Farm-fresh Friday: Rule #1: Don't name your food...

Yesterday the official separation of the egg and meat birds happened.  It happened for 2 reasons...  1.  Because the meat birds are growing way bigger way faster than the egg birds, which makes them big food-hogging bullies, and 2. because one of the little egg birds figured out how to use one of the giant meat birds as a launch pad, and bounced her way out of the box at 3 in the morning.  She was all kinds of pissed off about being out of her warm box and made a big (loud) enough stink about it to wake me up, make me get out of bed, and put her back where she belonged.  

So now they're in separate containers, and most importantly, they have a lid.  

Chickens are not difficult creatures to take care of, but nevertheless I'm a little impressed with myself for making it through the first week, learning as much as I have, and only causing the death of one of them.  In that death though, we learned something else; that my son will make an excellent farmer someday.  You see, I was totally dreading having to tell him that one of the chicks had died.  He was, as I feared he would, starting to like them, and had even started naming some of the egg birds.  So, I very carefully broke the news to him that one of the meat birds had died, and you know what he asked?  "Did you eat it?"  No, by the way, we did not harvest the bounty of a singular chicken nugget.  But it was nice to know that he can get attached enough to be friendly, and treat them with kindness and respect, and still understand that they're going to be our food. 

 Since he proved that he could handle the life-cycle of farming, I let him go ahead and name some of the egg birds (and I named the rest).  So, we committed one of the cardinal sins of farming; we've named our food... 

Meet Rosie, Starr (after Ringo, because The Kid is awesome and loves The Beatles), June (because she's one of the black ones, and I like Johnny Cash, but she's a girl so I couldn't name her Johnny after the Man In Black, so I gave her his wife's name), Velma (from Scooby Doo), Polly (because the movie Along Came Polly is where the term "sharted" came to light, and this chick had the most severe case of sticky-butt of the two we had to clean up last weekend.  charming, I know), and we have one little red one that we're still in search of a name for.

I'm calling this box of meat birds Jurassic Park.  One name to encompass the whole bunch.  Seriously, Folks, someday take a good look at a 1-week-old meat bird.  They look just like little fuzzy Velociraptors.  Frankly, I'm a little frightened of them...

Thanks for stopping by,

-Lindsey