They arrived as little puff balls of black and yellow. Cute little peeps.
We unfortunately lost one on our first day due to my overzealous heating protocol. But I learned an important lesson – in the heat of summer days, they are plenty fine without an extra heat source.
They grew much faster than the Layer Girls and had a bit more sass too. Feisty little ones.
Of course we got them unsexed, and later found out we had 12 cockerels to 7 pullets, which likely explained the difference in flock energy.
“Don’t you feel bad that you’re going to be eating them?” A friend asked as we watched the cute little chicks peck about.
“No not really,” I started, “We’re giving them a much better life than anything you can find in the store.”
We were living by the new motto: “Give them an amazing life with one bad day.” And we intended to make good on our promise to them.
We would raise them with all the love and kindness we were raising our Layer Girls with. We would feed them handsomely, move them to fresh grass every day, and protect them from predators and unruly weather. And when the day came, we would dispatch them humanely and with honor.
We were giving them a mansion to live in and feeding them steak dinners in comparison to the treatment conventionally (and even most “natural” or “organic”) raised chickens get, which is nothing short of nightmarish.
They would be allowed to be chickens through and through, not mongrels of enormous size who can’t walk at 8 weeks old, and whose beaks are cut off so they don’t peck the nearest bird to death due to extremely tight living conditions.
They would have the joy of feeling grass between their toes and eating bugs straight from the ground, a luxury factory farmed birds can only dream of.
They wouldn’t be filled with antibiotics and pharmaceuticals, because when you give living beings the right nutrition and environment, it’s not necessary.
And while we chose not to name them individually, to help keep from becoming emotionally attached to any particular one, we still had generic names for the two breeds we purchased.
Our son named all the black ones who were Partridge Rocks, Donalds. And all the yellow ones who were New Hampshires, Clouds.
And we are committed to doing our best by you, our sweet little Meat Babies.