Chicken Moving Day/ Chicken Update

Yesterday was a chicken moving day at Pure Water Hollow.

First we moved 7 cockerels. They moved from their lot to the pot, you could say. We had never butchered so many all at once before, but it went pretty well. Matthew did most of the slaughtering and we all helped with the plucking. Matthew also did one of the eviscerations all by himself, with Lisa’s guidance. He also de-boned and fixed three of them for dinner with stuffing and potatoes. (That is one boy who is never going to starve with the skills he is learning!) It was a delicious meal! The other four are for the freezer.

We also moved 6 Australorp hens and 5 Dominique hens from the main coop out to the ravine lot. They have started some feather picking again. De-beaking them seemed to solve the problem before, but I think their beaks are starting to grow back out now. We are either going to sell them or butcher them, but for the time being we will keep them down in the ravine lot. By the way, I caught a mama and baby raccoon on Father’s Day morning down at the ravine lot. I think they have been part of the predator problem. They are now out of the way but I decided to reinforce the ravine lot anyway. The coons were reaching through the 2 x 4 welded wire fence and killing chickens so I have put chicken wire around the bottom three feet of the lot.

By moving the Australorps and Dominiques out of the main coop, that made room for our surviving pullets. We moved 8 pullets from their small duplex to the coop after the sun went down. They are all around 11 weeks old, so I hope they are big enough to be with the mature chickens. They seemed to be doing fine this morning. Two of them are full-blooded Buff Orpington pullets. It is sad that only 2 out of 9 chicks survived, but I am thankful for these 2 anyway. Another two are from Black Giant hens. One appears to be a full Black Giant and the other is clearly half Black Giant and half Buff Orpington. The other four are Rhode Island Reds. One or two of them may be cockerels. I’m still not sure yet. 8 other of the chicks are definitely cockerels, so I have kept them in the duplex to await their sale or their butchering day.

Today is the one-year anniversary of getting our chicks from Murray McMurray hatchery. We have enjoyed switching out our old game mixed chickens with chickens of definite breeds. We still have 5 Light Brahma hens, 4 Black Giant hens, 3 Buff Orpington hens, and 3 Partridge Rock hens. Currently 2 of the Black Giant hens have chicks and one of the Partridge Rock hens has chicks. On June 21st we set eggs under another broody Partridge Rock hen and also under good old One Feather. She hatched and raised the Black Giant chicks and raised the Rhode Island Red chicks that we just put in the coop, but she was ready to try and hatch out another clutch. She is the only game hen we still have. We have set the timer for the new chicks to hatch on July 13th.

So, you can see, our chickens have been a big part of our summer activities so far, and it looks like a trend that will continue. We still have several more that we will be butchering before too long, and there is more work to do on the chicken lot, etc. I believe that they are worth the time and effort we put into them, however. Chickens are fun to raise and we enjoy the eggs and meat they provide!