Mom Hunter are you culling some of just hatching them ? selling meat or eggs ?
I have an older neighbor with diabetes who i give the eggs too she is like OH JOY , had them as a kid and she can eat them she doesnt want to mess even with a garden so i grow way more then i can hand;le but boy does she get mad when the deer get some LOL .
Since I have my weight records from the first 140 JMF eggs I hatched I will weigh these at 6 weeks. If they do not the minimal weights, to be considered for breeding, the males will either go to the freezer or be sold. The lighter hens I will feed for another two weeks, be for sale to others or go in my freezer. The largest ones will be weighed again at 8 weeks for me to select more breeders from.
Right now I have a two month waiting list of people that want chicks. I am hatching them out as fast as my girls are laying them. My problem is I kept to small of a number through the winter then a cat pulled some legs through my cage bottom and broke some hens legs. I am now down to only 6 hens giving eggs daily. Can't wait until my new chicks are old enough to join my breeder pen.
I have 45 eggs in the hatcher now that will be picked up Wed if all goes well. I am setting every egg, do not selling any eggs until I get caught up on chick orders. Then I need to raise a couple of hundred to put in my freezer, almost gone through all of my stock pile this winter. We raise or hunt all of our meat, no grocery store meat in our four freezers!!