I very well may be crazy, I have a problem with chicken math. I am not 100% sure how many chickens I have at the moment. I know I have 30 chicks in the house, I probably have 45 to 50 on the back porch and I have about the same in the swimming pool brooder in the shed. It no longer contains the chicks, I have a baby gate in front of the door and my husband actually found juveniles on the porch this morning! I have older Juveniles in what I call the Sidecar to the big coop. I am guessing about 40 in there. That doesn't include the ones in the "Big Coop", "The Rooster Condo", the "Chicken Tractor" area, the "Lowboy" or the "Kennel"....that is probably about 120 adult chickens. So what is that total? Just over 250 chickens?
I have 13 young turkey poults too. I have 17 ducks and 5 geese. Does it sound like I am on my way to a full-fledged poultry farm? I am certainly trying to be! I still have broody hens and decided to give a few fertile duck eggs. I have several broody hens and one is especially nasty. I have been bitten, I have been flogged and just down right attacked several times by her...she is a nasty broody hen! I have a beak mark and a bruise from her on my forearm, it really surprised me how viscous she is when it comes to the eggs she is sitting on. I may have to move her and give her eggs to sit on before she does serious damage to me. I still have several broody hens, but not all of them are as nasty towards me is this little bearded devil. I have three broody Marans and they are pretty docile, my Easter Eggers pecks me when I remove eggs and so does my Silver Laced Wyandotte. The Buff Orpington is starting to peck me too...all of them are getting very thin. I gave a Black Sex-Link a couple of duck eggs, I may give the rest a few to sit on too. I am done incubating in the house, to many disappointments...although my own eggs hatched without problems, I have a lot of barnyard mixes already...so they will be my egg layers if I don't sell them.
The Avian Flu has hit the Northern Tier of the United States really badly, a lot of poultry is being put to death because of it. As far as I know it has not hit Texas yet. There are very few cases of the Avian Flu in backyard flocks, it is mainly hitting major poultry producers that have hundreds of thousands of chickens and turkey's. Prices are skyrocketing at the grocery store for eggs, I am sure prices for anything that contains eggs will go up dramatically too. Eggs are being rationed and businesses like McDonalds are unable to get the quantities they need. I guess it is a good time to have chickens, because I have plenty of eggs...and the Avian Flu has hit turkeys too...so Thanksgiving Turkeys may be out of a lot of people's price range this year. They are saying it may take a couple of years for the big poultry houses to recover. I will not bring in any outside chickens any more, my flock is healthy and I plan for it to stay that way. So get ready if you live in the United States, eggs are going up, chicken and turkey prices are going up too...don't be too surprised if eggs get up to $10 a dozen before it is all said and done. I have only gone up to $3 a dozen so far, that is still cheaper than the price for the cheapest eggs...and I still don't make enough of of sales to feed my chickens yet.
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