The Pastured Poultry Experiment
We have tried on a lot of different homesteading "hats" over the years. We started our self-sufficiency adventure with twenty-five laying hens, and over a fifteen year period dabbled in everything from Goji berry production to AI'ing hogs for the local 4H market. You always hear people talking about the concept of finding one's niche. Well, I don't know if we found our niche per say, but we sure did fall into the knowledge-gleaning pool head first!
I wouldn't trade a single moment of the last fifteen years, for I feel like I attended homesteader's college. There were moments of frustration, days of exhaustion, a whole manure sized pile full of self-doubt, but in the long run the knowledge and skills that we accumulated over time was worth every smashed finger, sleepless night, and "those bleeping goats did what?" moment.
An interesting side effect of all that know-how development is that people now call us for information regarding self-sufficiency questions. It usually has to do with animals. In the last week alone we have had to help with a neighbor's weird pig illness issue, explain how to keep hens laying even though our daylight hours are decreasing, and line up a firewood cutting party to help out our in need of wood neighbors. We are happy to help, for when we were starting out there wasn't nearly the resources that are available now! I can probably watch a Youtube or Dtube video on trimming goat's feet if I wanted to!
It is in that vein of community spirited-ness that I thought it might be fun to share little snapshots of our past with ya'll. Today's glimpse into the past is a look at our foray into pastured piranhas, and by piranhas I mean Cornish Cross Chickens.
I grew up around cows, horses, and a whole heck of a lot of deer, elk, and bear. Chickens were a non-existent thing in my realm, the closest I ever came to anything like them was maybe standing near a bald eagle at the beach. I knew absolutely nothing about chickens. So of course I giggled happily in terror when my husband announced that we were going to pick up twenty-five, day old chicks at the Post Office. Great.
A year later I had 200 laying hens and was supplying the local health food store with farm fresh, free-range eggs. It was then that we branched out into meat birds, and we picked up some "broilers," as that was all that was available locally at the time.
Those little broilers were insane eaters! I left my grandpa in charge of their feeding for three days when my husband and I had to run over the mountains to my other grandparent's house. Grandpa fed the 25 birds 110lbs of feed in not quite three days! I can't believe they didn't seize up! Pops just shrugged and said:
"They looked hungry."
Well, being exciteable homesteading neophytes, we decided to build chicken tractors and start a pastured poultry operation. I had a pretty nice four acre field that was lying empty at the time, and with health and profit motivating us, we threw together some scrap wood chicken tractors and ordered two hundred broilers.
That summer we dutifully fed the beasties, created and installed automatic waterers on the tractors, and moved the wooden coops around to fresh greens twice a day. All went well. Too well in fact, for in a few weeks time we had to start butchering all the mammoth piranhas, and now might be a nice time to mention that I was very pregnant with my son at the time.
To this day I still can't stand the smell of Softsoap. Pregnancy heightened sense of smell combined with scalded feathers, manure, and that Softsoap aroma still haunts my olfactory cells! By the time I made it through butchering all of those broilers I was ready to scald and pluck my husband!!!
We had the broilers all sold before we even got them processed, and I even delivered them to our grateful customers. The chicken itself was amazing, both in size, flavor, and texture, but I realized that I hated butchering chickens. It was most definitely not my niche. That fact still tickles me a bit, for by the time I hit twelve years old or so I had gutted and processed thousands of salmon, and in reality, the two aren't that much different.
The pastured poultry experiment was a profitable one, both in income and knowledge gained. However, over time we figured out that we didn't truly enjoy producing animals in a commercial way, rather we preferred more of a subsistence type of production. Also, I will always enjoy reflecting on how I used to jump into the electrified netting that we had for our piranhas and subsequently running screaming with the food bucket as I evaded the ravenous raptors that were thundering across the ground right on my heels! Those genetically engineered marvels of poultry can move!
It truly makes me happy to see so many Steemit posts from people that want to or are homesteading. Providing for yourself while being a good steward of the land you are blessed with is such a noble pursuit, and I beyond enjoy reading about all of your experiences, challenges, and dreams. When I think about the compendium of homesteading knowledge that is being deposited onto the Steem blockchain for all to delve into I get almost as giddy as when I think about how I don't have any pastured poultry to deal with anymore!😉
Hope you all are having a smashing evening!
And as always, all of the images in this post were taken on the author's decrepit and retired digital camera or my old and currently under the tyranny er, possession of my preteen, iPhone.
