To be clear, Albert had never actually been to our house and we weren’t close friends. I knew him, and I will spoil the story and tell you that I didn’t see him once for the entire life cycle of those chickens.

I found out that day that they had to live on my pool table, safely away from the dogs for at least 3 weeks, but up to 6. It was my job to change out their bedding, feed and water the 50 babies, and prepare a place for them to move.

Believe you me, I got busy getting them out of the house and off my pool table. We had a dog pen that was the perfect size, but it had no covered area, and the sides were built to keep dogs in, not chickens. I sectioned off a roughly 12′ X 4′ area and used solid tin for the roof and sides. I built a small gate section that had chicken wire for entry and spread out bedding and put waterers and feeders inside.

As soon as they were barely feathered enough to be moved I was moving those boxes and heat lamps outside. Soon they were fully feathered, didn’t need a heat lamp and were allowed outside into the full pen.

I now took care of half grown chickens. I changed out bedding, disposed of dead birds (young chickens die for just about anything), put down the ones that were not going to make it and basically counted down the days until the show/sale to be held at Farm City Week.

Like all chores as a kid, it felt like pure torture. ‘Didn’t ask for ’em. Didn’t want ’em. Where is that Albert kid anyway?!’ It seemed like it went on forever, but as I realize now, it was probably 6 weeks.

The county extension agent came out one day and started picking up and flopping all of the chickens over and poking them. I had no idea what he was doing, but in the end he chose 10 chickens that were show quality, and we separated them.

The day of the show I was tasked with choosing the ‘best’ 6 birds, washing them, filling up 2 cages with 3 birds each and driving them to the arena. Chickens take a bit longer to dry than I had anticipated, so they were looking like they had just been drowned when I showed up. To be honest, my idea of washing them was to hold them under water and fluff up their feathers, so that might account for their looks.

They eventually dried. Albert showed up, we took turns holding our cages out for the judges. His placed and made the sale, mine did not and got a free ride back home. I asked if maybe I would get some of that sale money, since I hadn’t seen nor spoken to Albert in the last 10 weeks, but that was not to be the case.

His birds sold, I took mine back home and now we had maybe 40 chickens at the house that I was still responsible for. I had no idea what to do with them, so I just kept taking care of them. When the roosters became evident I researched how to pluck and clean chickens.

I would come home each day and practice a new technique. There were different suggestions on how to dispatch them, pluck them, clean them, portion them. I tried everything.

The only way to get a clean chicken that looks like you bought it from the supermarket requires that you pluck and clean without dismembering. That requires hot water and we had no water heater at the barn. I heated up a pot full of ‘warm’ water and drove it to the barn. When I got back to the barn there was considerably less water and it was nowhere near hot enough (150ishF) but I gave it a try; Dunking that bird and soaking it. The feathers did not loosen, they did not come out easily, they stuck all over me, the bird and everything else in the barn… it was a big mess and deemed not necessary by me. I kept researching.

I found out that you could skin a chicken just like any other animal and you ended up with a whole chicken that was simply skinless. It was much easier, so that became my new default. I got really good at cleaning those roosters, but I was glad when they were all gone.

Down to 20ish birds and all hens I took a break from slaughter duties and let them live on for a while. I quickly learned that broilers will just eat themselves to death if left to their own devices. I started limiting their food/scrap intake after some just couldn’t get up anymore.

Then came egg duty. Suddenly we had fresh eggs each day and I realized something else about chickens. I learned that chickens produce roughly 2 eggs for every 3 hens you have, and no rooster is necessary. When you have 15 birds that works out to about 10 eggs a day (an egg roughly every 23 hours until it is too late to lay and then they skip that day).

Without the proper protein in their diet they have egg defects. I have seen them all. There are the good defects…double yolks, the interesting defects….tiny fairy eggs with no yolks, and then the disgusting shell-less eggs that are just gross. I learned real quick that their diet made the biggest difference. I made sure we had quality feed and tried to manage the fine balance between them eating themselves to death and producing nasty gummy eggs.

Just about the time I had that all figured out, the snakes came. It was horrible. Each day brought a new hiding place for giant snakes looking for eggs. I was jumpy and nervous all the time. The snakes actually put an end to that adventure. Bart told me that as soon as the chickens were gone *wink wink*, the eggs would go away, and then the snakes would disappear. To be honest, the snakes were probably there to eat the mice that were coming in every night to clean up the grains, but that didn’t matter. It meant the same thing.

BACK TO SLAUGHTER DUTY!

I went through those final 15 birds pretty quick and I think everyone breathed a little bit easier when the feed/mice/snakes just disappeared.

Fast forward 23 years. Restless, unable to sleep, hungry for eggs, and having none in the fridge, I started thinking fondly back on those chickens. It’s crazy how your mind takes something that you hated so much at the time, and turns it into a valid project that seems worthy of another shot.

I would do it differently this time, better. It was 2004 and I had a plan.

I researched different breeds. Found utility dual purpose birds that would lay eggs, quiet, docile, big enough to eat, and would raise babies if given a chance. My original plan was to keep 5 or 6 breeds and a rooster for each. Keep them separated and maintain a clean gene pool. I also bought some of those broilers just so I could practice putting chickens in the freezer.

The first thing I found out was that keeping 7 different pens of different breeds was a pain. I turned them all out together (except the broilers). The broilers were a 6 week project that turned into 9 and it definitely gave me a chance to remember the hassles of home butchery. My son became a vegetarian soon after the 9 week mark, but he claims it had nothing to do with butcher dad.

The next thing I found out was that there are more predators than just the snakes I learned about as a kid. Snakes were there, but so were Raccoons, hawks, owls, opossums, and the worst was the neighborhood dogs. I was heartbroken the day I came home and found that a neighbor’s dog had killed 18 of my birds all at once.

I have rebuilt and moved my birds many times over the years. I have had to restart with just a few birds more times than I care to think about. Right now I have 3 grown hens, 9 babies, and a guinea. We have hatched birds in incubators, used hens to get new babies, sold them on Craigslist, bought them at Tractor Supply, raised neighbor birds, donated birds to neighbors….

The moral of this story is to always keep eggs in your fridge…never run out, don’t even run low. If you do, it may lead to thoughts of how easy it would be to “make your OWN EGGS!” and you will never be the same.