Chickens

I think the reason I often think of chickens when I think back to my early years on the farm is because gathering eggs and taking care of little chicks was about the first regular everyday chore assigned to a youngster. By the time I was five it was my job to gather the eggs—and it was understood that I was to take this responsibility seriously and not have to be reminded or checked up on. Everyone in the family had his/her daily chores and this was one of mine. By the time I was seven I was the “primary caregiver” for three or four hundred scatterbrained baby chicks. By the age of nine I could be expected to catch a frying chicken, chop its head off, scald it, pick off the feathers, singe off the hair, dress and cut it up and fry it for the family supper—all without help from anyone. Sometimes I think that it is unfortunate that all kids can’t grow up on a family farm; it’s a great place to learn about responsibility.

In the thirties all farms in the area had some chickens. Chickens were a rather minor part of a farm’s operation but they provided eggs and meat for the family, plus a little extra income for the farm wife from the sale of surplus eggs and chickens. At that time all of the local grocery stores would take eggs “in trade” for groceries and many of them would buy live chickens. On January 1st, 1931, Mother reported in her diary that she had tallied up her chicken, egg and cream receipts for 1930 as follows:

Chickens $241.82

Eggs 102.23

Cream 212.33

Total $556.38

At first glance these amounts don’t seem to be a very big deal. But when you consider inflation since the thirties at something on the order of ten fold—who today wouldn’t like an extra $5,563.80 in their annual grocery budget?

Another factor: back in those days nobody counted calories. Eggs were a much more prominent factor in our diets. Fried eggs were passed around the table in a big platter. Three or four fried eggs along with a few sausage patties per person was a rather usual breakfast. (Really, really good, too!! Imagine eating such rich food with absolutely no sense of guilt!)

I remember the chick incubator that we kept down in the cellar. (It was there because its heat control was manual--no “automatics” in those days -- and the room temperature in the cellar was more constant than anywhere else.) It was heated by a kerosene (we called it “coal oil”) heater that was supposed to keep the eggs at 101 degrees. It took 21 days to hatch the eggs and they had to be turned end for end every day. What a lot of excitement for us kids when the hatching started! The chicks came out of the egg wet and rather sorry looking, but within a couple of hours they dried out and were cute little fluffy things looking for something to eat. Day-old chicks are gorgeous—but that is the very height of their beauty. From that first day on they rapidly lose their attractiveness and in adolescence become rather ugly and silly. In maturity chickens look quite a bit better, but they are still by far the dumbest of all farmyard animals.

Each year we raised about 300 to 400 baby chicks in the brooder house. As I recall it was about the size of an eight foot by ten foot shed--such as some suburbanites use today for storing lawnmowers, etc. There was a kerosene brooder heater with a big round apron for the chicks to stay under to keep warm. (If chicks get chilly they will pile up in a corner and those on the bottom will suffocate.) There was no thermostat, so the flame had to be manually adjusted whenever there was a change in the outside temperature. One night we were all coming home from Bethany and when we got to about three-fourths of a mile from home we were astonished to see what appeared to be a big fire at our place. We thought our house was on fire! We rushed on home and found to our relief that the house was OK, but that the brooder house and all the little chicks were a total loss.

Before leaving the subject of baby chicks I should mention the four-legged little chick that Dad preserved in a little jar of formaldehyde. He had come across a hidden hen nest that appeared to have been abandoned. Assuming that the eggs were rotten, he was throwing them away when he noticed that when one egg broke it had a chicken in it that was about ready to hatch. When he looked more closely he was amazed to see that this chick had four legs. I have never heard of any other four-legged chicken.

As the brooder chickens were growing up everyone looked forward to the day when they would be big enough to fry. The first fried chicken of the year was a really big deal because without any refrigeration in those days we hadn't had any fresh meat since shortly after the last hog butchering--which had to be done during cold weather. (We had sugar-cured meat, home-canned meat, etc., but not fresh meat.) So that first fried chicken of the year really tasted especially great!

A final chicken item: One day a man came to buy eggs for hatching. While getting the eggs ready for him, Mother wanted John to show him our chickens, but somehow she got her words mixed. We always teased Mother for saying, “Take Mr. Oaks out and show him to the chickens!”