Baby Chickens
Have you ever smelled a baby chicken? Probably not, but I have many times. They are a precious little ball of yellow fur and they have a clean, fresh smell that can't really be described.Years ago, around this time of the year my mother used to order a batch ( I think that is what she called it, although I think a group of chickens is called a flock) of chickens. She raised the chicks for our summer supply of fried chicken. She would order about twenty five baby chicks from Swift & Company. Maybe about two or three weeks later, she would order twenty five more. Swift & Company was just up the street from us about a mile.
We would pick up the chicks and they would be in a big cardboard box. Once we got them home my mother would keep them in the big box, lined with lots of newspapers, in the house at night. Then when it was warm during the day they would be put out into the yard in a closed wire pen. Late in the day when it began to get colder she would transfer them all back into the box, with fresh newspapers, and bring them back into the warm house for the night. We might be unlucky enough to lose a few chicks due to crowding in the box or maybe some unknown ailment or disease they might have come with from Swift & Company. This care would continue for about two or three weeks until the weather got warmer and the chicks grew a little older. After that they were freed permanently from the box and the house and were allowed to run freely in the yard ( I need another blog to tell you about how carefully you walked in our yard !).
I am not sure how old the chickens were when we started eating them but I can tell you they were "finger licking good!" We had fried chicken most of the summer. If any chickens were not eaten at the end of summer then they were put with the laying hens and they supplied us with eggs for the winter (the hens, not the roosters. The roosters just took care of the hens).
posted by kyra lafain @ 3/19/2008 12:13:00 AM
2 Comments:
My sister and her family have chickens on their little farm. One really cute little hen became a pet. She slept with the dogs and would come and look in the door at us. They named her after a famous preacher (taking a little liberty with spelling his name) -- Bennie Hen. I know my sister really loves me, because I needed some manure for my compost one time, and she helped me one day scrape chicken manure from the chicken house. That's true family devotion!
We still have a few chickens today but we don't collect the eggs anymore. I used to love seeing the little baby chicks...they are an adorable sight. It is that blind rooster that drives us crazy...since he isn't sure what time of day it is, he just crows all the time!
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