Cornflower
Chirping
Hazy Memories = Frozen Chickens
I like to listen to my elders, but I've learned to be very careful about their information. Sometimes their memory isn't as complete as it needs to be.
Times have changed dramatically in my town. People here used to farm, garden, pasture cattle and horses, raise chickens, and keep bees right on the street where I live. Now it's not possible and it hasn't been since the 60's and 70's.
First that went was livestock. Horses, cows, and chickens got banned. I remember petting an grandfathered pony on my walk home from grade school as a little kid in the 70's. It was strange to me then that a pony was allowed to be kept in someone's side yard in the middle of town. That's where I began learning about change and grandfathering ordinance actions.
The last of the steam trains rolled through our town the year after I was born and how I wish I had some memory of that baleful whistle when I hear one, but I don't. I have visited the foundations of an old coal tower, and a standing building that was the oil house (now gone) in my preteens but nothing of the great steam era is left. Even the tracks that was theirs have all been replaced for the diesels that run through on that old line.
A neighbor of ours tried to keep chickens. She lives at the end of the street up against the woods that were once pastures. Our block is on the edge of town, but around three corners is the town hall. You would think someone could sneak in chickens at her place, but she was turned in both times she tried it. Once when I was knee-high to a grasshopper, and again just 15 years ago, and had to get rid of all her free rangers both times.
The recent chicken scandals in the news have had me and mother talking about how ridiculous it is that we're not allowed to keep chickens here. Some properties around still have their old chicken coop buildings as standing testimony that once upon a time, people raised chickens in town.
My mother grew up with chickens, a chicken coop behind the garage (both now gone) facing south. She's told me tales of hating it when her father butchered them, cutting off their heads and laughing at how she ran away from the traumatic scene.
I was telling her that I didn't think we can keep chickens (if we dared) out in an unheated coop all winter. Our winters can get down to -40F/C and chickens like our temperatures. They can get frostbite if there isn't thick enough bedding, but I think that's not even enough. Something wasn't adding up, if people kept chickens here, why are all the coops so far away from the houses and are nothing better than outbuildings or rabbit hutches? It doesn't square with the chickens' environmental requirements.
I know we see people keeping chickens all winter in hoop houses with some heavy clear plastic stapled over, and calling it good. But I've squinted my eyes and found these homesteader all live in southern states. I see farms (as opposed to townies) have their chicken coops attached to their houses. I have a friend who raises chickens and he's kept his chickens in his enclosed front porch where he has an open dog door in the kitchen wall to let the pups out and go crazy when someone knocks on the door. A half wall and screen keeps them off the landing. He was keeping his chickens there and the wood heat from the house would warm that area very nicely on our coldest days.
So why have things changed in chicken keeping now? Why do people have to heat their chicken coops now but didn't back in the olden days. My mother insists you can keep chickens in unheated chicken coops because people "did it all the time" when she was a kid.
Then an idea struck me. What if the chickens people kept in town were meat chickens? The image of my grandfather butchering the birds is probably set in the autumn as temperatures are getting too cold for them at night. Then in the spring he would buy new chicks and raise them, probably for 10 cents a dozen, and graze them all summer. They'd be ready in 6 to 12 weeks. He might have been able to do it twice in the season if he wanted.
As I look at the maturity rate for egg laying hens, I see it can take 18 weeks for a hen to start laying. That's all of our fair weather here if started in March when the chicks are being sold in the farm stores. We're going back into winter at the time she only just starts to lay! That's a year of her egg laying life wasted, but you're feeding her all the same.
We would have to start hatching chicks in the winter in our houses and keep them to maturity, timed just right to have them ready to lay at the same time they can live in the coop in order to get a summer of egg laying. But then comes the autumn and then where do they go? It can't be done in an unheated coop with short daylight hours and winter weather that stays below freezing for months! Surely people didn't take all that time and do all that juggling. Mom doesn't talk about keeping chicks and pullets in the house all winter.
That explains the chicken coops attached to farm houses that I see in the country side. If you want eggs around here, the chicken coop is part of your house.
But the quandary has brought clarity to the way people lived back in the day. And now a couple generations have passed and lost that information. Recently new generations are trying to reach back and figure out how to revive that old economy - the old days of self-sufficiency. Mistakes will be made. My friend had to find an emergency shelter for his chickens on his front porch when he found out his hen house was too cold. It's a good thing he didn't have a lot.
When we hear the old-timers say, "we used to keep chickens right here in town in our own backyards," They neglect to say, 'we used to keep chickens for meat.' They weren't overwintered. No one remembers that part of it.
