Stories from the Amazon - The Tale of a Million Feathers

 This story happens one year around the beginning of dry season. One hot day in the Amazon, we were enjoying a relaxing get together with some friends at our farm. Meat was on the grill and the hammocks were strung. We had been doing some work on the farm and our reward was a little bbq, good Brazilian style. In the middle of the day, the heat on a full belly of food is like a tranquilizer, making sleep necessary in a softly swinging hammock with a muggy breeze blowing hot air in your face. 

As we were all laying in hammocks or nibbling still on the meat chunks, a car pulled up to the farm gate and a man approached the gate carrying two boxes of chicks. We gestured for him to come in the gate and he did, carrying his boxes. He began his sales pitch by saying he had a box of laying hen chicks and a box of meat broilers. With very convincing words he soon talked us into the great deal he had for us and we bought the chicks. It took a little convincing on my part too to talk my dad into letting us get the chicks. I was after all working on a new chicken coop and we'd have lots of fresh eggs to sell or eat and lots of homegrown chicken to eat and sell. It was a great plan!

Excitement took over all sleepy nap thoughts and I rushed to put together a warm brooder type spot for 200 chicks. The best place I could come up with was the spare bathroom. The chicks in the layer hen box were darker orange and looked like little Rhode Island red chicks. The meat birds were yellow puffs and both types looked like what the guy said they were. I soon had them situated in their new living quarters with food and water and we all went back to laying in our hammocks. 

About an hour or so later, the guy showed up at our gate again, this time carrying 3 boxes of chicks and a deal we just couldn't pass up. After all, what was 300 more chicks.... We could handle it! Not a problem.

So now the small spare bathroom held 500 little chicks. (whatever possessed us) A few of them didn't make it through the first days in the bathroom in rather overcrowded conditions, but then I got them a better place and they started to grow and a few more died from random problems, but then they all evened out and got to growing. Then one day I was watching them and noticed that all of the chicks that were supposed to be the layer birds seemed to have lost their orange color and were yellow chicks. Then they grew a bit more, and I noticed that all of them seemed to be turning out to be roosters. Then they stopped growing and started crowing.

To my great horror, I realized that we had been totally taken by the sleazy travelling salesman. He sold us 500 all the same, bantam roosters!!! None of them were laying hens, none were meat birds. All were tiny little roosters, so small you had to eat an entire one just to feel like you had a meal. Their drumsticks were the size of a thumb. 

We decided that we didn't want to keep feeding these horrid tiny creatures so we called all our friends together and had a butcher day, which actually ended up being a butcher week. It took us about 3 or 4 days of work and an assembly line to get them all hand processed. We didn't have a fancy plucker or anything to make that job easier. It was hands on, everyone doing something. We filled a chest freezer with tiny bantam roosters and we ate those things for almost a year. We sold a small handful to friends, we gave away more that I can even remember and we ate tiny chickens for so long that by the time we finished them we were so sick of chicken we didn't want to eat it for a long time after!

They were tasty once you got past the thumb sized drumsticks, but goodness we wanted a fat juicy beef steak. Pretty sure my family wanted to disown me after that adventure and we all learned our lesson (I think?) about travelling salesmen!