Backyard Chickens (and Other Birds)

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ca/post/4413694

These Cornish X meat birds arrived on our farm on August 3. That makes them 30 days old today. We ordered 40 and got 45 (the hatcheries always give you extra in case there are any losses during or immediately after transport.) We have lost only one so there are 44 out there now.

My wife has Chicken Day on the calendar as September 30. They will be 59 days old at that point and should average between 6 and 7 pounds dressed.

We had a confluence of events that resulted in our cancelling our original order for 60 birds with one hatchery and ordering 40 birds from another hatchery for delivery a week earlier. That means that we lost our slot at the abattoir. We normally have half of the birds done at an abattoir and do half ourselves. We can't sell the birds we do ourselves so we eat those ones. With the situation this summer we decided not to grow any birds for anyone else this fall and will do all 40 of the birds here on the farm for ourselves.

Butchering day is NOT my favorite day of the year but it is part of farming livestock and it has to be done. We're likely going to offer a workshop for anyone local who wants to learn how to process chickens on their own property.

I gave their bedding a toss this morning.

Our meaties always have access to outdoors from the time they're about 3 weeks old. They will continue to go outside right up until the day before they are processed.

At list a few chickens to raccoons early in the season. They were taken outside. When you improve security raccoons can get more aggressive so I beefed up the summer door on the house.

He was hatched on our farm and went out to a friend whose family wanted a few laying hens. They named him Chloe. When he turned out to be a cockerel he came back and we told her kids that he would live on our farm as a roster, not a meat birds. He turned into a pretty bird.

These 8 nesting boxes, in two banks of 4, are most than 10 years old. They have worked very well. We have somewhere between 40 and 50 hens in the laying flock right now.

EDIT: 45 hens and 3 roosters. I counted this morning.

Mine go crazy for mealworms.

Sesame, our chicken, is spoiled rotten.

I usually chill with her in the mornings, then walk with her in the evening while I'm pretending to do yard work. She follows me around, I drop the occasional peanut, she drops the occasional chicken refuse.

Well, my family has been giving her mealworms this week while I was handling other things, so this afternoon, I paid her a visit with sone peanuts thinking we would just hunker down and bake in the southern heat together, avoiding the sun under some trees.

I walk out the door and got greeted with the most furious t-rex scolding I have ever heard.

I sit my chair down and shes just a squalling and squawking at me. I hold out a peanut, and she gives me that side-eye go to hell look and flips the thing out of my hand, then stomps around me looking at the cup we measure out treats in.

This little monster kept up a nigh constant scolding that I did not have worms for her. She finally settled down enough to catch this pic, but hopped up on my foot and glared at me right after.

She has us trained now.

Our fall batch of Cornish X meaties arrived this morning. We do a batch in the spring and a batch in the fall. We had 60 birds ordered for two weeks from now but I have to be in Atlanta and my wife and daughter will be in Toronto. We moved the delivery earlier but couldn't get an earlier date at the abattoir so we reduced the order to 40 (they always send extra) just what we need and will process them ourselves.

A couple of farts yesterday.

When I saw these I started talking out loud about my recent efforts to prefect a homemade naan recipe to go with my favorite butter chicken recipe. We'll see whether that had any impact today.

The naan is coming along nicely. I'm going to make another batch today.

The two eggs on the left are definitely twins. The little blue one in the middle is a fart. The others are just...unusual.

My hand for scale.

Me : Ummm....

We demand treats and pets!

I cleaned the chicken coop last week, and to my horror the next day I found millions of these little buggers crawling around the edge of the bin lid.

I've disenfected the coop and chickens, and will be doing it again on Friday to capture any survivors. The coop is plastic, so they were living in the wood shavings.

Unfortunately I got mites all over me, and I have gotten bitten BAD. I have bites all over me :( Makes me feel bad for the chickens, but I'll be doing a better job from this point.

My question is what are they? I'm from the UK and they don't look like "red mites" that are common in Europe. I can't find any on the chickens themselves but the coop was rampant with them. And they like human flesh, I tell you that now!

The link of this post is a video of one of the only survivors from my onslaught of the bin today.

More pictures:

spoiler

You ever have a hen who has a beak that seems to delaminate and soften? This is a first for me.

She's in good spirits, doesn't seem to be in pain, and forages a lot. But, she can't seem to grab much food in her beak - especially no grass.

She can get some layer crumbles and mealworms but not as much or as easily as in the past. I've been weighing her the past four days and she's hasn't lost a noticeable amount of weight. But, yesterday I also started supplementing her with moistened layer crumbles (offered separately from the others) and she devours it. It seems to only be the upper beak, the tip of which appears to have broken off yesterday afternoon.

Today I got a vitamin mix (couldn't hurt?) named "Nutri-Drench" and added that on top of the moistened crumbles.

Just curious since I've never seen this before.

We have a flock of welsummers, saphire olive eggers, black jersey giants and americanas with a brahma roo since our welsummer roo was killed this winter.

After four long chookless years (sold up, moved to a different country, bought a property, and got enough renovation done) I finally have hens again and today Phyllis laid her first tiny egg. I’m so happy I sang the egg song with her

She is the last of our original flock of Dominics. She loves to sit in my lap. If I sit down and call her she comes running. If I’m doing chores, she follows me around until I pick her up and hold her. I think that’s amazing.

Youtube suggested this video for me. And I have never seen anything like it. My wife heard my exclamation and agreed with a "what the fork".

So my question to you, dear reader, is this: wtf, is this real?

Edit: "is" had become "us"

A video of me opening the chicken door and letting the flock out this morning. The most senior hens come out first. The bulk of the flock starts to trickle out until the Big Guy comes out then the hens pour out. No. 2 comes out with his girls toward the end of the video. The youngest hens hesitate in the door and No. 3 never makes it out in this video. He always sneaks out once everyone else is out and gathers up his small group of young hens.

The wood, fence, and plastic sheet structure you see here is an aluminum awning with wood walls we use to give the birds outdoor space sheltered from rain and show. It doubles the floor space of the main house.

They have a large, outdoor yard with a thick layer of wood chips for them to dig in and a 5' chain link fence. The fence keeps them out of the gardens and conflict with my wife and protects them from daytime predators. It also meets out obligations under the biosecurity regulations during the time of the bird flu outbreak.

These are working birds, livestock, not pets.