Circle M Farm

The title of this post will likely inspire a host of misguided hits on the website via search engines. Sorry to disappoint – this is a story about mail-order chickens.

Inspired by some archaic chicken butchering information I acquired watching Julia Child’s vintage television show, The French Chef, I’ve placed an order today.

It’s quite exciting. Some of my favorite chapters of favorite books by favorite rural writers have to do with picking up chicks at the post office in a peeping cardboard box. The scene is perhaps one of the most familiar and loved images of our romantic American pastoral history. Barbara Kingsolver writes an updated version in her city-to-country memoir, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, and calls the chapter “The Birds and the Bees” since a neighbor receives four crates of worker bees on the same day her daughter receives a box of chicks.

“You’d better come get this one,” the post mistress tells Kingsolver over the phone the morning the chicks arrive, “It’s making a pretty good racket.”

Nowadays, just a few people even in our tiny agricultural community keep chickens, but it used to be that most families in small towns raised a modest home flock. The mail-order poultry companies would deliver chicks to a particular area all on the same day, and instead of one box making a racket, the entire one-room post office would be floor-to-ceiling full of chirping packages.

Though I’ve read many such accounts, and heard similar stories from my husband’s rural Missouri relatives, I’ve never had the experience myself. The first year we arrived at the farm, I impulse-bought a dozen fluffy chicks, five diminutive guinea keets, three squat ducklings and one adorable yellow gosling from the incubator bins at a Farm and Fleet in Dodgeville, the closest town near us of a size big enough to host a farm supply store. These stores have “Chick Days” in early spring, which are publicized events that inspire waiting lines before the doors open. New to the country, I got lucky and happened to be in need of dog food shortly after the birds arrived.

The incubators (actually just stock tanks heated from above by clip-on trouble lights) were labeled with matched baby and adult pictures of the breeds hopping about inside. But I just willy-nilly scooped up the cutest peeps in the bunch and took them home. Three years later, this farm is home to about 40 chickens, four guineas, one duck and three geese, some from that original group, others dropped off from homes that couldn’t keep them, and many that were born here in the hedgerows where I don’t hunt for eggs. I have too many roosters, many of whom get to live because they are so beautiful, and others that will join their brethren in my freezer when I have time to catch them up. I always have more than my share of roosters because nearby Madison allows households to keep four hens a piece, but no roosters, and by reputation I’m a foster mother of sorts for these illegal fowl.

But this year, guided by Julia’s “To Roast a Chicken” episode, I’ve made a first attempt at an educated guess about what breeds would best suit my purposes here on the farm. I took a lot of notes while watching the show, and have a much better understanding of the ages and sizes chickens should be butchered at to be best for particular dishes. We tend to just grab up roosters of all ages (when their numbers become oppressive to the hens) and take an afternoon to turn them into food. The result is that my freezer is a confusion of various birds – some of which are quite young and probably tender and tasty, others of which are old enough that they should probably only be stewed. Size doesn’t really help me to figure the age out, because I’ve got so many different breeds running around the barnyard that their mature sizes are all over the place. They all end up in the slow cooker.

So – based on the definitions of old-school market chickens, as explained by Julia, I want to have some small fryers (three to five months old, and only 2 1/2 to 3 1/2 pounds ) that I can cook up on the grill outside. I also want some bigger, tastier chickens to roast (five to nine months old, and about 6 pounds). Armed with that information, I begin a thorough study of the poultry catalogs most often recommended by like-minded neighbors, Murray McMurray Hatchery and Sand Hill Preservation Center. Both are located in Iowa, and both focus on preserving heritage breeds.

I most enjoy the McMurray catalog because of the long descriptions and fabulous color photos of each breed: chick, male and female. They also list each breed’s status on the American Livestock Breeds Conservancy list, so if you want to help save rare bloodlines and promote genetic diversity, they make it easy for you. Sand Hill is a smaller operation, with more very unusual breeds, and reputedly more diverse genetics within breeds. But unless you know exactly what you are looking for already, Sand Hill’s catalog descriptions are too brief. The catalog actually warns that if you call or email, they will try to get back to you within a month. And no pretty pictures!

I decide to go with Murray McMurray and some white heritage breeds that can easily be told apart from the mostly brown and red mixed breeds already roaming about my place. A hen makes just as good a roaster as a rooster, but because the hens are more expensive and slower growing, I’ll order just males for our white meat flock. I choose White Rocks, a “recovering” breed on the ALBC list, because the description says “Raise some for the frying pan or roaster. They are compact and well fleshed at almost any age,” and adds, “A flock of these pure white birds ranging busily over a grassy field is one of the prettiest sights you will ever see.” Sounds good to me. I take a dozen.

What’s for dinner this summer? White Rocks and White Wyandottes.

I also order White Wyandottes. “With their deep, well-rounded bodies, these make an ideal bird for dressing. The males acquire a plumpness and finish earlier than many heavy breeds,” says the description, and I’m sold. Another dozen. And because I’ve been poring over the catalog cover to cover, I also order a dozen Dark Cornish roosters, even though they aren’t in the white color scheme. “They are unique because of their thick, compact bodies, unusually wide backs and broad, deep breasts. These super meat qualities have made the Dark Cornish a truly gourmet item to raise for eating.” I feel virtuous, in spite of flaunting my own color rule, because the Dark Cornish is on the ALBC “watch” list, with only 10 or fewer primary breeding flocks remaining in the United States. Plus, the picture shows them to be very dark brown, so I should have no trouble telling them apart from my lighter “native” chickens.

“Truly gourmet” Dark Cornish and the “very rare” Chocolate Turkey.

The pictures also convince me to raise some turkeys this year, and I decide on the very rare Chocolate, a breed that was popular in the South before the Civil War. Many breeders were lost in the war, and the strain never made a comeback. Since the ALBC has them on the “critical” list, I order 15. While I’m ordering anyway, I decide that I’d like to try Eliot Coleman’s method of keeping the garden free of pests with ducks. I go with ten Cayugas – hardy black ducks, with a green sheen, that lay light blue or grey eggs. And then, thinking about colored eggs reminds me that I miss having green eggs in my henhouse.

Way back when I picked up those first chicks at Farm and Fleet, I’d brought home some Ameraucanas that laid beautiful blue-to-green eggs. Now those girls are old and lay about an egg a month for me. So I go ahead and order a dozen Ameraucana pullets (young hens). Why not?

Well, I vowed after that first round of birds three years ago that I’d never again raise chicks. Whether you buy them at a farm store or by mail, the chicks you get are just a day or two old. Miraculously, they don’t need food during shipping because just before the babies hatch, they absorb what’s left of the egg yolk for nourishment. When a hen broods a clutch of eggs, they hatch over a period of days and she sits on them until the whole group hatches. They don’t eat until she finally rises, and then the whole group jumps up and follows her to food, where they just start pecking away like adult chickens. But while chicks are quite independent when it comes to food, they are extremely fragile when it comes to temperature. Without their mother’s ample feathered rump to take cover under every few minutes, they require constant vigilance in the form of thermometers and heat lamps for several weeks. And they smell! Within days the sweet little peeps will stink up their heated enclosure, and even daily bedding changes won’t remove the stench from the bathroom or dining room or kitchen or whatever other warm place you’ve put them.

Mine will move into the living room, as soon as I get my call from the post office some morning in mid-April. All 75 of them.

Who can resist a Cayuga duckling? Not me!