Adorae’s Family Flock and Farm

[Adorae]

Welcome everyone! This is my attempt to catalogue my journey into chicken husbandry. I will be using my little section here as a way to consolidate all of my chicken project ideas. I am going to attempt to dabble in making my own meat birds. I have enough room to have more than one flock, so I will have a small egg bird flock, but I really enjoy eating chicken and so does the rest of my family, so I hope to create my own.

I have my first group of day old chickens being shipped from Murray McMurray next week. This order has 10 Whiteing True Blues 7 of which are supposed to be female, 5 straight run Dark Cornish, and a surprise chick, which should be fun.

My other group of chicks I will be picking up from Cackle Hatchery myself on April 11, since it’s not a terrible drive. This group is all SR and will include 5 Lakenvelder, 5 Colombian Rock, 6 Turken, and 5 Silkies.

My set up consists of an 11x13 chicken coop I have nearly finished building and, eventually, to very large fixed runs. If things go favorably I will build more breeding coops and use the original as a grow out coop for the meaties. Oh, I also have a prefab coop that can hold up to 5 chickens that I plan to use as a breeding coop/chicken jail/hospital once I get it put together.

I live with my family on about 10 acres. My son is 2.5 years old and my daughter is 2 months old. I’m waiting to raise my own chickens as a way to provide the healthiest possible food for my family. I love cooking good food, growing things in my garden, and I very excited to add the chickens onto my list of projects.

Please feel free to ask questions and make suggestions if you want. Here’s some photos of the coop as it is, and I will update with new when it is closer to completion. I will also update when I get my chicks next week!

 

[Adorae]

Got the first batch!

 

[Adorae]

So Cackle got my order slightly wrong, they gave me 6 silkies instead of 6 turken, which I didn’t catch until I got home. But I did catch the silkie with cross beak. They gave me another silkie, but wouldn’t take the cross beak one back. I’m pretty upset I’m gonna have to watch the baby fade away since it’s pretty severe.

I got a couple pictures of them in the brooder. Tomorrow I will try to get some more of them all.

 

[notabitail]

Got the first batch!View attachment 3463521

Congratulations!

 

[Adorae]

Poor Silkie . There's nothing you can do?

As far as I know there’s not anything you can do to fix it. If it can eat on its own, then it will be okay, if it can’t then it wastes away. I’m trying to see if my mom will take it as a pet. With a new born baby, I can’t.

 

[notabitail]

As far as I know there’s not anything you can do to fix it. If it can eat on its own, then it will be okay, if it can’t then it wastes away. I’m trying to see if my mom will take it as a pet. With a new born baby, I can’t.

Make sure that it has a companion. I hope it eats on its own.

 

[Adorae]

Okay, so I got my order of chicks from Murray McMurray. Doesn’t seem to be any issues with the order of the chicks themselves. I’m having a dark time identifying the free surprise chick though.

 

[Adorae]

Is the Silkie going to make it?
They're all very cute.

So far it is doing okay as far as I can tell. My mom said that if it is still alive in a week or 2 that she’ll adopt it.

 

[Adorae]

I forgot to mention that I weight some of the boys to get an idea how they were gaining weight.
Columbian Rocks - 3.9lbs & 4.12lbs
Naked Necks - 3.96lbs & 4.3lbs
Dark Cornish - 3.7lbs

Then for fun I weighed a Lakenvelder and Pita, the WTB to get an idea how much they weigh.
Lakenvelder - 2.58lbs and WTB - 2.94lbs

The Dark Cornish and Lakenvelder roosters look about the same size, but the DC cockerel is over a lb heavier. The Columbians and the NN look to be similar sizes and their weights are reflective of that.

It's really hard to tell the Columbian's apart from one another, so that's why I only weighed 2 of them. however I will get weight from all of them in 4 weeks when they are all 18 weeks old. At that point I will need to look them all over carefully to determine which one stays. I know there's one with a weird comb that should go, and another seems to have an issue with their tail, it is tilted down instead of up, and I would like to remove the poor boy that took forever to get his feathers in. Even after removing those, I will have 2 left to choose from.

 

[Adorae]

Oh man, I hadn't realized that it's been over a month since my last update. I keep planning out posts in my head, but never get around to getting them on here.

So this last Saturday I had Kevin, a work friend, come over and show me how to process the chickens. We managed to remove 2 of the Lakenvelder and 1 Naked neck cockerels from the flock.

The Lakenvelder averaged 3.62 lbs and the Naked Neck was 5.46 live weight. They were nearly 20 weeks old. I have a few pictures of the chickens enjoying their last day and then a picture of the Naked Neck after he was skinned.

My work friend killed the Lakenvelder by stepping on their necks and pulling the heads off. I killed the Naked Neck and that ended up being an ordeal. I Tried to slice his neck, but I didn't cut deep, enough so I had to cut him a couple more times. Then I just felt bad and left him in the kill cone to drain out, only was I was walking away he managed to flop himself out of the kill cone and Kevin went ahead and put him out of his misery. My sister was there also to help with the kids while we were working on the chickens, but the kids ended up napping the entire time.

I spent a lot of time that night watching more videos and planning how I can do it better going forward.

Tomorrow I will be making chicken and dumplings with them, and I will be sending 1/2 the leg quarters to a friend who plans to smoke them.