chapter 6
Chicken Chapter
12/7/2010
the real Farmville
link to egg folder (3 dozen medium photos)
My Great Grandpa, Grandpa, Dad, and all my siblings worked in this barn. In 1918 my forefathers sold $285.75 worth of eggs from the farm. Now it is all gone. I was merely a hired hand but during my high school senior year it was each day in the morning around 5:30 for an hour before school. Every day, year around. This original old Olmsted dairy barn was converted with extra floors built to result in 5 floors of thousands of white leghorn laying chickens for egg production. We would shovel-fill then carry in each hand the 5 gallon pails of mash grain to distribute to feed hoppers on each floor. Check on the water troughs and refill the shell dispensers as needed. Lights were on a timeclock to ensure maximum egg laying production. Collecting the eggs was done by hand going to each roost picking up the eggs with one hand, placing in the other hand's plastic coated wire mesh basket and counting something like 150 eggs per basket for the record keeping. Hated to reach under the nasty hens who would peck your hand.
The homemade elevator was a scary proposition. It was an open simple wooden platform raised by an electric motor way up at the roof line. Pull on one cord, hand over hand to ride up to the top. Pull on the other cord to descend. The problem was if you pulled on both, sometimes the motor would free wheel and you descend uncontrollably. Seems like Dale thought this was great sport, and may have been responsible for burning out the clutch motor- not sure. Another problem was you'd take the elevator up to the 4th floor- go do the feeding and come out to step back on the elevator while someone else had taken it up to the 5th floor. I think someone actually did fall down the shaft. Later on people were banned from riding only to allow placing egg baskets or feed on it.
My egg grader, sorting machine, and vacuum handling shots are interesting but when I started in the early '60s a much more crude machine was used and Anita would check the egg weights by hand on the ACME egg scale not trusting the machines.
In the free run or free range situations there was a pecking order. Darwin's theory of survival of the fittest ruled. The stronger guys would peck to death the weak or sickly. A sort of natural selection process to ensure a survival of the species. Hens were caged in the early 60's you could euphemistically say "for their own protection", but mainly it was just for business; more production to survive as a viable farm.
I worked on the construction of the new barn where it seems we had up to 10 thousand more chickens were brought in on it's two floors. Dale thinks it was maybe 5000 total? At first the chickens were free to run around the floor, then later the "more modern" cage system was put in. Feeding was easy as there was an automated conveyor system in place and we only had to fill up the hopper by aluminum shovel from the storage bin. It was an unpleasant situation to get your hand mangled if you stuck your hand in the gears as someone did. She had a penchant for putting her fingers where they didn't belong as I recall her putting her hand in a running propeller of our model airplanes too. Watering was also automatic. Both these barns are now gone, having been burned down for property tax reduction purposes.
There were a variety of other miscellanous things going on. Some out buildings had incubators and brooders to hatch, warm and raise chicks. Free range shacks for young non-layers.
Night Raids: These were memorable events where we'd assemble a crew to go to some Tully farm by a moonlit night to capture hens. It was not illegal, we had bought them but darkness allowed for easy catching of these free running birds by the legs. Moon light gave us a little light to see. It was spooky since we had not been in these hen houses before and could run into something in the dark. It was a great sport to see how many chickens you could capture and hold by yourself. I could do 6. Not so easy holding and capturing with the same hand, and with the weight and flapping around. Believe Dick Fuller had the record of 7 or 8 with his large hands.
Eventually converted to hogs before the demise.
chapter 184 Dad Uncle Bud building the silo
nice modern informational video
undercover video of a Wegmans farm
half billion egg recall for salmonella in 2010