Weekly Update, half a week late.

Here's your pictures for the week. We did actually take these the other day, I just hadn't put them up yet. The chickens are bigger now then when we took these pictures a few days ago. We've been letting them out most evenings and they are in no way hesitant to go outside now, they still don't roam very far, but they love to go outside. Hopefully in a week or two they'll be big enough that we can let them into their run all day without worrying about them being able to sneak through the fence. We've been debating about keep a couple extra layers around since we've received a number of inquiries about selling eggs, we'll see, and if that doesn't work out, into the oven! We might be getting a turkey or two also. A guy at work has chickens and turkeys and he's currently incubating 20 turkey eggs and asked if I would want any, he apparently keeps his right with his chickens, so a nice turkey or two sounds delicious. He's also hatching peacock eggs, but I have to draw the line somewhere.

Chicken Update

Here's this week's growth update. They are getting enormous, they look like little birds now, not little fluffy chicks. They have almost all their wing feathers and little tail feathers too.

We left the coop door open for a while after work tonight to see what
they would do. They were all a lot more hesitant than I expected.

Only a few brave ones jumped out and poked around for a bit.

Their roosting instincts have definitely kicked in, they have free run of the coop now and can pretty easily jump/fly from the ground to the top rung.

Farm News - Week of May 30, 2010

We lost one more chicken this week, it was another one that had never really grown at all. The rest of them have grown much bigger this week, I think we should be in the clear now. The garden is flourishing right now with all of the rain and hot, sunny weather we've had this past week. I had to build some trellises today for the beans and tomatoes. Our celery and cauliflower got decimated by a rabbit this week, I need to step up the defenses and try and keep the little punk out. I have some fence up, but it's not quite small enough to keep the baby bunnies out, yar. He's lucky we don't live in the country...

You can see a little better in this one, they're a handful now.

I expanded the brooder to give them some more room to run, they
attempt to run and fly with their little wings, it's pretty hilarious.

Turnips poking through.

Gigantic Lima beans and their new trellis.

Chickens

The chickens are all doing well, except for the free bonus rare breed chicken they send with your order, which I'm pretty sure is just their way of dumping extra chicks off on people. That one unsurprisingly died, I have no idea what it was, I couldn't match it to anything on their website. It didn't look very good from the beginning, the rest of them all look very healthy though. They're pretty hilarious to watch. Here's the rundown on what we got:

18 Rhode Island Reds - Brown egg/meat combo

3 Buff Rocks - Brown Egg Layers, suppose to lay well through the winter.

3 Black Australropes - Prolific brown egg layers

2 Araucanas - They lay a mix of blue/green eggs, are suppose to
lay well straight through the winter as well.

So that's 26 total, one I owe to someone as a trade for the heat lamp they gave me. Then we'll probably keep around 8 for laying.