Poultry News

Someday when Freeloader Farms is a multi-hundred dollar corporation, we'll send out a fancy newsletter with full-color photos for all of our screaming fans to read up on the latest updates around the farm.  But for now, I'll just post them here for the 3 people that read this blog to enjoy.

Flock Increases by Seven
   My "chicken ticket" birthday chickens arrived about 5.5 weeks ago.  They were special ordered from Meyer Hatchery (who is big enough to not only have an email newsletter but also has a very informative catalog with beautiful photos available for viewing online or by mail order).  Even though they were all supposed to be my chicks, I only ended up with two of them as the others were claimed by the kids.  These chicks weren't handled quite as much as last year's chicks, mainly because the boys had more concern about ending up with manure in their hair from carrying them around on their heads (not necessarily a bad thing to be concerned about).  But the chicks are still very loved and still living in our kitchen.
The chicks added to our poultry roster were named:

-Eggy (GD's chick, named after a chicken in a random foreign kids' movie we found at the library that GD loves.  I don't understand the movie, I've only seen about 15 minutes of it, but there's a line that references the old musical "The King and I," so it must be ok right?)

-Green Layer Like Gecko Is Green, known as simply "Green Layer" by friends and family (GE's chick, he wanted a chick that laid green eggs because chickens don't lay orange eggs and Gecko, his favorite PJ Masks character, is green.)

-Princess (KM's chick, named by her brothers because KM is the princess of the family)

-Watermelon (my Buff Orpington chick, this was one of my specific requests because Buff Orpingtons are so docile, named after our original Buff Orpington who never got to fulfill her lifelong dream to be a mother)

-Sunshine (another one of my chicks, G won't let me name our children hippy names so I might as well give the names to our livestock.  For the record though, I think G was very wise to not allow me to name KM Galilee Sunshine as I had wanted).

-Miss Fritter ("The school bus of death is after me!")

-Cupcake the Fluffy Cloud (GD wanted to name her "I Am A Fluffy Cloud" and GE wanted to name her Cupcake).


Missing Chicken
Missing: one adult hen, answers to the name of Daisy
Description: breed unknown, white with black at her neck and feathers on her feet
Last seen: wandering the farm about two months ago, did not come home in the evening after a day of free-ranging
Other pertinent information: will be looking lost, lonely and confused; may have gone to the nearest chicken therapist for help working through some unresolved trauma related to last winter's chicken massacres


Obituary
I am sorry to report the Obadiah Jonahmicahnahum Habakkuk is no longer with us.  He was an odd little fellow and his fear of grass and hens was simply not compatible with life as a chicken.  There are many stories I could tell of his inability to cope with life, but we are all very sad about his passing and so I will save those for another time (or my first children's book).  He was buried in a private ceremony in which he was, as GE says, "planted in the garden, but he's not there anymore, he went away" (not sure if that is his understanding of chicken souls of just his misunderstanding of death).  Obadiah is survived by his sisters Josephine and Henrietta.


Turkey Narrowly Escapes Death
Just a few days before Tom and Frieda were scheduled for butchering, Frieda started laying eggs.  It is highly unlikely that the eggs were fertile.  Broad-breasted bronzes don't breed well due to their broad breasts (say that 5 times fast).  But on the outside chance we could have baby turkeys, we built an incubator out of a foam cooler, struggled to keep the temperature and humidity the same conditions as a turkey's bottom, and ultimately hatched a couple of rotten eggs that made the house smell like low tide.  The eggs were unfertilized.  Frieda stopped laying eggs.  The turkeys are back on the waiting list for our freezers.

The World's First Pig Farmers

   Tens of thousands of years ago cavemen were realizing that they could domesticate animals. I wonder during those first years of animals domestication if our ancestors really had plans for the animals or if they were just making it up as they went along. Which is totally what we're doing with this whole homesteading thing. I imagine the first humans to raise pigs may have experienced something like this.

   Father Caveman arrived back to the cave late from hunting and gathering one evening. Mother Cavewoman was slightly annoyed but still curious when, after he tossed the squirrels for supper on the fire he pulled out a box (chiseled laboriously from rock of course) with air holes and presented his children with two new strange animals to befriend and turn into something useful.  The animals were small and pink with flat noses and curly tails. 

    "What are they called, Daddy?!  Where did you find them?! What do we do with them?!"  The Cave Children asked excitedly. 

     "I found them for free in an ad carved on a cliff while I stopped to eat my lunch today. I picked them up from some one named Craig after hunting and gathering. They are called piglets and I don't know what they're good for, I just thought the cave drawing of them was cute."

      The Cave Children were delighted with their new pets. Mother Cavewoman did not want to keep them but Father Caveman thought she might be more agreeable once she got some squirrel and foraged roots and mushrooms in her.  

        "After supper we will build a pen for them."

       Soon(ish) the pig pen was roughly constructed from rocks and tree limbs the Cave Children gathered while Father Caveman carved food and water barrels and Mother Cavewoman cleaned up from the lovely squirrel dinner and tried to keep the Cavebaby from climbing the cave walls and swinging from the overhead torch. 

     The Cave Children excitedly cared for their piglets.  They tirelessly tried to train them to do....something.  Even if they couldn't be work animals they could still be pets and maybe even protect the family from wild dinosaurs (the timeline for this may be a little construed). The piglets would dance little jigs when they saw the Cave Children coming, but as the pigs grew all they wanted to do was sit in the mud. The pigs grew larger than the Cave Family could have ever imagined and soon were consuming more than the family could forage. Fortunately there was bulk feed available at the elevator in the next village over (that village was much more advanced than our cave family's village, obviously). The smell of the pigs became overpowering and manure was piling up.  The pigs dug and rooted and made a mess and were constantly destroying their living enclosure.  They repeatedly knocked over their waterer and Father Caveman had to recarve it three times. As winter approached Father Caveman was finding it harder to keep their water thawed and had to rig up a thermostat-controlled fire to thaw their waterer.  The pigs were not too smart either. Father Caveman was getting smoke signals like "Pig stuck in feed barrel" from Mother Cavewoman while he was out hunting and gathering. 

      Finally the family had had enough. The pigs were not earning their keep around the cave and the family could not afford to keep them.  So they did what they had to do....
      After several hours of huffing and puffing, Father Caveman finally loaded them into a livestock cart (this was after the wheel had been invented), to take them out and hunt them.  He brought home so much meat the family had to carve another ice box to store it until meat curing could be discovered.  With all that meat available, Father Caveman no longer had to devote his entire day to hunting down squirrels and could now spend time working the land and inventing agriculture.

Or something like that.