Raising Chickens

When we moved to our first country home, I was delighted to find thatI would be able to start raising chickens. There was not only a big barn on our property but a huge building in back of the house that had a recreation room, a shop, a garage and a chicken coop.

Naturally one of the first things that I did was order baby chicks.

I ordered 50 of them from Murray MacMurray Hatchery and the baby chicks arrived in two boxes via the mail. I had to go to the post office to collect them!

I ordered Pearl White Leghorn chickens because I had heard that of all the chicken breeds, they produced the most and best eggs. After the chickens grew, I was in the egg selling business.

The eggs were collected each morning. We candled them and put them in boxes.

Eggs are candled by shining a light through them. The candler is a simple device that is like a coffee can with a hole in the top and a strong light set inside. The egg is set on the hole on top and you can see inside the egg. You can tell if they are fertilized. If there are any bloody spots or if a chick has started to form, you dispose of that egg or put it under a setting hen.

Sometimes the chickens would lay a brown egg instead of a white one and my children would always argue about who would get the brown egg because they called that egg a “chocolate egg”.

I next ordered fancy chickens.. I ordered Houdans, Silver Spangled Hamburgs and Black Rose Combs. These were taken to the fair by the boys and shown.We have many ribbons for the Silver Spangled Hamburgs that the boys took to the Junior Fair.

I ordered Cornish Rock Hens to be put into the freezer and used for meat. When the Cornish Hens were large enough I would take them to a place that would butcher ,defeather and gut them.

They charged between 25 and 50 cents apiece to do this and then all I would have to do was cut them up and package them for the freezer. I would usually do about 50 chickens a year.

Unfortunately, one year I had the just arrived baby chicks in the workshop under heat lamps. It was a windy day and the lamps fell into the straw and started a fire. When we discovered it, we called the fire department but it was to late to save our large building. All they were able to do was save the house which was very close to the building.

And that was the end of my chicken business in that first country home.

This time I bought Cornish Rock Hens and Araucanas. The Cornish were to put in the freezer and the Araucanas were for eggs.

Araucanas are a hardy breed from South America and they lay blue and green and pink eggs. They are often called the Easter Egg chickens.

We always had trouble with the varmints at this country place. Raccoons, opossums and finally the weasels would get into the coop and kill the chickens. The coop was near the bedroom end of our house and I would always hear when there was trouble in the night. I would wake my husband who would go outside with his shotgun and eliminate the varmint. He would get the culprit but we lost many a window in the coop that way.

The day came when we were on vacation and had a house sitter taking care of the property. A weasel got into the coop and killed all 56 of the chickens. Not long after there was a huge summer storm that blew a large tree down onto the chicken coop and crushed it.

My chicken raising adventure was finally over – but I enjoyed the experience and would like to do it again.