Red Meaty Chicks - An Examination and Comparison to Cornish Cross

When we did our first batch of Meaty Chicks last spring it was only an experiment. I wanted to determine a few things: Can Cornish Cross be healthily raised by hens? Will the resulting adult Meaty Birds be happily eaten? What is the cost effectiveness of said Birds? And how many does it take to supply our needs? The answers: YES, YES, $2.23 a pound and 30 to 35.

The 10 Cornish Cross we raised that first time were mostly cooked by August. We kept cooking chicken so everyone could taste how good they were. This meant we needed more chicken to get through the winter, so I embarked on a second experiment.

I was curious to see if the Red Broilers acted/tasted/grew any different from the Cornish Cross but mostly I wanted to see if their health and foraging skills were all that much better than the Cornish Cross had been. Contrary to popular belief we really had no health problems with the Cornish Cross and found them to be very good foragers with a mother hen to guide them.

Since I knew now that my Cuckoo Marrans hens would happily raise Meaty Chicks as their own and save me the incredible trouble of raising them myself and that the freezer had plenty of room, I felt it was only prudent to get a new set of Meaty Chicks going.

At the beginning of August I ordered 26 Red Broilers to "graft" them under a couple of broody hens on the 24th of August. I have been doing this technique of grafting chicks for most of my life and I wrote a post on how to do it Here if you are thinking of doing this. I HIGHLY recommend it.

We lost 2 chicks right away because they did not have the best of luck in shipping. One was dead in the box and another died the next day. I blame this on the postal service and the ignorance of modern day people who know nothing about farm animals. It was a warm day when the chicks arrived at the post office and, thinking they were doing the chicks a favor, the postal workers put them next to the air conditioning!

 The hens I used were setting in the bushes where they had started to sit on eggs and because they were not locked up at night, more chicks disappeared the first week. The next weekend I moved them all to a varmint proof pen. If you do this, remember you need to keep them locked in the new location for at least 3 days before you let them out or they will not return to the new place the next night.

Ever the tricky and clever little devils, Raccoons will reach under hens at night and pull chicks out, without harming the hen. The hen sleeps through it- until the chicks run out. Which takes several nights of chick munching. It's like nature's own crunchy chick vending machine. (Pardon the Homestead humor)

I took these photos of the Red Broilers to be compared with my visual diary of the Cornish Cross progress:

August 27

September 20

September 20

September 22

October 5th

October 16

October 16

November. We were busy and forgot to take a picture of the chicks.

December 21. The meaty chicks are 17 weeks old. Knowing they would be "going in" the next day I told them to live it up! They had a lovely day running all over the farm.

December 21. A mix of our flock, all of the red ones are meaty chicks

December 21. For size comparison the Cuckoo Marans hens behind them are 5 months old.

Here's the numbers:

$56.92 initial cost of chicks (26 chicks at $1.77 each + 10.90 shipping from Ideal Poultry)

$101 for feed (This is a guess-timation. We had $202 total feed costs for the 17 weeks but we had 22 full grown Cuckoo Marans and Americana eating with the chicks)

Butchered at 17 weeks. 22 birds processed.


96 pounds total dressed weight, average dressed weight per chicken was 4.36 pounds. Among the individual birds there was a large range of sizes. A couple roosters were 6 pounds and 3 hens were barely 3 pounds.

$91 cost for butchering. Half of the chickens cost more to process because they were over 4 pounds. ($5.00 v.s. $3.50)

Total cost = $247.00

96 pounds divided by 22
  = 4.36 pound dressed average bird
$ 247.00 divided by 22
  = $11.23 per chicken,
$247.00 divided by 96 pounds
  = $2.57 per pound

Some of our observations are that the Red Meaty Chicks have slightly better flavor and are a little firmer in texture (not tough though) than the Cornish Cross. This is probably directly correlated to their age and not necessarily their breed. They were very good foragers, which is good for curtailing feed costs. This however made them hit my flower beds and potted plants much harder. I don't think I would recommend them for a small city lot. They would completely destroy a yard. They may however be ideal in a situation where chicks would not be raised by hens, since they seem to have a much stronger foraging drive and would not lay around at the food dish as Cornish Cross are purported to do in such a situation (although we never witnessed them doing this in our experiment).

