Chickens, Pigs and Cattle These were the fowl and animals that were always on the property as they supplied a major part of our food and livelihood. Chickens Hens were usually the first of the animals, birds, on the small farm after the house was built. This house where I am writing in 2001 was built my by my grandfather in 1866. Each spring the hens would get broody. They would set on a nest for weeks with very brief periods off to eat. They would not lay eggs during this time so they were not productive. They / we would set about three of these hens on 13 eggs. Don't ask why, but it was always 13 eggs. I expect it had a superstitious background, but it took three weeks to hatch the chicks. The hen s body heat would keep the eggs moist and she would also turn the eggs with her beak every few days. The eggs were not all fertile and if you got 10 healthy chicks from a setting you considered this a good average. When they were grown we ate the roosters, butchering them as we wanted them, that way the meat was always fresh. The pullets we kept for laying eggs. As their productive years tapered off they went the way of the roosters and the young hens took over in supplying us with eggs, the cycle continued. Chickens, Pigs and Cattle Page 1 of 8
The old system had gone on for centuries until about the 1950 s. Chick hatcheries started up everywhere, each one specializing in different kinds of birds of fowls, such as layers, meat kings, fryers, roosters, etc. After years of these chicks hatched in incubators, the hens stopped getting broody as their sole purpose was to lay eggs. The old way of getting our chicks had gone completely. You realize it was more convenient to buy your chicks from the hatchery then it was setting a hen on 13 eggs. You could buy them at different ages, day-old, two weeks or three weeks. If you were having chick's shipped a long-distance, day-old was the way to go as the chicks could go two days without food or water, after that they had to have food and water available all the time. In buying day-old chicks, they were less costly, but it was necessary to have heat lamps for a few weeks, as the chicks are very delicate, also the mortality rate was quite high. After some experience, we decided to buy three week old birds, they were stronger and the loss rate was very low. By this time it was all commercial feed, chick starter, grower and when they got about 4½ months old we fed them laying mash or pellets. I used to buy 25 chicks every spring. At about 4½ months they would start laying and lay a high percentage for about a year. At the peak some of them would lay an egg every day. Over the years, we bought chicks from West Dublin, Lunenburg County, Pentz, Lunenburg County, Auburn, Kings County, and Truro. They were all good people to do business with. We had all the fresh eggs that we could eat and we sold about 10 dozen a week. We had 8 or 10 customers that came weekly. It was mostly a social visit; they stopped for coffee and conversation. I expect we didn't make money, but it was fun. When the hens were 1½ years old and had started to decline in egg production I butchered them and put them in the deep freezer for winter eating. By this time our new chicks were laying so the cycle is complete. Chickens, Pigs and Cattle Page 2 of 8
For a few years, I also bought 10 three week old roosters, grow them until they were five or six months old and butchered them for our use. They were so tough from fighting amongst themselves, they were just barely fit to eat. That venture didn't last long. We stopped keeping hens in 1987, the year I retired. We still miss them. We wanted to travel a little more, and it was getting difficult to get someone to look after them. The first time in 120 years there were no hens on the property. Pigs There were always pigs on the property every year. They were another important animal on the small farm. We never bred pigs. We always bought four-week-old pigs in the spring, usually in May. After the railway came through here in 1905 Dad would take orders for young pigs in the community and have them shipped up on the train from Lunenburg County, mostly from the Italy Cross and Hebbville area. Some years he would have as many as 15 or 20, and he would keep one or two for his own use. He would get the little pigs in May and butcher them in November. There was most always a local man in the village that would go around and do the butchering. When I started buying pigs in the late 30 s we had a car so we would go down and pick up the pigs: mostly for ourselves, occasionally one or two for neighbors. Those days we always got two for ourselves. It was just as easy to feed two, so when you did the butchering in the fall, we would sell one by the quarter, so the pig we kept for our own use only cost us the work we had put into them. We also got the lard, hearts, livers and heads from both. Chickens, Pigs and Cattle Page 3 of 8
The fat from around the intestines was rendered down into lard which would last the winter for baking. It was only the last few years that we kept pigs that we had a freezer. Before that we salted all the pork. After it was salted a few weeks we would take a ham and bacon out of the salt pickle and smoke them. In about three months we would do the same with the other ham and bacon. Usually a six month old pig would weigh about 250 pounds. It was great fun and competition among the neighbors whose pig weighed the most. When it came time to weigh, about suppertime, after the animal was cold and the pork hardened up, it was not unusual to see four or five standing around making guesses on the weight. They also wanted to make sure there was no cheating. I remember one time about 1940 we had bought three pigs in the spring. We were able to keep them under the barn. In the fall we killed one for our winter pork, the other two were left in the barn cellar all winter. It was quite comfortable. In the spring we killed the one-year-old pigs. They were huge; they both weighed about 430 pounds. Some of the pork was sold locally the rest went to the butcher in Lockeport. When we butchered our pigs we would give a roast or steak to our neighbors that also raised pigs. And when they did their butchering they would return the same cut of pork. As our pork was all salted it gave us fresh pork over a longer period of time. Also there will was always two or three widows living here on this side of the river. We would give them a nice roast and once in a while a man would be sick or a broken bone so we would give them pork also. There wasn't any employment insurance at that time so we helped our neighbors. I couldn't remember when we raised our last pig so I had to do some research in our diary and found that the last year we had a pig was in 1965. I am writing this story from memory of over 60 years ago. If there are any errors or omissions it is absolutely my fault, I take all the blame. After we stopped keeping pigs we would buy a side of pork in the fall. This was a practice that we continued for a few years. Chickens, Pigs and Cattle Page 4 of 8
