It’s hot, I’m sweaty & sunburned, but we got some good things done today.
The 40 chicks we were brooding for a friend went home today, which is a relief. 6.5 weeks old. They were no big deal when they were smaller, but just in the last week or two, 50 in one coop/run became kind of a lot of birds. Feed consumption was one thing, and constantly cleaning out their waterers, but the manure production was also impressive. I added a bunch of shavings to their area one day last week, and it looked good for just 3 or 4 days, until it rained and suddenly: packed down poo shavings again. I added more, of course, and they were fine, but that was going to get real tiring.
After we got back from dropping off the chicks, I cleaned out the brooder coop run, down to the sand layer, and carted three full wheelbarrow loads to the neighbor, who had asked for some for her flowers & tomatoes. I’ll clean out the inside of the coop tomorrow probably. I let the pullets hide in there for today - they’ve been through enough (the catching-40-young-birds process is not a calm one).
We meant to keep 5 brown leghorn pullets, and one spare Dominique. We’ve ended up with 6 leghorns, plus the dom (who J is hoping will be a rooster, so he can set up a second flock. I’d rather have another hen.) because I guess I miscounted, but our friend got all 40 she ordered, so I guess that’s a spare. In an order of 50 chicks (+3 turkeys), the hatchery sent 55, so everybody got extra even though we lost 2 early on. Not a bad outcome.
J and I both really enjoyed our first experience brooding a large number of birds. We learned how to do it, and that we can do it successfully with this setup, and that we both like watching them grow up at least enough to outweigh the added hassle. Next spring (or possibly this fall?) we’re going to order another batch of similar size, though we may not keep any, or just a few if we get a second flock going. The idea will be to get a fun assortment and raise them up to sell to other people who’d rather skip the brooding step. It’s expensive to get just one or two of each of several fun breeds of birds, the kind the backyard hen keeper wants (fancy feather patterns, fun egg colors, etc), but you get good prices at 10 or 15+ birds of each kind. So we’ll order a bunch, raise them up til they can live outside easily, and people can come get a starter flock of, say, 2 Easter Eggers, 2 Wyandottes (different colors), and a Copper Maran. They get to skip the fragile baby stage and save paying small order fees, and we get to profit. We haven’t decided what the prices will look like, but it shouldn’t be too hard to set them at a good level. People could also buy a few day-week old chicks for just a little more than we paid for them, if they want, just to save on the surcharges.
We probably won’t do point-of-lay hens, unless we build more space to keep them in. The brooder coop run isn’t big enough to raise more than a few pullets up to 5 months. I think there’s a good market for those, though (skip all the waiting! get eggs from your own hens as early as next week!), if we had a good spot for it.
Our remaining young chickens will stay in the small coop for a few more weeks. They’re fully feathered, but still a lot smaller than the big chickens, so I’d like to let them grow up a little so they don’t get bullied. Then we’ll just open their door one day, and let them do as they will. I expect they’ll keep sleeping in their home base for a while, but eventually we’ll go out one night and move them to the big coop while everyone’s asleep, then shut them out of the small coop.
The turkeys moved out to their own pen today as well. We wanted them to have their own space where we can put their high-protein feed, and we’ve got water and a roost bar in there as well. It’s big enough for them to be in full-time for now, but as they get bigger we intend to let them out to go where they want. We’ll keep feeding them in there every day, so they’ll come back for that at least, but who knows where they’ll choose to sleep. The research we did suggests that the roof of the house is a likely possibility, or up in a sweetgum tree. Whatever, so long as we can catch them as needed and they don’t get eaten by a fox.
We took the brown doe to our friends’ house as well, in exchange for some pork chops. She was over a year old and continually failed to produce a litter, so she’s going to be used in an educational demonstration for their WWOOFers. I’ve really cut out some unnecessary rabbits recently; I’m down to just one buck (Digit) and three does (Poppy, Blosssom, and Lily), which means I need to get some new blood in here to fill those cages and get producing! I’m looking for NZ or Cali, or any good commercial type mix if not those, to do some crossbreeding. I haven’t really found any good contacts locally, yet.
Alright, supposedly it’s “only” 85 degrees right now, but it’s been cool this spring so far, so I guess I’m just weak.