One of the biggest cost factors was the drastically different sizes among them. Because of the wide range in growth/sizes between the individual chicks, it was difficult to determine when they should go in to the butchers, which in turn increased our processing costs by $1.50 for half of the birds.
I am thinking it might be nice though to have different sizes of birds in the freezer for different sized meals. I suppose this size discrepancy might also be good for those who process their flock a few at a time. One could simply take the larger birds first and give the smaller ones more time to grow.
Another possible factor, which I have no hard evidence to back up, is that since I dilly dallied and didn't get the chicks a month earlier, we may have spent more on feed because of the cold fall weather. They most likely burnt more calories staying warm and the first frost came early this year, killing all the lovely grasshoppers I was counting on as a protein source for them.
I would recommend getting these chicks 15 weeks before your first frost at the latest.

Red Meaty Chicks eating my baby asparagus, Argh!

As far as a comparison to the Cornish Cross on ease of care, the jury is still out on that one, but I am leaning in favor of the Cornish Cross next time, just because of the fact that the Cornish Cross did not eat all of my baby asparagus like these did.

Gifts From Friends: Chanterelle Mushroom and Butternut Soup

I did not find a hat full of Chanterelle mushrooms this fall but a very good friend of ours had the good fortune to do much more than that. He found a grocery sack full and through an act of incredible generosity gave us half!
I also had a Butternut squash given to me by another good friend, sitting on the counter.
Hmmm, I thought, what would they taste like together?
I peeled the Butternut and cubed it. Then I cleaned the fir needles from the Chanterelles and roughly chopped  them.

 

I diced some carrots and celery and sauteed the whole thing in 4 tablespoons of butter and a tablespoon of olive oil.
For seasoning I did not want to do too much since Chanterelles are very delicate in flavor. I added only salt and pepper and a 1/2 teaspoon of Tarragon. I sauteed the ingredients until the squash was tender and the Chanterelles were juicy. Then I added 2 cups of chicken stock from the freezer and a cup of soy milk (half and half would be more traditional, but soy is what I had) to make it slightly creamy.
Although I completely made up this recipe on the spot, I think it was the best soup I have ever made. Owing entirely to the incredible ingredients of course. 
I had baked a loaf of bread the day before and the soup and bread made a perfect meal.
We were very thankful that night for the gift and gifting of good friends.

Loafing Shed Pt 2

Time for the second post in my building-a-horse-shed series.

After our Thanksgiving break, the concrete was set and ready for posts. We went 8' high on the short end, 10' on the high.

Hank identified the shortest post, and used a straight 2X4 to mark the other posts to the right height. He cut them to level with his skill saw.

 

If you are going to have to work in an active pasture, freezing weather can be a nice thing; keeps all the muck nice and firm.

With the posts all the same height, we screwed plywood gussets on top of the outside posts to hold the beams in place. The structure is 20' wide so we were able to use a single piece of wood for each beam.

Once the beams were all up we squared the building the best we could and attached braces to keep it all in place.

 

One of the big things I have learned from Hank is to do things on the ground that you would rather not do in the air. For instance, while the beams were on the ground he marked where each rafter would go.

In the shot above, he snugged all the rafters together on a work table, squared the ends, and cut the rafter-tails on all of them at once. He then marked each rafter on the bottom where it would sit on the beam, and the layout on the top where the skip sheeting would go. This made it so we knew just where each board went when we were standing on top of the ladders.

We toe-screwed the beams and posts together, then added strapping to keep them in place.

After the rafters went up, we used hurricane straps to keep them in place, and blocking to keep them upright.

We used a come-along to pull the structure into square. It was not off by much, only about 3/8 of an inch, but we got it just right.

1X4 skip sheeting came next, tying it all together nicely.

Continuing the theme of doing ground work, I marked the tin roofing where we wanted the screws to go, and punched holes with a nail set. This spared the effort of forcing the nail through the tin while standing on the roof.

We used used un-grooved T1-11 plywood for the sides/sheer panels. Phoebe is a fan of letting the light in, as we did in the Hay House. It gave the barn a really nice, open and airy feeling.

We continued that idea on the loafing shed, so we can see in, the horses can see out, and it is nice and bright inside.

 

The high side faces east, not a big weather consideration here, but she suggested closing it in a little anyway. A couple of 2X6s on the inside will keep the horses from pushing the plywood out. Stall mats and a 4' gate finished it off. 

The weather had been unseasonably dry that December, with the rain holding off until the shed was finished. Rio was a little spooky when he first came in, just before Christmas. In a few days, though, he was right at home. In addition to keeping him warm and dry, his hay stays dry, so we are wasting less of it.

