This is Home, Part 34 - Mom's 500 chickens, Katie Jane, Mary Ellen and the rooster

This is part 34 of my mother's book about her life, written in 2004.



Mom's 500 chickens

Mom not only raised chickens to use the eggs or have as food. She wanted spending money of her own -- that she had made. She had a checkbook or checkbooks that she could use for anything she wanted and no one ever objected to any money she spent, but this was different.

We used to have a couple of large crates made of thin light wood with wood through the center to form two divisions. Each division had a bunch of square gray division papers with egg depressions. The paper was similar in thickness and color to gray egg boxes we buy at grocery stores today. The crates were kept in the cellar and filled with eggs as they became available.

When both crates were full, Uncle Doc drove us to Stampers Feed in Moberly. Stampers candled the eggs, which was a very interesting process. They held each egg in front of a light to be sure it was good and didn't have a baby chicken in it. I'm assuming they candled each one. I watched a lady do a few, while Mom was getting paid.

Mom also sold extra roosters.

Katie Jane

Katie Jane didn't come to our house to stay, because she had a bad heart and nose bleeds that were so severe that a doctor had to be called.

Mary Ellen and the rooster

Mary Ellen didn't come to visit much that I remember. She came with Bea when they were children.

When Mary Ellen came later, she always helped Mom. I remember her ironing. She didn't do what I thought of as fun things like Bea did.

One time when she came, she was going to kill a rooster and fix fried chicken. She didn't know how to kill it. She twisted the chicken's neck. It not only didn't die, its eye kept looking at her. Mary Ellen jerked her hands away and the rooster walked off shaking his head.

Mom killed a different rooster. Mary Ellen helped fix it.

This is Home, Part 31 - Missouri Hen House

This is part 31 of my mother's book about her life, written in 2004.



Missouri Hen House

A Missouri Hen House (the plan's name) was built sometime when we were in grade school. It was two story. I don't remember what the first story was like.

Upstairs over under the roof on two sides of the building was no floor, just chicken wire. There may have been wood under the nests. All I saw was straw on wire which slanted and had a sort of wire depression near the front where I stood. The hen would lay an egg and, when she moved, the egg would roll gently into the wire depression or trough.

Sometimes, the hen doesn't like it when one takes the egg away and tries to peck. This solved that problem.

The hen house was large enough to be a barn. It had a lot of nests.

It was built past the brooder house, near the fence with the woods and swing on the other side.

The hen house had a door that opened out from the upstairs. Nothing was under it. It was like the barn, but the door there is used to put bales of hay in the barn. This one was probably for straw.

Most of the hens were happy with the new hen house. Some of the older ones insisted on staying in the two old hen houses past the wash house.

I remember when Uncle Doc couldn't get one out of the yard -- it had sneaked in -- so he put corn in the back yard on the snow for it. We were looking out the window and saw a rabbit hop up to the corn and start eating it.