we have sold all of our chicken that we are offering of this round of birds. we need to keep a few for ourselves. we like to eat at least one chicken per week.
they look really great, healthy chickens. it is very satisfying moving them twice per day. they get so excited for the new possibility of bugs and such. i made these new feeders just before we put the birds in.
they like them so well that they stopped using their old feeder.
it was just dead weight in the coop and made it harder to move. version 2.0 was four inches wide. see below
i decided that each chicken tractor needed a second feeder. having learned from version 2.0 feeder that they were a little too narrow and could use a little more capacity. my next attempt, i used a six inch wide pvc pipe and cut it length ways in half. also i wanted the center bar to spin so birds wouldn't try to roost above their wider food bin.
welcome to version 2.2
it seems to work as hoped. it hangs from the tractor. we raise it up and it moves with the tractor easily.
we have also restrung the electric fence to include a third lower hot wire. we want the dogs to have access to pastured poultry to protect them. the puppies took to the new paddock immediately--there be chicken poop to eat in there.
astrid on the other hand it took four days of coaxing before she would tentatively expand her sphere of protection.
here the puppies are hanging with their girls.
symbiosis in action at the pile of omelays.
now if we can just keep all those birds healthy for the next month until butcher? we are also compelled to raise a hundred birds for the next round. We have sold twenty birds of that second batch already. we were hoping to raise a hundred birds for ourselves for this winter. we'll have to glean fifty each from the next two butchering dates. i'm not sure that is possible? to make things worse we just ate our last bird when ron came to visit. yes, ron i just outed you;)
now that i am seeing all those tasty birds several times per day i don't want to sell any of them. they are MY tasty chickens.
6 comments:
And a mighty tasty bird it was. Come visit us before the snow flies and we'll feed you guys some homegrown ham. :)
The birds are looking great. I'd have a mighty hard time parting with them too!
Ron
ron, we are excited to come to your house. as soon as things settle down here we'll try to arrange it.
separation anxiety is already happening and we've got four more weeks. i have never been so pleased with our chickens. they are frisky and moving them so often, plus the sea-kelp in the fertrell mineral supplement keeps their smell non-existent.
I'm so happy to see that your chicken business endeavor has gone so well! Hope it continues to go so well.
thanks, annie it is kinda scary ramping up into the unknown.
I was wondering if you notice a decline in bugs around your acreage now that you have the chicken tractors in operation, especially around your garden?
ed,
i don't have any double blind testing going on here but it definitely seems like there are fewer ticks and chiggers. the garden is a different story. the bugs are overwhelming. anything more than critical mass of overwhelming insects is completely unnoticeable. i plan to build a narrow chicken tractor for between the garden rows. that might make a difference. we'll see... btw, we have many beneficial insects in the garden too.
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