Since he is a mustang from Eastern Oregon, it could be argued that standing outside in the milder Western Oregon winter is not big deal for him. So why go through the effort and expense to build him a grade A horse house? 

First, just because he can stand in the rain doesn't mean he should. As a city boy at heart, I have the idea that everyone should have a dry place when they want it. Second, mud control is one of Phoebe's big things. So for both of us, a wet horse standing in deep mud is not an acceptable approach to animal owning. Since we have committed to having horses, we need to do what we can to treat them right.

Finally, we are trying to build infrastructure that will allow us to follow our interests, and what the land teaches us, to discover what the Homestead is best suited for. 

This may well involve more animals. Could be more horses, a goat or two to help with the blackberries, or a couple calves to try raising beef; we are not sure. But we do know that before we get serious about animals we need good fences and safe, dry shelter. The loafing shed is the next step in the progression. We don't really know where we are going, but this is one more important step on the way.

Two Christmas Books

The first Christmas book is one our daughter June gave me. It was 3 years ago, and I was just learning how to bake bread. As I have said before, work was very, very slow, and I needed something to do. Phoebe reminded me I like to bake bread, so I did. 

With help from a great website (http://www.thefreshloaf.com/) I started learning how to make artisan bread. In an inspired moment, my daughter got me a blank sketchbook to use for bread recipes.

And use it I have. Every time I bake I write in the book. I will transcribe recipes into it, note different approaches, and their results. 

I also add other recipes I want to be able to find easily. With information available on the web, in books I own or read, and things others tell me, having one place to store all the info has been really handy. 

I don't bake much in the summer, so when fall rolls around, I can read the last few entries to catch up to what I learned earlier in the year. This may sound fairly elemental, but I am terrible about retaining information. So having a place to put it, and find it, has really been a great thing.

The second book also involves June. When she was 3, and her brother 10, we bought a Christmas book. It is called The Christmas Secret, by David Delamare. He is an illustrator who lives in Portland, and we saw a signed copy of his book in a shop.

We have read the book every Christmas for the 20 years since then. We read it in two parts, starting on Christmas Eve Eve, then finishing the next night.

This year, as you may know, June is in Russia. She is staying there for Christmas, so we are having our first holiday without either our children home. (Her brother Jake has made it home every year until this one.)

But we were not going to let a little thing like a 12 hour time difference and half the globe stand in the way of our tradition. So yesterday morning, her Christmas Eve, we read the first half of the story to her over Skype. I would hold up the photos so she could see them. She knows them so well she would say "Lift it a little higher so I can see the mouse."

This morning we read her the second half. It was very sweet, and makes my Christmas feel a little more Christmasy.

Yesterday after we were done I found an email address for the author. I wrote him a quick note telling him how much the book meant to us and what we were doing this year.

To my surprise he got right back to me. He said he usually gets a note about that book every year. Mine was the first this season. They were very touched and grateful for the story. That, in turn, gave me another high point for my Christmas Eve.

If you have a holiday tradition in your family, tell us about it in the comments. We love hearing about other homestead lives.

I am very grateful for what this year has brought. I humbly hope next year will be as kind to us, and just what you want. Thank you all for sharing it with us.

From all of us at the homestead, Phoebe, myself, the kids and critters, please have a yummy, warm, loving and laughing holiday. 

Windfall

Life here on the homestead is pretty peaceful in general. One thing that is very apparent though is that it is rarely quiet, and there is always something happening around here that would definitely disqualify the Homestead for the "Tranquility" prize.
Perhaps the casual discovery of a headless rabbit in the path to the barn. Or the sudden onslaught of migrating hawks taking down our chicks.  Or maybe that the teenage neighbor has a new dirt bike.
Whatever it is from day to day, it will just be something you learn to take in stride. It's always changing around here. It's usually not worth worrying about it.
This attitude is something I came by naturally from growing up in this place. Buck on the other hand did not. He still worries, for instance, about silly little things like the screaming wind storms we get here in the fall and spring.
After moving back to the Homestead, sleeping in a travel trailer under the trees, it all came back to me in one single sleepless night of 60 mile an hour winds and things flying by the windows like the tornado scene in Wizard of Oz.
After thinking to myself "Oh yeah, the wind really blows here." I settled down for the winter.
It will be fine. No trees have killed anyone yet.
Buck on the other hand had a tougher time sleeping through the "Howlers", as my dad calls them. Buck had the unfortunate burden of a sensible and fact based reality and in this world of gravity and chaos it was only a matter of time before we would be crushed by a tree.

