We went on a course today. The title says it all, really. “Kill, Pluck, Gut, and Bone”.
If we’re going to breed our own chickens next year, then all the boys and some of the girls will be destined for the freezer. Ixworths are, after all, dual purpose birds, and the meat is reputedly delicious. But if we’re going to raise birds for the table, then we need to be able to cull them humanely and efficiently.
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Posted in Allotments, Poultry
Tagged chicken keeping course, Ixworth chickens, meat chickens
Today we let the chickens out onto the pumpkin bed. Junior hen led the way:
The chickens have been confined to the safety of their run in the 8 weeks since they arrived. They have plenty of room (12 square metres) but there’s no doubt that Ixworths love to scratch. So on Saturday we plucked up courage to allow them out. The reasons for our trepidation were that they are very reluctant to be caught and picked up, and we had no idea whether they could and would fly over our rather flimsy fencing and head off over various allotments wreaking havoc as they went.
We needn’t have worried. They were as good as gold. We set up a “chicken patio” outside the main door of the run, about 3 metres square, and scattered a few tempting mealworms around the doorway. The cockerel was the first out:
This morning’s treat for the chickens was plums and pasta. Three out of six plums for 19p from the remaindered greengrocery counter, and a spoonful of tagliatelle left over from last night. I don’t normally give them starchy treats in the morning, just fruit or veg, but it was chilly.
Next to the chicken run Jean planted a bed of courgettes, squash, and pumpkins. The courgettes did moderately well, but in any case you rapidly tire of even a modest harvest of courgettes. The Festival squash did brilliantly, and we’ve discovered that roast squash is a delight.
Which leaves the pumpkins. Two decent sized Halloween pumpkins, plus one smaller one, which have now ripened to a lovely orange colour. But what to do with them? We have a very nice recipe for pumpkin and goats cheese, which I’ve written about before, but what else? I decided to try making pumpkin marmalade.
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The chickens have affected my behaviour in two previously unheard of ways. I’ve taken to skip diving and checking out the cheap shelf in Morrisons. All in a good cause, natch. And here are the four good causes:
Posted in Allotments, Poultry
Tagged chicken keeping, chicken treats, Ixworth chickens, treadle feeder
Jean has grown some lovely red cabbages, the first of which we cut and ate yesterday.
Posted in Allotments, Cooking
Tagged braised cabbage, brassica cage, desvres market, red cabbage
Poor old chickens. As fast as we pick feathers from the run, so they top up the supply by shedding some more. But we have a few signs of hope. For one thing, the cockerel is beginning to regain his virility. He’s left the hens alone from the start, but yesterday as he emerged from the coop he immediately began to chase senior hen round the feeder. She’s just starting to moult seriously, and his attentions were most unwelcome. She retreated to the safety of the coop, and all three hens only ventured out when they could see that he was busy feeding.
He’s just beginning to regain his tail feathers, so right now he’s not quite as fine a fellow as he thinks:
As I’ve been reading books, blogs, and all sorts of internet material about chicken keeping, I have been prompted to ponder the subject of monster chickens. I guess that we bought into the idea of keeping a few chickens for the normal rather middle-class suburban reasons: fresh eggs, maybe a little of our own home-grown meat, from happy chickens rather than unhappy caged ones.
But I’ve started to wonder whether battery cages are the greatest of the problems of modern poultry.
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Posted in Allotments, Politics, Poultry
Tagged chicken breeding, free range chickens, poultry genetics
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