Just What Happened to June?

Be warned, if you have a soft stomach or prefer not to know where your food comes from, maybe don't participate in this post....

As some of you may know, June was one of our first 13 chickens and one of two Australorps. June, much to my denial, surely turned out to be a rooster. We did as we had before with first Spencer and then Johnny and asked our friend if she had room on her farm for yet another rooster. Sadly, this time she denied us. I can't blame her really, she had her own roosters before we added our own to her troupe. I supposed this meant it was up to us to figure out an alternative route of dealing with unwanted roosters.

Luckily for our friend Chris, we knew just what to do.

I started by doing a bit of internet searching for a do-it-yourself solution. I found this wonderful blog about a family that has done it themselves with detailed instructions. How-to-Butcher-Chicken-Easy-Way helped me figure this all out. Now Josh and I made our own changes to the processes with Chris's help.

There are no pictures of either the butchering or the recipe, we simply forgot to take any... and our hands were full.... and sorry, I can't really remember what I did for the recipe, so I can't share it...

Last Summer and Fall (2010)

First we felt the need to add some chickens to our coop....

We started with 5 pullets we got from a guy in CT at a farm called Horsefeathers. Two were Black Australorps, two Black Langshan and one Light Brahma. And we found 8 on Craigslist in northern VT that needed a new home. Two were Buff Orpingtons, two Easter-Eggers (probably Ameraucanas), two Plymouth Rocks and two White Laced Wyandottes. All of them are considered "Standard" breeds which simply means they are full sized as opposed to the smaller bantam sizes. 13 was one over our permited limit. Quickly it became apparent that Spencer (the black and white "easter-egger" on the very top left) was not a hen and we had to find him a new home. Soon after, Johnny (one of the black australorps) also got named rooster and found the same home. The other australorp, June, later revealed herself as a him and I'll brief you in a later post of what transpired with June.

One of the reasons we had decided to buy a house was because we always wanted a dog. It's hard to get permission from landlords to have dogs. So after a couple of visits to the local Humane Society we met our guy.

Here's Stormy as a new addition to the family.... such a cutie. Stormy's guessed birthdate is April 7 2006. He is a Basset Hound Mix, we're guessing Coonhound may have had a part in his making.

Chicken Coop

I've always wanted chickens. So the first thing Josh did for me when we got into our new house was to build me a coop. Here are the pix:

This is the part of the backyard we decided to use for the coop and the run.

Here's Josh working hard on building the coop. Just about everything we used to build this hen house was purchased at our local re-use store, ReNew. The only exception is the plywood.

Here it is finished with the pullets we filled it with!

Photo Montage

Here's a photo montage of what we saw right before we bought our house in June 2010...