Culling

[aart]

Some of my birds are 3,2 and 1 years. See we ordered 24 chicks the first year, 50 the second and 100 the 3rd (this past spring). The coyotes and foxes had a hayday this year and our egg production has gone down from 6-7 or 8 dozen a day to 1 dozen. On top of that they are molting. That being said...all egg layers or dual purpose and I can no longer tell who is who. BTW, finally got the fence secure enough, coyotes ate through our first electric fence.

So how many birds are left in total?
So you have multiple housing so can separate while assessing?
How many do you want to remain?
Are the youngest group laying yet?
Should be fairly easy to tell the newest ones from the olders by plumage.
And you can always do butt checks before slaughter.

Slaughtering molting birds is a PITA, might as well skin them which is not easy, IMO.
Have you slaughtered before?
Do you have lots of refrigerator and freezer space?

 

[Ridgerunner]

Not totally sure what you are after, probably help picking which to eat. I don't have any good answers to that. They are molting which makes it rough. And you've lost track of age. I don't know your goals either. What are you looking to keep?

Will you new hatching any new ones? Then keep the ones that you want want new chickens to look like.

Hopefully some of them will be fairly obvious. Maybe color or pattern will hep you age some. Start there. Just keep going until you get down to the number you want. There will be a lot of guessing involved. I think you should shoot for a new starting point.

In the future you can mark them. I use colored zip ties on the left leg to mark the year they were hatched. That leaves the right leg free to mark a future keeper or cull if you wish. Or get a different color. breed or pattern each year. No need to mark them.

You said you are going to can them. You probably know that pressure canning cooks and tenderizes them. I don't know how pressure canning them will affect appearance from the pin feathers.