Have you ever wondered what the inside of a chicken coop looks like… while the chickens are inside? This is not something I have ever considered, but, since we have been homesteading, I have had the opportunity to understand the life of chickens on an intimate scale.
For approximately a month (or more, depending on who you ask), our initial six hen flock luxuriated under a heat lamp in a large plastic tub on our one-and-only bathroom floor. Giggle and Wiggle loved to sit on buckets around the brooder, clucking and slipping the birds pieces of grass and dried mealworms. This arrangement became more interesting as the birds grew large enough to escape the tub, and a wire mesh top was added. The nights were still quite cool by the time my patience had worn thin. These toddler chicks were loud and the chirping, squawking, and wrestling were bothersome. To retain marital bliss, my precious husband moved the birds to their moveable coop outdoors. He had spent several weekends building this palace, using some antique wheels we found on our property and crafting wooden shakes for the roof.
But the cool nights concerned him, so he put their heat lamp in the coop and personally helped the chicks into the coop at day’s end, cooing a chicken lullaby all the while. Then he locked the coop’s inner door and the door to the enclosed chicken yard. Still, he worried about the possibility of predators or other problems. I realized that his concern for the chickens eclipsed my own when he presented me with the parent unit to our expensive video baby monitor, proudly displaying the coop interior. “Let me know if you hear any noises overnight,” said he, “and wake me up if you do.”
Fast forward a year or so. Our flock has grown, but is mysteriously lazy in the egg department. The birds now live on pasture and are supplemented with expensive (and apparently delicious) organic, soy-free feed. We can’t seem to figure out which birds are laying and which are not, and the gossip around the henhouse is that someone is actually eating the freshly laid eggs. So a game camera was installed in a corner of the coop. Over the course of three days, over five thousand images were captured! We reviewed them all while drinking wine (wouldn’t you?) and came to the following conclusions: (1) One of the chickens is a wiggly sleeper and an early riser (2) a broody hen truly doesn’t leave the eggs and (3) only one bird is laying eggs. Here is a picture of the laying chicken, glad to have something to look at while she completes her task. You can just barely see the broody hen in the far left nest box.
For your enjoyment, Gentle Reader, here is the wiggly hen.
Now it is November and theoretical egg production would be slowing, except you can’t get much slower than our daily average of zero. Another problem is that we have more than one rooster from the batch of chicks that hatched in late June. So we thanked God for the blessing of a happy chicken life well-lived and killed a rooster.
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I roasted the rooster for three hours at 250, then for 40 minutes at 375. The meat was delicious, falling off the bone and tender. After it cooled some, I pulled all the meat off the bones and put it in the refrigerator. The carcass, the peeled feet and various other parts went into my crock pot with apple cider vinegar and water for about 12 hours on low.
That fed us for several days:
- For lunch, I minced up some of the meat and fried it inside quesadillas along with leftover rice, black beans and corn.
- That night, I cooked some mushrooms and green peppers and served the leftover rice mixture and more chopped chicken as fajitas.
- The next day for lunch I made chicken salad sandwiches. Here is the recipe, loosely adapted from one contained in America’s Test Kitchen’s book The New Best Recipe
Rooster Salad
- Appx. 3 lbs cooked chicken, shredded or pulsed in a food processor
- 2 celery ribs, cut small
- 1 shallot or other small onion
- 2 Tablespoons lemon juice
- 3 Tablespoons minced fresh parsley
- 3/4 cup mayonnaise (I made homemade mayonnaise in my trusty food processor, but Hellman’s works too)
- Salt and pepper to taste
Mix all of the ingredients and serve.
What’s your favorite way to serve chicken? We have plans to eat a few more soon and I could use some suggestions!