I grew up in rural areas and watched my grandparents and dad butcher hogs and chickens. My husband and sons butcher deer after hunting season. So while I haven't actually learned that particular skill set, the concept isn't foreign to me. I used to love eating chicken. My grandma would go out to the chicken house, catch a chicken, butcher it, scald it, pluck the feathers, cut it up and fry it in a lard-filled cast iron skillet. I've never eaten chicken so delicious since my childhood. These days I honestly don't eat chicken often, because the commercially-raised meat from the grocery store is flavorless and fatty. Grandma's fresh fried chicken set the bar high!
When I first began homesteading, I found the Pioneering Today podcast with Melissa K. Norris on Spotify (also melissaknorris.com) and listened to almost every episode. Melissa is a wealth of knowledge and produces great "how-to" content that is extremely valuable. I bought her books, found her YouTube channel and dug through those resources for information. Through her content I encountered Joel Salatin of polyfacefarms.com and his system for pasture-raised, organically-fed meat chickens. I was intrigued, but hesitant. Could I actually butcher chickens after spending months raising them from cute little chicks?
Two additional women homesteaders who inspire me are Shaye Elliott of theelliotthomestead.com and Angela Reed of www.parisiennefarmgirl.com. These lovely ladies host and produce the Homemaker Chic podcast and listening to them I became convinced I could remain a well-rounded woman who appreciates literature, art, and music and still butcher a chicken to provide quality food for my family. Funny how I thought I could only do one or the other instead of both.
Having worked through those mental blocks, I began raising thirty chickens to be butchered later this month. This was to be a trial run to track costs and gain new skills. If successful, I would build another chicken tractor (mobile coop) to use next spring and summer allowing me to raise enough chicken to sell in my community. My goal is to create diverse income streams to grow my homesteading business and in doing so, gain new knowledge and skills - my favorite things!
Unfortunately, my first attempt to pasture-raise chickens in a chicken tractor was a disaster! I came home one afternoon after running an errand and found that my dog chewed through the chicken wire covering the side of the tractor and killed every last chick. I was beyond devastated! I cried, penned up my dog, and cleaned up tiny chick carcasses - an awful experience. It wasn't the financial loss that hurt the most, it was the fact that I'd put a lot of hard work into building the chicken tractor being sure to follow advice from the experts. I also invested a lot of mental energy and felt emotionally responsible for the lives of the tiny creatures I was raising. But I learned a few things as well: tailor expert advice to your particular circumstances (I have a bird dog, so heavier wire on my tractor is a must), think ahead to possible scenarios that could be problematic and plan for those, and remember that your first try at something new won't produce perfect results. Give yourself a little grace and be open to input from those around you.
This was a particularly humbling experience for me. I had decided not to finish this blog post, but then realized that maybe someone else could benefit from my mistakes. Through the winter, I'll revamp the chicken tractor using hardware cloth/hail screen rather than chicken wire and add tin to portions of the coop for more protection from rain and wind. I also plan to run electric fencing around the tractor to keep predators and pets away. This will all require more work when moving the tractor, but the result will be well worth the effort.
Have you put your hands to a new venture recently? Did it work as planned? Let me know in the comments below - I love to hear from readers!
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