Now I wonder about that cow pasture out back...
I like to listen to my elders, but I've learned to be very careful about their information. Sometimes their memory isn't as complete as it needs to be.
Times have changed dramatically in my town. People here used to farm, garden, pasture cattle and horses, raise chickens, and keep bees right on the street where I live. Now it's not possible and it hasn't been since the 60's and 70's.
First that went was livestock. Horses, cows, and chickens got banned. I remember petting an grandfathered pony on my walk home from grade school as a little kid in the 70's. It was strange to me then that a pony was allowed to be kept in someone's side yard in the middle of town. That's where I began learning about change and grandfathering ordinance actions.
The last of the steam trains rolled through our town the year after I was born and how I wish I had some memory of that baleful whistle when I hear one, but I don't. I have visited the foundations of an old coal tower, and a standing building that was the oil house (now gone) in my preteens but nothing of the great steam era is left. Even the tracks that was theirs have all been replaced for the diesels that run through on that old line.
A neighbor of ours tried to keep chickens. She lives at the end of the street up against the woods that were once pastures. Our block is on the edge of town, but around three corners is the town hall. You would think someone could sneak in chickens at her place, but she was turned in both times she tried it. Once when I was knee-high to a grasshopper, and again just 15 years ago, and had to get rid of all her free rangers both times.
The recent chicken scandals in the news have had me and mother talking about how ridiculous it is that we're not allowed to keep chickens here. Some properties around still have their old chicken coop buildings as standing testimony that once upon a time, people raised chickens in town.
My mother grew up with chickens, a chicken coop behind the garage (both now gone) facing south. She's told me tales of hating it when her father butchered them, cutting off their heads and laughing at how she ran away from the traumatic scene.
I was telling her that I didn't think we can keep chickens (if we dared) out in an unheated coop all winter. Our winters can get down to -40F/C and chickens like our temperatures. They can get frostbite if there isn't thick enough bedding, but I think that's not even enough. Something wasn't adding up, if people kept chickens here, why are all the coops so far away from the houses and are nothing better than outbuildings or rabbit hutches? It doesn't square with the chickens' environmental requirements.
I know we see people keeping chickens all winter in hoop houses with some heavy clear plastic stapled over, and calling it good. But I've squinted my eyes and found these homesteader all live in southern states. I see farms (as opposed to townies) have their chicken coops attached to their houses. I have a friend who raises chickens and he's kept his chickens in his enclosed front porch where he has an open dog door in the kitchen wall to let the pups out and go crazy when someone knocks on the door. A half wall and screen keeps them off the landing. He was keeping his chickens there and the wood heat from the house would warm that area very nicely on our coldest days.
So why have things changed in chicken keeping now? Why do people have to heat their chicken coops now but didn't back in the olden days. My mother insists you can keep chickens in unheated chicken coops because people "did it all the time" when she was a kid.
Then an idea struck me. What if the chickens people kept in town were meat chickens? The image of my grandfather butchering the birds is probably set in the autumn as temperatures are getting too cold for them at night. Then in the spring he would buy new chicks and raise them, probably for 10 cents a dozen, and graze them all summer. They'd be ready in 6 to 12 weeks. He might have been able to do it twice in the season if he wanted.
As I look at the maturity rate for egg laying hens, I see it can take 18 weeks for a hen to start laying. That's all of our fair weather here if started in March when the chicks are being sold in the farm stores. We're going back into winter at the time she only just starts to lay! That's a year of her egg laying life wasted, but you're feeding her all the same.
We would have to start hatching chicks in the winter in our houses and keep them to maturity, timed just right to have them ready to lay at the same time they can live in the coop in order to get a summer of egg laying. But then comes the autumn and then where do they go? It can't be done in an unheated coop with short daylight hours and winter weather that stays below freezing for months! Surely people didn't take all that time and do all that juggling. Mom doesn't talk about keeping chicks and pullets in the house all winter.
That explains the chicken coops attached to farm houses that I see in the country side. If you want eggs around here, the chicken coop is part of your house.
But the quandary has brought clarity to the way people lived back in the day. And now a couple generations have passed and lost that information. Recently new generations are trying to reach back and figure out how to revive that old economy - the old days of self-sufficiency. Mistakes will be made. My friend had to find an emergency shelter for his chickens on his front porch when he found out his hen house was too cold. It's a good thing he didn't have a lot.
When we hear the old-timers say, "we used to keep chickens right here in town in our own backyards," They neglect to say, 'we used to keep chickens for meat.' They weren't overwintered. No one remembers that part of it.
Now I wonder about that cow pasture out back...
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