Chicken update

My chickens have really gotten big...they weigh four or five pounds now, and the roosters have started crowing, mostly between midnight and 5 a.m. I have put quite a few in the freezer the last few weeks, and I sold a bunch on craigslist.com. I got $75 for fourteen hens, and I threw in four roosters for free, just to save the trouble of butchering them. My flock is down to three Sussex pullets (one red, two light); four Sussex cockerels (three light, one red); and two random cockerels--a black Wyandotte, and that nasty Naked Neck. One of these days I guess I need to put those two in the freezer.
I am also getting a few eggs now. The rate of lay isn't even, but the three hens are laying two eggs every three days. I need to build some extra pens so that I can separate breeding pens, but I should be able to hatch some eggs this spring. I got an incubator for Christmas, so I should be able to have a nice hatch.

I'll post some pictures later this week, when I get a chance to take some.

Chicks

Here are some chick pictures.

This is a Light Sussex at three and a half weeks old. You can see that the black is just starting to show in his wings, neck, and tail. These are the birds that I really wanted, but I've only got five.


This is just a crowd shot. You can really see the difference in the older and younger birds, even though the age difference is just two weeks.


This is the back of Monty Burns's neck; his head is turned away from the camera). This shot really emphasizes the boniness and scrawniness of his neck, and his generally evil appearance.


These two shots are mixed breeds at about a week old.



I've been asked via e-mail what I'm planning on doing with all these birds (37, at the moment). I'm planning on keeping some to start a little breeding flock. I've got five Light Sussex and three Red Sussex that will be evaluated for the breeding flock, based on body type and color. I'll also look pretty hard at the Buff Orpingtons to see if I'd rather keep them around. At any rate, six to nine of the birds will be preserved as breeding stock. The rest will join the turkeys in the freezer. I'll start working on that when the birds weigh three to four pounds. That's a little small for fryers, but I need to start reducing the numbers before the birds get too big.

Chicks

I finally got some chicks two weeks ago, and some more today. I had ordered 10 Light Sussex and 15 Buff Orpingtons, to be delivered the first week of June. However, the hatchery has had trouble getting the Sussex to hatch, so the shipment was delayed. I got the first set two weeks ago: 11 Orpingtons, 3 Light Sussex, 4 Rhode Island Reds, and 4 Silver-Laced Wyandottes. 19 of the original 22 survived the trip; one more was lost to a copperhead(!) the next day. Today, I got 3 more Light Sussex, 3 Red Sussex, 3 Silver-Laced Wyandottes, 10 Red Leghorns, and one Red Naked-Neck. That one has been named "Monty Burns." (Click the links....do you see a resemblance?)

Anyway, I now have 38 chickens, in seven breeds / varieties. I've got an interesting-looking chicken house right now. I'll try to get some pictures up this weekend.

(By the way, all those breed pages are part of Feathersite, which is the best place to see all kinds of groovy-looking chickens on the web.)