Cattle A cow was another first on the property. As soon as his grandfather got a shelter ready he got a cow. This is important as they supplied milk, cream and butter. We kept the cows for a long period of time or as long as they produced milk and a calf every year. I remember one cow we had when I was little. She was 17 years old when Dad sold her to the butcher. We had other cows in the 30 s and early 40 s but I don't remember much about them as dad was still well enough to do most of the milking. The heifer calves we kept and they became our cows as they matured. The bull calves we usually kept them until you could sell them for beef. In the early 30 s we had a bull calf from one of our cows and Fred Dexter had one about the same age. Fred wanted to get rid of his so he gave it to me. I raised them as a pair of steers and when they got old enough, about two years, I made a yoke for them and trained them to work. As we had a big pair of working oxen I sold the steers to a man in Barrington. The longest we had a pair of oxen, dad bought in 1928 and sold them in 1936 to a butcher in Liverpool, they were getting too old to work. 1930 Chickens, Pigs and Cattle Page 5 of 8
I started teaming them in 1931, when I left school and went to work in the logging woods. The oxen knew more about logging than I did. We had a log drive on the Sable River for a number of years. They were usually in April. I worked on four of them in 1931 to 1934. The next pair of oxen we had, Dad and I bought in the fall of 1936 in Conquerall Mills. We started to walk them home. That would mean a walk of two days and one night. Dad decided it looked like a long way home. Dad was about 64 years old at the time and in his lifetime he had walked quite a lot of oxen home from Lunenburg County. We called Leland Richardson as he had a truck to come meet us. We were in Middlewood when we saw him coming, and we were happy to see him. 1937 Three years later I sold the oxen to Ed Rafuse, a butcher in Liverpool. I walked them to Liverpool. I left home about supper and walked all night as there is little traffic on the road. Chickens, Pigs and Cattle Page 6 of 8
In 1939 in the late fall we bought a pair of four-year-old oxen from Gordon Tufts in West Caledonia. 1941 On Christmas day 39, I had the oxen out to the water trough when one of them was run down by a car. He was crippled so badly that he couldn't work the rest of the winter. He didn't have any broken bones but a lot of muscle damage. Every night I would compress his front leg and shoulder with hot brine for about an hour and then rub it well with horse liniment. In the spring of 1942 I sole the oxen, one cow and a couple of young cattle before I went in the Army. Dad wanted to keep one cow for he and mother. It was only a year or so when he had to sell the cow as his strength was going from Parkinson's disease. There were no more cattle on the property until I came home from the Army in September 1946. Very shortly I bought two cows and a pair of four-year-old oxen. The oxen I bought in Camperdown Lunenburg County. I was planning to log the home property back to the baseline, which I did in the next two winters. It was very good logging as the pine and spruce hadn't been cut there for many years. I mostly worked alone. I would hire someone for a day about once a month just to saw down the trees. Then I would do the limbing and haul the logs to the landing by the railway where I could get a truck to them. The oxen were not used to working in the woods so I had to train them. It was very important that they knew my voice and also knew what I wanted them to do. For instance, if I was caught and said Whoa, that was exactly what I meant. Chickens, Pigs and Cattle Page 7 of 8
We worked together weeks on end and they got to do what I said because if they didn't I had a good chance of getting bones broken. [I recall Dad told me about how he trained them to stop. He would loop the drag chain over a stump as the oxen walked by. Just as it was about to come tight he d yell Whoa. At the same instant the chain would come up and the oxen got an awful neck jolt. He said that he had them so well trained that when he say Whoa they d stop in mid step with a foot half raised. They dared not lower it. I also seem to recall him telling me about how he d use different commands than was traditional so no one else could work with them. ] In the winter of 48-49 I cut a lot of oak on the nine mile lot and sold them to Robie Giffin, mill owner. The oak went for lobster trap material and we got 50/50. So I could make a good day's pay, about $12 for me and the oxen. In August 1948 I had a cow that was calving. The only problem was the calf was in a breech position and had to be turned. I got Francis Freeman as he was very good with sick animals. Every time we would move the calf, the cow would bear down, and she was so much stronger than we were. Finally in our endeavors we broke the calf s neck. We couldn't do any more damage so we took the calf. We lost the calf but saved the cow. If she had been alone I would have lost them both. In September 1949 I started driving the school bus. I had to go out many nights so I didn't have time to look after the cows or work the oxen. Dad was an invalid at this time and he took all of mother's time and energy so she didn't have time to feed and water about five head of cattle and also milk two cows. I sold them all in the fall of 1949 and there has been no more cattle on the property since. Wilbur Robart Chickens, Pigs and Cattle Page 8 of 8