Almost Free!

I am a crazy chicken lady these days, I hatched chicks way longer than I intended to this year...but, I am going to move the last of them to the yard tomorrow...I think.  Once I get them off of my back porch and get the cages cleaned up, I am hoping the flies will go away!  I am so tired of scrapping poop trays out and dealing with maggots and poop...well, you just wouldn't understand unless you have been hatching chickens steady for 9 months and taking care of babies.  So, I will consider myself almost free...no more cleaning brooders for awhile...I think anyway.

I still have a goose sitting on eggs, I think they should hatch this weekend...if they are going to hatch. I am hoping the Momma Goose will take care of them so I don't have to.   I have a lot of young chickens in the yard, but I am going to have to gather up a lot of the males the young are being extremely aggressive with my hens, some of the young roosters I hatched out this year are huge!  It may sound awful but I really need to process a lot of them soon.  They tend to gang up on the hens, sometimes five males will go after one hen and I need to put a stop to it.  I have a man who buys roosters from me for eating...he stopped by the other day and said come October 1st, he would probably come by and get at least ten, possibly as many as 20 roosters.  I will probably get rid of a lot of mixed breed roosters, I have 20 roosters in my big pallet coop, but half of them are full bred Cream Legbars, I may go around to pens and just selectively choose mixed breeds for him.  Getting rid of twenty roosters would help the feed bill...goodness knows I need all the help I can get with that!  I am up to 21 five gallon buckets of feed fermenting in my feed shed.  I had to increase it, you can't add turkeys, geese, ducks and chickens and not feed them enough...I went from 9 turkeys to 23, I added 15 ducks and 3 geese, and no telling how many chickens.  The bad part is, about 3/4 of them are males!  I don't need more males...my goal was to get more laying hens to sell.  The only reason I grow them up is for food...and since I have not finish my processing station yet...I am selling off the older roosters for cheap.  I have plenty more growing up for when I am ready.

I think people around here wait for fall, cooler weather and a lot of chicken keepers will thin their flocks.  I may only get rid of roosters this year...but, I have had people calling wanting hens this summer.  I am not willing to get rid of my breeding stock.  I have some nice birds, the heritage Rhode Island Reds are a very rich deep dark red, the Cream Legbars are gorgeous, and I have some nice Marans.  I am hoping my Welsummers start laying soon and the newest of the Blue Laced Red Wyandottes.  I need to tag or band all the ones I want to keep for breeding and do an inventory of each breed so I know how many females I have and males from different sources.  I may sell the Isbars I hatched though...kinda pissed that they turned out to be bantams.  I prefer only large fowl because of the size of some of the breeds I have...like the Orpingtons and Java's, some of the mixes are huge too.  But, I am trying to get large birds that can take care of themselves, the Falcons, Owls and Hawks don't stand a chance with my fowl these days.  I have not had any deaths since my geese and turkeys have grown up and I have such huge roosters running around.

I have lots to get done today, well every day...but some days there is more than enough to keep me busy from dawn to dusk...my body will only let me do so much though.  I rest every few hours most of the time, sometimes for an hour or more in the summer.  I come into the house, cool off, drink a ton of water, do some laundry, maybe some dishes or wash eggs sometimes and then go back at it outside.  We are suppose to have a cold wet winter...gotta get ready for it.  It is suppose to get up to 91 today, I am just hoping the humidity is not to high when I get out there today.  I need to do some cleaning in a few coops and then moving of the young juveniles from the porch brooders, then clean the brooders too.  Then I will go from there...