After our chicken debacle earlier in the summer (we had a shipment arrive with half of the chickens dead which broke our hearts) we had to go to a Plan B. It's amazing how hard it is to plan on a farm sometimes. Because we had already sold about 150 chickens, we needed more chickens for ourselves. Bringing them in later wouldn't work as they'd be off-cycle from the other group. So we had to do a totally different cycle. What a pain! We decided to be very conservative -- just 100 chickens that will be broken down (breasts/thighs, etc.) immediately after processing for our consumption.
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| Arabelle surprised us by picking up a baby chicken in her mouth and walking off with it. Bad farm grade for her today. |
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| Abigail said: It's a shame we have to eat them. I agree. I wish there was a way to have the best of all worlds. |
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| Doesn't Isaac look so old here. Mannnn .... |
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| The boys and Abigail helped load ten chickens at a time into the blue container seen in the background. John then "dunks" each chicken and we get a good count. |
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| We ordered 100 chickens. 108 arrived. As of today (four days out, only 4 have died.) |
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| John was the "dunker" this year. |
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| I am noticing how much faster we can do jobs like this on the farm. We've brought in new chicks so often that it really is nothing to us now and we barely even prepare much beforehand. The biggest thing for the first few days is keeping their temperature above 90 degrees and making sure they have food and water and don't get too wet. |
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