After a year of raising both broiler and layer chickens I felt like I had a good handle on what to expect and a process for it all. So We doubled the number of broiler chickens we ordered to 40 and got an incubator to hatch our own layer stock. Last year we ordered 10 layer hens but ended up getting 9 hens and 1 beautiful rooster. The only problem is, the rooster is a giant jerk, the girls named him knuckle head. He attacks from no where, and on several occasions has chased children across the back yard. One of our German short hair pointer Weimaraner mix dogs Jeb has taken it upon himself to be the protector of the humans. He gets between knuckle head and his humans (except me for some reason) and has taken a few tail feathers out of the bird on a number of occasions. So I figured we would use old knuckle head for more than just waking up the neighbors, and terrorizing children and we hatched 9 of our own chicks.

This may seem like a lot of bird to deal with, and it is, but after about 8 weeks that number would be reduced back down to 19 total. After about 4 weeks I moved the new chicks outside to a pen inside the larger chicken run. This way I would help introduce the various birds to the flock ahead of time and hopefully reduce some of the stress it causes later on. This was going well until about two weeks later. I went out to feed and water the birds and was shocked to find  a small tunnel about 6 inches wide going under the wire bottom on the pen to a small opening in the wire fencing in the center, only 8 broilers remained. I was shocked. There is no way anything that size would take 41 birds in a single shot. So I started looking around. I saw one small chicken leg sticking up out of the ground like a flag so I walked over and picked it up. It was like pulling up a large carrot. The whole bird was there, not a piece missing. Then I saw another leg poking out of the dirt a short distance away. Then I realized what was going on, we had a Fisher in the neighborhood.

So after coming to grips with the financial loss I just incurred, not to mention the loss of meat and eggs I decided to put my trail camera out on the reaming birds and see what came by. Sure enough a few nights later the fisher came back, crawling all over the pen trying to figure out a way in. A few nights later a fox stopped by, and a house cat. Then we had a very unexpected visitor. A cat who’s back was taller than a five gallon pail and tail hung down and formed a perfect J. It had short hair, the color was not apparent since this was at night. I showed it to some family and friends, many of whom agreed with my assumption that it was a juvenile mountain lion. The DEC however assures me that there are none in the area.

Fast forward a few weeks to butcher day and we are down to six harvestable animals thanks to heart attacks, if you know broilers, you know. If you don’t they are a mouth, a stomach and a exit hole. They are fat voracious eaters who will actually eat themselves to death if you don’t ration their food, so yeah my fault I guess.

In the mean time we managed to hatch another 9 layers from our existing flock, one drown himself in about a half inch of water. Another thought the idea of swimming would be fun and jumped out of their box and landed in the dog water bowl. To its credit it did not drown, we found it head above water dead from hypothermia. That left 7 that we introduced to our current flock. We were up to 17! That too like many of our chickens this year, was short lived. One of the old hens didn’t make it back in the coop in time and was found without a head or breast meat. While in my deer stand I noticed a clump of feathers that looked very similar to a chicken in a pine tree a few yards away. Upon counting the flock we were down to 15. Another one of the newest turned up dead in the back yard and we were now at 14, 6 of which are in fact roosters.

It was time I turn the tables and make it a bad winter for predators.  The fisher found its way to the taxidermist and then the fox paid a visit in broad daylight to take out one more of our mature hens. So we are down to 13 and the fox and I have yet to meet  face to face despite his nightly visits. We also now have a pair of bald eagles that have decided to take up residence near by.

So what has this past year taught me about being a “chicken farmer”? Well honestly, the loss of 49 birds in less than a year hasn’t taught me much, I knew this was possible and was surprised to not have had many predator issues sooner. It has however been a very educational experience for my children. As you may know by now we are homeschooling our three children. Raising chickens has been eye opening for them. They got to watch the baby bird grow inside the egg while in the incubator, then they got to watch their “babies” hatch, care for them as they grew, name them and then find out they were eaten by an animal. At first this was hard on them, they cried obviously. Soon however they began to say things like “It’s ok I will see Rose in heaven, she is with Jesus now” and “Darn chickens always getting eaten, when are we going to eat knuckle head?”

So no I am not a huge fan of chickens, the eggs are nice, especially when the powers that be decide they need to up the price to 8 dollars a dozen (do you remember when they were 89 cents?). I don’t enjoy collecting frozen and fractured eggs on days that are below zero. I don’t like tracking foxes and fishers through the snow in sub zero temperatures. I don’t enjoy watching bald eagles soaring over head waiting for freedom to come feed on my remaining birds, while it would be an honor I just don’t want to.  I do however enjoy the education it is giving my children about responsibility or chores and living things depending on you for survival. The circle of life, where our food comes from and the value of life, even if it is a chickens life, it has value of some sorts. I can see their respect for animals, food and nature growing as a result and that is something you cant teach a kid by lecturing them about it over and over again in a classroom.