From Beauty to Beast

Last week I heard a friend murmur, “I’m not exactly a spring chicken anymore.”  That started me thinking…spring chickens…how many people even know what spring chickens are in this day of vacuum-sealed drumsticks, wings, and boneless chicken breasts?  Before the convenience of picking up a package of chicken from the grocery freezer, most farm families raised their own chickens.  It all began with the arrival of newly hatched chicks in April or May, hence, the term spring chicken.

The two-month production cycle from peep to chicken dinner was busy and began when Dad brought home two cardboard boxes filled with delightful, fluffy, yellow, day-old chicks cheeping loudly inside. The flat boxes had quarter-sized holes on the sides and in the lid, allowing air to reach the chicks while giving them openings to peek out with their downy little heads and pointy beaks.  A cardboard partition divided each box into two parts with 50 baby chicks stuffed into in each section.

The chicks hatched in an incubator and never knew a mother hen’s protection, so they needed extreme care.  The first rule of caring for peeps:  a chilled chick was a dead chick.  Immediately upon arrival, Mom carried them gingerly to the basement and placed them in a small, enclosed area that she’d prepared out of cut-up boxes. She’d suspended a heat lamp a foot above the chicks to keep warm as they began to explore their new world on spindly little legs.

The second rule of handling peeps: peeps could not tolerate handling.  The chicks were very delicate, and it was tempting to pick them up and feel their soft fuzz against my cheek.  However, even gentle touching bruised the tiny creatures and they could not survive if picked up often.  (Still today, I cringe when Easter season arrives and stores make baby chicks available to children…but I digress….)  After numerous reminders from Mom, I eventually learned not to pick them but just enjoy them from afar.

There was an important exception to the ‘do not pick up’ rule—teaching them to drink water.  Mom had to teach each of the 200 chicks to drink by picking them up individually and dipping their fragile beaks into the water. I remember feeling quite grown-up when Mom assigned me the important task of dipping each fuzzy head into the water and watching for the day to make sure all returned to drink again.

Once the chicks were eating, drinking, and adjusting to life, Dad moved them from the basement to a cornered-off area of the chicken coop, still warmed by a heat lamp and small enough to keep them confined for another week. In a couple of weeks, he turned them loose to roam the shed and adjoining fenced-in yard. By now, feathers replaced the yellow down, and the cute baby chicks had turned into gangly adolescents.

Fully feathered, they were soon well on their way to maturity.  When I was in high school, feeding and watering chickens was part of my morning chores in the summer.  I tried to do chicken chores early in the mornings before the dusty chicken house heated up. It was tricky to squeeze through the door while carrying a bucket of feed or water and not let any chickens escape.  Occasionally, one got loose and I spent the rest of the morning chasing it down with a catching hook as it ran in tall grass and flew into trees.

Chickens are notoriously flighty and my presence in the coop always caused a frenzy of squawking, running, and flapping wings.  This only increased the amount of dust and dander flying in the air and sent me into a coughing fit.  I tried to fill the feeders without taking a breath. Sometimes, I tried tying a red handkerchief bandana over my nose and mouth.  Either method was effective against breathing the polluted air of the chicken coop.

In two short months, the beautiful little peeps had transformed into feathered beasts with extremely unpleasant dispositions.  They wouldn’t allow anybody near them, they pecked when anyone got close, and they were far from anything one might consider cute.  These chickens were not the pristine white critters seen story books.  To put it mildly, they were dirty, ugly, and downright nasty.  It was always a relief when they reached maturity so we could be done with them.

The butchering process lasted a couple of days and extended family came to help. I’ll skip the gory details, but summarize by saying by saying the work was intense.  It took a crew of workers a couple of days to get the chickens caught, cleaned, cut-up, and frozen.  Over the years, I learned the entire process, beginning with picking feathers to the point of being able to quickly cut up chickens and get them in the freezer.

This is a simple skill I’ve had since I was a teenager, but now folks learn to do it via You-Tube videos!  Sadly, younger readers have no idea how the taste of factory-processed chicken pales in comparison to farm-grown.  However, readers like myself, who are no longer spring chickens, know exactly what I mean.