We lost several chickens this year to predators so no more free roaming. My old run was too small for the flock so I fenced in what used to be our garden and turned it over to the dinosaurs. The old run will accommodate our pullets until they are bigger and can run with the rest of the herd.
We got a Tetra hen from a friend who can't keep it anymore yesterday. Fortunately we were looking to get a couple of chickens anyways, so we had purchased a used coop some weeks ago.
To our surprise, our cute new chicken, Clémentine gave us an egg already on the first morning. What a nice surprise.
Don't worry, we won't keep it alone for too long, we're looking to get one or two more friends.
They are going out to the run in the next week or two, I am building a new run for our older chickens this week so we can keep them separated for now.
We would have had 24 with these guys but we lost a hen last week to a predator so 23 it is (for now). The plan is basically to add 6 (NY minimum for buying chicks) every year and expand the coop as needed.
We just got a batch of ten baby chicks! Two days old and they are already having a blast climbing and jumping off a little rock and sticks. This batch are all females, and are a random variety of "exotic" chickens. When their real feathers grow in it'll be fun to figure out what breeds we got!
They are just in an XL dog crate with foil insulation around the bottom edge, and a red heat lamp hanging from the top of the crate. I don't know if the foil actually helps retain any heat, but it does keep the chicks from escaping. It's a high security henitentiary.
My wife had to run off to the other end of the country very suddenly yesterday. She had planned to process two boxes of late season tomatoes. It fell to me to get it done. I diced them up and put them in the freezer so that she can make sauce when she gets back.
The big guy thinks that any time I'm at the butcher block in the morning I must be slicing ham. He loves ham. I told him I was working on tomatoes but he was quite persistent about making sure that I wasn't slicing ham. I even showed him a chunk of tomato and he went away but he came back 5 minutes later to see if I was still not slicing ham.
Chicken treats = happy chickens and more eggs.
The chickens love the trimmings and rejects. They were very excited when I let them out this morning and they found a bunch of tomatoes in their yard.
French fries and homemade roasted turkey gravy topped with our own roasted Bronze Orlopp turkey, homemade bread dressing, and fried eggs from our backyard chickens.
Thanksgiving poutine!
Yum!
We had a bit of rain these few days. 110ish mm over the last 14 days, 25 of which decided to check in on us yesterday. So our run got flooded.
Not having the space for a truck load of woodchips, nor the time to spare, I got a couple of 23kg bales of sawdust. BTW .6USD pr kg for sawdust, what's wrong with the world?
The chickens were quite perplexed as to the bale when it arrived, and definitely not sold on it either when I had spread it out, pic in comments. I'm going to see how it works before spreading another one.
Usually I don't have to pump water from this area before November, but I guess that life ain't fair and the world is mean, so we started the pump this morning. Next 5 months (we'll I guess it'll be 6 months if luck be) we'll be pumping about 26m^3 from this area daily.
There's a Danish children's song that starts with something like "The farmer is always busy on his farm" and then lists the chores. I wonder why I that was stuck in my head as I wandered about the hardware store looking for bedding material.
We ordered broilers from a different hatchery this year. I don't think we got what we expected to get.
He and the six heaviest girls will be sticking around to keep us in meat chickens. I've really enjoyed raising these guys.
cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ca/post/4413694
These Cornish X meat birds arrived on our farm on August 3. That makes them 30 days old today. We ordered 40 and got 45 (the hatcheries always give you extra in case there are any losses during or immediately after transport.) We have lost only one so there are 44 out there now.
My wife has Chicken Day on the calendar as September 30. They will be 59 days old at that point and should average between 6 and 7 pounds dressed.
We had a confluence of events that resulted in our cancelling our original order for 60 birds with one hatchery and ordering 40 birds from another hatchery for delivery a week earlier. That means that we lost our slot at the abattoir. We normally have half of the birds done at an abattoir and do half ourselves. We can't sell the birds we do ourselves so we eat those ones. With the situation this summer we decided not to grow any birds for anyone else this fall and will do all 40 of the birds here on the farm for ourselves.
Butchering day is NOT my favorite day of the year but it is part of farming livestock and it has to be done. We're likely going to offer a workshop for anyone local who wants to learn how to process chickens on their own property.
I gave their bedding a toss this morning.
Our meaties always have access to outdoors from the time they're about 3 weeks old. They will continue to go outside right up until the day before they are processed.
At list a few chickens to raccoons early in the season. They were taken outside. When you improve security raccoons can get more aggressive so I beefed up the summer door on the house.
He was hatched on our farm and went out to a friend whose family wanted a few laying hens. They named him Chloe. When he turned out to be a cockerel he came back and we told her kids that he would live on our farm as a roster, not a meat birds. He turned into a pretty bird.
[Were you a mod of backyard chickens on Reddit? Message me if you're interested in modding here.]
This is a community for people who keep chickens in their back yard. This includes pets, layers, and meaties at levels that are sub-industrial. Family farms and homesteads are included.
EDIT
The Fediverse is small. There probably aren't enough people here to make up a community for every type of bird that someone might keep so for now, everyone is welcome. Bring us your ducks and geese, turkeys and quail, Guineas and Peacocks, emus and parrots. The community will be focused on chickens but until there are enough of each bird community for their own community they will find care and comfort here.
/EDIT
There may be discussions of animal processing. This is part of chicken keeping. If you don't like it leave and block the community.
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RULES:
All Lemmy.ca rules apply here.
Everyone (see rules 4 and 98) is welcome.
If you've seen a question 100 times answer it the 101st time or ignore it. Even better, write a complete, detailed answer and suggest that the mod(s) pin it to the community.
There will be ZERO tolerance for shaming, brigading, harassment, or other nonsense of those who keep and process chickens. You will be permanently banned the first time.
No, it's not a calcium deficiency. Wrinkled eggs are the result of insufficient or insufficiently viscous albumen. Tiny eggs and missing shells are misfires. They happen.
If you post a picture that includes a dead animal or blood mark it NSFW. We're not going to tolerate the militant anti-hunting and anti-farming bullshit here but we're also not going to tolerate people rubbing their hunting and harvesting in people's faces. See rule 98. If you post blood, gore, or dead animals and don't mark it NSFW it will be removed and you might be banned.
[Did you actually think there were 98 rules?]
If you present something as fact and are asked to provide proof or a source provide proof or a source. Proof must be from a reliable source. If you fail to provide proof or a source your post or comment may be removed.
Don't be a dick. Yes, this is a catch-all rule.
The mod(s) have the final say.
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