Both of our attitudes are valid. Neither of us really knows what will come next, so we have a right to our own way of looking at it.

What entertains me about these disparate attitudes is how they played out in the face of an event that happened last winter. An event which we have dubbed "The Trailer Stabbing".  We have not mentioned this event because we had to slowly tell our family in the least alarming way we could, so they would not immediately demand we move back to the city. We had to calm everyone with time before we could blab this story to everyone else. But now a year has gone by and it has turned into a favorite funny story to tell at parties.
This story begins with a real Howler one fall evening. We have done the chores, fed ourselves and the dogs and we are ensconced in the fluffy warm world of bed, I am drifting to sleep, Buck is, I am guessing, reciting a circular mantra which goes something like this "Please, Please be over soon. Please, Please don't fall on us."
I on the other hand am in my small world of safety, protected by childhood imaginings of trees that care about me and would therefor, never fall on me.
The fact that we are sleeping in a travel trailer under a mangy tree full of Widow Makers, protected by the trailer world equivalent of basswood sticks and tissue paper does, I admit, disquiet me. I am reciting my own mantra as the trailer jolts and rocks "Please, Please be over soon. Please, Please don't fall on the newly rebuilt barn."
Our ability to remain awake is over powered by exhaustion. We drift off to sleep. We awake to a "GATHUNK" that cannot be good. While Buck lays stock still, no doubt taking an inventory of critical body parts, I jump up to see what we will need to fix tomorrow.
No sign of anything. But the sound was just too close to believe there was no damage, so I put on my boots and coat, pull out the xenon flashlight and brace myself for the wind.
It only took a minute to see what the gathunk was. A 15 foot, 5 inch diameter limb was sticking straight out of the trailer roof.
This is where I have the moment I suspect I am still asleep and dreaming. I go back inside the trailer and look all around, no sign of the limb.
Buck gets up now and asks what it was. But I am speechless. How do you say "There is a huge dead limb buried to the hilt in our roof, but there is no sign of it in here" to a guy whose worst fear is being speared by a tree limb on just such a night as this?
Instead I say "I can't tell and there is nothing we can do about it until morning anyway." and we go back to our bed and our perspective mantras. Oddly, my mantra changes a little.
The next day it turns out we were both right. The tree speared our trailer but it didn't spear us.
But from my way of thinking, the tree sent a message. Move the trailer. And Buck was listening. So we did.
Here is a little film of what we found that morning.

Leaf Job

I grew up in the city. I did chores in the yard and garden, but never chose to spend much time out there. Mowing and some forced weeding was about extent of my childhood farm work.

So when we moved to our first country place, with 1.3 acres, I had a lot to learn. Fortunately, Phoebe had a lot to teach.

Not only did she grow up on the homestead, she is a an avid gardener. So when it comes to plants and animals, she has a lot of experience and interest. I have learned a lot over the years, but still feel like a city boy playing at country. At least I enjoy it.

Here is one of Phoebe's ideas, that I was happy to execute:

We have a big Broadleaf Maple at the other house.

 

It dumps a ton of leaves in the fall.

Years ago Phoebe started using the leaves to mulch her garden over the winter.

The leaves get raked up and used to help make the garden better for the spring. It has perfect balance; a waste product becoming a asset with no additional effort needed.

"It's Orange Season" or "Rolls Around My Waist"

We are not growing oranges on the Homestead, but we do have relatives who have neighbors who grow oranges!

Because of their great generosity we scored three shopping bags of homegrown oranges and I did not want to waste a single drop of them so I decided to make Marmalade with them.

I have never really been around marmalade eaters in my life and so I didn't really know what to expect. I do know some people love it and some people hate it. I had never eaten homemade marmalade before, but I suspected it would be worlds better than the store bought stuff.
I looked around on the internets*  and settled on Ina Garten's recipe.

So I commenced to slice and dice a triple batch of Marm without ever having tasted it. Pretty brave, huh?

It was super easy to make. Just dice up a bunch of oranges add sugar and cook.

The recipe also called for a couple lemons and it just so happened there were some lemons in the bags too.

The final word for me is not that I love Marmalade on my toast. Instead I have discovered that if you make a cinnamon roll dough (just a yeasted sweet roll dough), spread Marmalade in place of the sugar/cinnamon and then top the resulting orange rolls with a vanilla cream cheese frosting...

You will think you have died and gone to heaven.
This is the last one and I barely got a photo of it before it was ravenously consumed (by me).

*we like talking wrong for entertainment around here.