Wow, lucky you! That would be my guess. Every time we've bought laying hens they may lay and egg or two the first few days and then always stop for at least a week.
I have personally never slaughtered anything until our first rooster last month, we knew nothing about what we were doing (besides Lonny's experience with deer hunting and fishing), and it honestly wasn't too bad. It was easy to see in retrospect what to do differently to make things move more quickly next time (number one- a sharper knife!). It also taught us that a BIG bird gets REAL small once you get all the feathers and innards out of the way! We had 4 black copper marans (5 months old) to process but stopped after one because it was so small, I think we only got maybe a pound of meat off of it? After talking with others we learned that BCM, as they are a large dual purpose bird, take longer than usual to "finish" and that a super hot summer like we had makes for low body weights. However our other 3 are getting frisky with Fat Albert's girls, so something is going to have to change sooner or later, whether we pen them by themselves in a bachelor pen or go ahead and process them.
I have personally never slaughtered anything until our first rooster last month, we knew nothing about what we were doing (besides Lonny's experience with deer hunting and fishing), and it honestly wasn't too bad. It was easy to see in retrospect what to do differently to make things move more quickly next time (number one- a sharper knife!). It also taught us that a BIG bird gets REAL small once you get all the feathers and innards out of the way! We had 4 black copper marans (5 months old) to process but stopped after one because it was so small, I think we only got maybe a pound of meat off of it? After talking with others we learned that BCM, as they are a large dual purpose bird, take longer than usual to "finish" and that a super hot summer like we had makes for low body weights. However our other 3 are getting frisky with Fat Albert's girls, so something is going to have to change sooner or later, whether we pen them by themselves in a bachelor pen or go ahead and process them.
