4 7 month old laying hens (The Ladies)
4 6 week old future laying hens (The 4-Pack)
4 6 month old muscovy ducks (Draco and Harem)
25 2 week old Cornish Rock Cross meat birds (Lunch)
1 mystery chick we got with the meat birds (Pretty Boy)
That's a total of 38 birds. That's a lot of birds.
My laying hens are awesome. They give us three eggs a day, regular as clockwork, and have proven invaluable for processing old leaf litter. I have to fence off the driveway before we forage them again, they've decided the neighbor has the best bugs in town.
The Ladies, hard at work right after I mowed the lawn
The ducks are loving life as free range birds. They spend all day hunting bugs and nibbling on the lawn. The first couple days we had some trouble convincing the girls to not spend the night roosting on the roof of the garage, but now they've settled into a pattern. They get their feeding of layer crumbles and treats at night and the drake helps herd them into the pen. We ended up naming them since we expect to have them for years. The drake is Draco and the girls are Spot, Speckles, and Hershey. We are the least creative owners ever.
Spot and Speckles on the roof, at least they're safe from foxes
The ducks and the chicks hanging out, L to R it's Speckles, Hershey, Spot, and Draco
Draco and his ladies (L to R, Spot, Hershey, Speckles)
As for the chickens, we have four 6 week old girls to expand our laying flock. There's two Red Stars and two Easter Eggers. We have them in a run next to the laying flock so they can get used to seeing each other without the big girls getting a chance to beat the little girls up. When they're about three months old we plan to combine the two flocks.
The new girls on the block
And then there's our meat birds. We decided to try the commercial line of birds instead of the heritage type broilers for this batch. They grow faster, have more breast meat, and I got them for a lower price per bird, but they can't reproduce on their own and are prone to leg problems. Sure enough, we have one with a leg problem that I spotted just today. They also eat like starved raptors and poop a shocking amount. Since they'll be at processing weight at 10 weeks old, they have a lot of growing to do.
We're trying to raise them as naturally as possible and give them the same quality of life we gave the Rangers. Today was their first foray outside while I cleaned out their brooder.
The meat birds doing some maintenance in my pepper garden
I don't think I'll get these guys again, they're just not the same as the Rangers. The Rangers were chickens that happen to grow faster than the dual purpose birds. These birds are bred for exactly one purpose and they're not as much fun to raise. Next time I'll get the birds that take a couple more weeks to grow but behave normally. But it made me happy to see them out pecking and scratching like any other chicken. They uncovered some sort of nest and had a feeding frenzy before being tucked back under their heater.
Don't my peppers look awesome? That's my habaneros in front, bell peppers and ascents in back, and purple jalapenos on the right. The big pot in the back is lemongrass. I've had quite a good year with the peppers and I'll be repeating all of these peppers next year.
38 birds is a lot. I'm spending quite a bit of time cleaning up pens and runs right now. Of course we'll be at a laying flock of 8 and a duck flock of 4 come November, but in the meantime, our compost heap is getting a lot of material. Should be some awesome compost next spring with the manure, straw, wood chips, and leaves going in. It's the silver lining I have to look for when cleaning out the brooder for 26 chicks. Ew. Raising chickens is not for the squeamish.
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