ABOUT US CIRCLETOP FARM LIFE - RINEYVILLE KY

CIRCLETOP FARM LIFE - Rineyville Kentucky

Chicken Chuckles

Our venture into our farm products started with my unspoken desire to sit down at my own table and serve my family a meal that had been prepared from products raised by our own hands. Partly because it was the wholesome goodness I craved, and the satisfaction of knowing we provided for ourselves.

We were already getting eggs from a few chicken, and since we’d ordered some new chicks to keep the eggs supply going, we decided to order some birds just for the meat. I hated the taste and spongy feel of the chicken we were buying at the local grocery, and longed for the taste I’d grown up with.

Mark was so excited when he said he’d found a good price on some birds, and he’d ordered them ‘straight run’….hoping to get half pullets for eggs and half roosters for meat. Or so we hoped. About eight weeks later, our 50 new birds tallied up to 1 hen and 49 roosters…what a nightmare!

Mark had dressed out wild turkey before, so we were up to the task of dressing out these roosters. RIGHT! But after the butchering job we managed on bird number one, we knew we’d have to take the other 48 somewhere to be processed. That’s when we found [SS Enterprises]a USDA processing plant….and they were within an hour’s drive.

Until the birds weighed 4 or 5 pounds, we had to keep them separated from the regular flock because the few laying hens we had were becoming way too popular. The roosters were rounded up, provided free choice food and water, and stayed cooped up until they reached processing weight, and off to slaughter [they went in the back of our two-horse trailer.]

Visions of a plump home grown chicken basting in the rotisserie were replaced with the reality of [our birds lined up in the processing room] with scrawny bony breasts bared for all to see, and the plump juicy birds we’d envisioned were being packaged up and readied for the customer ahead of us…”Hey! What kinda birds are those?”… ”That’s what we want!

Our next flock of meat birds would be the Cornish Rock Cross. And so it was. The first flock of our CRC were raised without a hitch. Our mortality rate was minimal, the feed conversion was good, and we averaged a 6 pound bird at 10 weeks. Little bit on the heavy side, we decided to only grow to 8 weeks with the next batch of birds.

We hurriedly ordered a second batch of 50 birds, reared those chicks up to 8 weeks, and right at week 7, I walked into the chicken yard to find only 8 CRC birds. No feathers, no dead birds lying around, just 8 birds, and the littlest ones we had at that. Where’d all the fat ones go?

My first reaction was they’d escaped, but they were too fat to go anywhere, but we looked anyway and while we walked the fields we ended up finding 33 piles of feathers, where coyotes had helped themselves to the birds. How’d they know the only night the gate would be left open?

They didn’t. Apparently they’d be stalking the perimeter for a while. While we were disappointed, and sick at heart, we were NEVER discouraged. Our next step was to find ourselves a guard dog, [Molly] and if we ordered quick, we may have just enough time to get another flock under way before the cold weather came upon us.

This batch of 50 birds was a total loss. It was entirely too late in the season, and with the construction of the kennel going on, we lost most birds because extension cords were unplugged and heat lamps turned off, and we ended up with 13 birds from 75 total. Not hardly worth the trip to the processor, but we remembered the ‘butcher job’ and loaded them up in a dog kennel in the back of the pickup. (I had to talk Mark out of taking the birds down in the back of his little Honda CRX that gets 55 mpg. Can you imagine the smell?)

Still not discouraged, our next flock of birds will be raised outdoor on grass, under protected, movable chicken yards, and they will be fed on a twice a day feeding schedule instead of free choice. Many birds we lost were due to heart attacks from the birds having free choice feed 24/7 and they got too fat too fast. It will take longer to produce a 4-5 pound bird, but it’ll be healthier, and the living environment will be cleaner, resulting in a happier bird, and a better product for the consumer.

Goat Graces

After reading and worrying about the hormones and antibiotics and health issues associated with homogenized cow’s milk, and not being really big milk drinkers, I thought owning a milk goat would provide our family with enough pure healthy milk I set out to find myself a goat. Lo and behold, we had neighbors wanting to downsize their milk goat herd, and off I went. Everyone (but me) knows a goat can get lonely, so I was talked into two, goats who were already in milk. [Tabby and Milk] came into our lives and they were the perfect goats to get a couple of greenhorns started into milking. I’ll never forget that cold February morning, it’s 20 degrees outside, and I’ve got to get these goats milked before their udders burst. I’d milked a cow many years before, but geez, this was not the idyllic scene I’d imagined. This was work, and it was cold and it wasn’t easy. My arms were killing me, and I feared I was going to run out of sweet feed before we got that first milking done! Jud and I managed to get the two of them milked enough to release the pressure, but it took an hour for us to get a quart of milk from the pair. Boy! were our hands and arms sore the next day! I can’t imagine how those two goats must have felt. Patiently, they allowed us to perfect our milking technique and Jud, my 12 year old son, can out-milk anyone! Milking time has become the ‘dinner table’ time for us. When the weather’s mild, and we’re all three in the barn milking, or tending to our animals it’s one of the most pleasant times we can have as a family. We catch up on all those little things we missed. We love sharing milking time with our farm visitors, in the hopes that they can take a farm memory of their own home with them. Tabby and Milk are as patient with strangers, as they were that first time with us! They regularly give us a gallon of milk at each milking and from the fresh milk, came yummy cheese and yogurt, butter and cottage cheese. We ended up feeding excess milk to chickens, dogs, and hated to see it ‘wasted’, so we began offering it to others. We have several customers who come regularly during the milking season, and rarely do I throw milk down the sink anymore.

Rabbit Reasoning

From the goats, we had rabbits….let me explain. In the country, you meet folks, they have ‘things’, and soon you have ‘things’ too. That’s how we started in rabbits. When we bought the goats, those folks had rabbits, so we ended up with rabbits too. Mark built a nice setup for the rabbits, increased his brood, and started his bunny business. With the intentions of raising live rabbits to sell to commercial processors, we found ourselves at first with more rabbits than we could eat ourselves, but not enough to make a profit at the hatcheries. So we froze the excess. Living in a multi-cultural community near Fort Knox , many of our customers are German and were raised on rabbit meat. We have been able to provide them with a much nicer rabbit than they are able to purchase locally. Rabbit meat is delicious, and really does ‘taste just like chicken’ but the protein and fat levels are much healthier for you. Finding different ways to cook it is challenging with two picky eaters at the table, but we do. My favorite is the [Rabbit Scaloppini] ...ummm! We raise young rabbits as food, pets, and replacement stock. We use their poo for fertilizer in our gardens, and will venture into tanning the pelts in the future. Oh no….I see snuggling up in a rabbit robe next the fire.