Chickens, Ducks and more

Our meat chickens are doing well, I think we are down to 58 at this point - two died the day after we put them outside, a bad wet and windy storm had come through and they weren't quit acclimated, but otherwise they are growing really well and we have set the date of 17 April to slaughter them. They will be 11 weeks at that point and should be a healthy 4-5lbs on average. My oldest son, Daniel is going to be coming up that day to help.

This is their tractor they get moved in every day, it is probably a little on the smaller side for the number of chickens in it, there is plenty room for them to move around in, but the amount of waste that many chickens put out in that small of an area is quite large! I think in the future they should be split into two separate cages for that amount of birds. It is neat to see how there waste. is already helping the emerging grass grow where they first started out.

This is the chicken infirmary, a couple of the meat chickens are injured, one has a broken foot from getting caught under the tractor while moving it and the other was one that was a little lame and small when we moved them outside, but somehow seems to still be hanging in there. The other small birds are the egg layers, Laura thinks something was wrong with some of them when she got them, they seem to have some neurological thing going on where they twitch really badly, the one looks like a bad movie her head twitches so much, so we seperated them and are keeping an eye on them to see what develops over this week.

The egglayers are a mixed bunch, so some are growing a lot faster than others, so we split them between two brooder boxes so that the bigger ones don't hurt or exclude the smaller ones from food. Its really lovely to see all their colors coming in, and they are starting to grow quite rapidly now.

These are the guardian dogs who look after a group of the female breeders, and they got a fresh hay bale this week and couldn't be happier to lay on it and around it.

These are the 12 egg laying ducks we are raising, they are getting to be so beautiful and have these lovely blue beaks, Abby was having fun playing with them and then doing a real live egg hunt to find all the eggs from the more mature ducks, who seem to lay them wherever they please.

These were just a few fun shots of the baby goat, he was having fun playing with the kids (mine) and then climbing up into the hay to eat it, get away from mom and Vanna