How many birds are in your current flock?

[KLIL]

They love each other till there 10th week then they start fighting and we made their separate section in home

Ohhh ok. I thought so. I think we will just keep one.

 

[Rysktal]

Chicken math

Started with 1 Rooster, 1 Mama and her 10 chicks last summer.

I won't go through the details of how we got to where we are right now but in my backyard I currently have...

1 Rooster (not the same as the one we started with lol)
5 mature hens
4 four week olds (one of my hens babies)
2 five week olds
22 ten-ish week olds
22 four-ish week olds
19 muscovy ducks
3 quail

It's a lot, a bunch of them will be for food. Come winter I would like to have my flock down to 20-30. 20 would be best but I need to be realistic with myself, lol.

 

[KLIL]

Chicken math

Started with 1 Rooster, 1 Mama and her 10 chicks last summer.

I won't go through the details of how we got to where we are right now but in my backyard I currently have...

1 Rooster (not the same as the one we started with lol)
5 mature hens
4 four week olds (one of my hens babies)
2 five week olds
22 ten-ish week olds
22 four-ish week olds
19 muscovy ducks
3 quail

It's a lot, a bunch of them will be for food. Come winter I would like to have my flock down to 20-30. 20 would be best but I need to be realistic with myself, lol.

Ohhh wow! I was just thinking about what I should do if I get more then 1 roo from my chicks I currently have. Do you cull them yourself for food? Or a butcher?

 

[Rysktal]

Ohhh wow! I was just thinking about what I should do if I get more then 1 roo from my chicks I currently have. Do you cull them yourself for food? Or a butcher?

We will process our birds ourselves. It's a big learning experience but my husband and I agree it's better to do it ourselves then send any birds away to the butcher.

I had no idea this was even a thing, but in our community apparently sending your birds to the butcher puts you at risk for getting the wrong birds back! Also I would rather my animals last moments not to be full of stress.

...we didn't set out to raise our own meat exactly, it just sort of happened and now I can't bring myself to buy meat at the grocery store.

 

[aart]

I have 13 adults, including the flock cock.
10 pullets, some of which may be sold before winter.
Already sold, gifted, slaughtered 9 cockerels, they were tender at 14wks.

~6 of the older hens will be slaughtered this fall, suitable only for stew IMO.
I'm strict about chicken math(subtraction!!),
and keeping my winter population numbers reasonable for my space.
Winter can be brutal here and I've had too many birds over winter once,
it was not fun for me nor humane for the birds.
Nothing worse than an overcrowded coop.

 

[Rysktal]

@aart Yep, I need to do a lot of subtraction to get my flock down to what will be comfortable this winter. Here is hoping I can move forward with *logic* instead of emotion!

 

[KLIL]

We will process our birds ourselves. It's a big learning experience but my husband and I agree it's better to do it ourselves then send any birds away to the butcher.

I had no idea this was even a thing, but in our community apparently sending your birds to the butcher puts you at risk for getting the wrong birds back! Also I would rather my animals last moments not to be full of stress.

...we didn't set out to raise our own meat exactly, it just sort of happened and now I can't bring myself to buy meat at the grocery store.

I was just reading up on it. And I didn't like the idea of sending them away to the butcher either. Id be willing to learn for myself but you should have seen me break down when we had to cull one of our chicks omg. Was it hard the first time?

 

[nessa.morg]

I currently have 11. Some reason I thought I had 13 but I kept counting wrong.
I know im getting one more soon.
I started of my flock with three leghorns. and then I got two polish but one turned out to be a rooster so I had to rehome the rooster but I still have one polish. Then I also got a wyandotte. And six bantam babies hatched last week. so that makes 11! The three leghorns are the only ones old enough to lay right now.

 

[KLIL]

I have 13 adults, including the flock cock.
10 pullets, some of which may be sold before winter.
Already sold, gifted, slaughtered 9 cockerels, they were tender at 14wks.

~6 of the older hens will be slaughtered this fall, suitable only for stew IMO.
I'm strict about chicken math(subtraction!!),
and keeping my winter population numbers reasonable for my space.
Winter can be brutal here and I've had too many birds over winter once,
it was not fun for me nor humane for the birds.
Nothing worse than an overcrowded coop.

Yeah I understand, we let ours free range. Our coop is rated for 8 chickens so we capped our flock at 8 but if they couldn't free range I wouldn't have capped it at 8. We thought we need to cap it or we will just go over board. We always have a plan before we act when it comes to our chickens.

 

[HuffleClaw]

3 years ago I started with 12....
Now I have over 60, but now I’m downsizing the flock again...