Chickens

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My friend invited me to see his chickens.  I thought he just had a few chickens at his house.  I already knew that he had one cow and had seen that.  So on this day, after visiting for a while at his house, I was surprised when he said we could go see the chickens, and we left his house.  We walked down the narrow dirt street between houses, then walked through a field of cauliflower growing, past some people threshing wheat, across the main road, down another dirt lane to a brick two story structure.

The long rectangular building of brick is surrounded by fields and trees.  The windows were all covered with plastic.  My friend opened the door and let me go inside.  To my wonder and amazement, the building was full of chickens walking around, clucking, and eating. My friend got right to work measuring out some food for the chickens while I snapped photos.  I marveled at the difference between his chicken coop as compared to pictures of the chicken farms in the US with chickens all shoved together as tightly as possible with their beaks cut off.

The plastic covering the windows was to keep the cold out and the heat in.  When I set foot inside, the warmth was quite noticeable.  My friend mentioned that when the weather outside turns hot, then he sets up some water tubing all around the chicken house.  The tubing has small little holes in it and when the wind blows (or if he sets up fans), then the chickens inside get misted with water.  Its a homemade air conditioning system to keep the chickens cool!!

A couple weeks later, he sold all of these chickens.  I'm not sure if they were going to a bigger farmer or they were being sold for slaughter or to sell for eggs.  I do know that he had mentioned keeping chickens for their eggs, but I think the chickens weren't producing enough eggs to make it profitable or even break even.  So now he raises chickens to sell.

19 Jan 2011 - Chickens

Several days later my friend told me that he had bought some new chicks and I was invited to come and see them.  I don't think I've ever been close to any cute little chicks.  There were 1000 little chicks all making peep-peep noises in their new upstairs home. There was one black chick among the sea of yellow chicks.  Two of the chicks didn't survive.  They appeared to me to be premature (if that's possible in the world of chickens).  They didn't appear to be fully developed and couldn't stand up.

I watched as my friend did his work with the chicks. He had put down newspapers on the floor which were covered with chick waste, so he quickly rolled up the newspaper to throw out.  Then he set up food for the chicks, washed out their water containers and refilled those.  He had a metal can sitting on two bricks with some charred pieces of wood inside.  That had been used to keep the chicks warm the previous night as the temperature that night had dropped.  He said he probably wouldn't have to use the fire to keep the chicks warm the night of my visit, either because it wasn' t that cold or because the chicks had generated enough heat to keep the chicken coop warm. Each time one of us walked around, the chicks would all race toward a corner and huddle together.

23 Jan - hmm, I think there's something different about you!

Chicks huddled together in the corner next to the cardboard wall temporarily dividing the chicken coop.

Two "premature" chicks that were two weak to survive

Chicks feeding out of two different containers

Eight days later, I returned to see the chicks.  I was amazed, again, at how fast they had grown.  The cute, yellow chicks had now lost most of their bright, yellow down and now were starting to get plump. They were well on their way to turning into chickens, like the ones I saw during my first visit here.  I mentioned to my friend that most people in the US don't ever see where their food comes from.  It was wonderful to have the opportunity see this part of the process of raising chickens! 

31 Jan 2011 - Getting bigger!