First Year almost Completed

[KatyTheChickenLady]

lol,

I'm not laughing at you cattleman just with you, but I too am picturing you & your lovely wife with 100 crowing roos . . .

 

[rickerra]

You went from 6 hens to over 200 chickens in 10 months?!? That some serious exponential chicken math!

I like the idea of your DP grow-out trial. I hope your birds get to a good age/size before they start crowing.

1 of my 2 roosters growing with my hens... just found his "voice" this morning. He came out of the hen house and let our 5 nice crows.

And he's only 10 weeks old. Not even big enough to make the butchering worth it at this point. He is an Ameracauna roo.

I'm hoping he quiets down for a few more weeks so he can pack on the weight... but I have my doubts.

Good luck!

 

[karimw]

10 weeks? That would be nice! I have some Ameraucana/Welsummer crosses that are 6 weeks and crowing up a storm. It sounds like I have bantams

I just completed my first year in March. I started with 35 misc pure breeds and now have 50+ layers, over 100 chicks of various ages and more in the bator. LOVE the chicken math!

 

[FeedYourself]

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[cattleman999]

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That doesn't count the roughly 50 CX that have already gone to the freezer. I had some thoughts of trying to grow the CX to sell to others to help provide a small additional income but have decided that I just don't have the time to invest in that. I plan on letting my DP birds free range as much as I can to help offset some of their feedbill and they will just be for our consumption and a few close family and friends. It should be interesting to say the least. If it becomes too much we have a place where people come to buy chickens every Saturday morning and I can probably get a few gone that way if need be.

 

[Bossroo]

Well, don't stay out 'till 2am just dancin' and drinkin' on Saturday mornings... 3am comes awfull quick !

 

[brandislee]

Dude, you guys must eat a lot of chicken...

 

[cattleman999]

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Don't bring up dancing or my wife will have me out there all the time.

We used to do that at least three nights a week but that seems like a lifetime ago now. I don't remember what it was like to not have kids and other responsibilities to take care of. We enjoy spending our weekends at home now. We like to be outside and spend time with the kids.

 

[cattleman999]

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We eat a lot of everything it seems like. In the last 18 months we have gone through 1 and 1/2 beefs, 1/2 a pig and the last 40 broilers didn't last more than 3 months. I did give some of those to family to try though. I anticipate selling some of these roos to the hispanic and asian communities here. There is a place where you can take them on Saturday mornings and those folks come to buy their chicken still clucking so no processing involved. It might only be a breakeven on those birds but this way I get to try 4 different breeds at once. If I don't like the results I don't have to do it again.

 

[brandislee]

That's a lot of meat! But I don't know what our consumption is- I know we've gone through most of a 1/2 of beef between now and last Thanksgiving, and I'm about to buy a whole hog (we have the biggest deep freeze on the planet- seriously I'll bet I could fit six or seven bodies in it). I've only got 10 meaties right now and am waiting on 10 chickens (processed) from someone else- I'm curious to see how long those last.