Saturday, October 14, 2006

Moving day!

Later today we'll be out making life & death decisions about our chickies. It's time to choose our laying flock and the 2 roosters that will "service" them. The rest will go into the old pen for a couple more months, then to the butchers, and finally into our freezer. The 2 new Red Star hens are staying, and just got popped into the layer pen with the babies. A little squabbling, but not the wrathful vengeance that the Rhode Island Reds showed towards other chickens. The 3 older gals are most likely going in to the stew pot as well. They are done laying, and just plain mean, so we'll follow tradition and recycle them into tasty soup or stock.

Hopefully we'll have a few more pictures later today. It's an under the weather kind of weekend, unfortunately, with one migraine and one nasty cold. The original plan was to run errands in town, divvy the flock, then take the dogs to Nooksack Falls and bring home a growler of beer and grinders from the North Fork Brewery. For now, we'll just call it good at groceries and chicken wrangling.

Here's a heartwarming photo of brotherly love to tide you over:

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Stewart looks like he thinks he did something wrong and you found out about it.

--LGP

Anonymous said...

What do you guys feed your chicken, both young, old, laying, retired ?

Anonymous said...

Right now they have constant access to an all purpose chicken feed crumble. Then AM/PM we scatter them all a mix of scratch, sun flower seeds, COB, laying pellets, and oyster shell. This has all been supplemented with any fruit/veg trimmings and egg shells. Also we have supplemented with any non-par garden veggies... many a big zuccini, and tomatoe...