Quote:
Tuesday
4 eggs
3 eggs from the control group
1 egg from the free range chickensIt was my fault as I went to town paying bills and doing some shopping ....
Todays temp was 57F degrees and night falls to a chilling 39F degrees as the mountains around us are covered in snow .......
The control group chickens were originally made up of hens that were hurt in one way or another like thorns in the feet or in one case a super fat guinea who had a broken leg from jumping of his perch in the morning and after making a cast as one of my grandchildren had asked because he did not want to eat an animal he helped to raise and due to his age I tried to save the guinea and the guinea is still in the yard but has never gained such a huge size but others were hurt by chose cats, dogs and Bob Cats and other then wounds and broken wings we and I say we because the kids and grandkids are involved but the recovery rate is way up from the beginning from five years ago from 30 percent to 70 percent chance of living but most never go back to free ranging but still produce good off spring ...... Now there are others that are just in the control group because there are very few of them and they are just for breeding purposes as one of my Spangled Russian Orloff hens is four years old and the months she is producing eggs she only gives up one to two eggs a week so I consider her special and she has never fully recovered from a thorn in her foot but she has some wonderful chicks and she is so special to me and (Buddy) the roo gets to grow out his tail feathers that would be pulled out by the geese at feeding time .... The control group stays in a old unused 3 bedroom house that was on the property and it still had electricity so I can use the swamp cooler when the temp in the house is from 100F to 130F in the summer and yes it get's up that high every summer and from June to September the temp never drops under 100F it is nice as the house is over 1200 feet of living space and I run water over there so I do not have to haul water also it makes it nice as one of the closets are used for incubation because it is easy to control the environment .........
The free range chickens are a mixture of Geese, Ducks, Guinea, and different breeds of chickens and the grow out cage falls in to the free range chickens and at last count there are over 60 chickens 11 geese and 6 ducks 2 guinea the guinea really hard to raise as the wild animals get them first because the guinea go after anything interring the yard ........ the fenced in yard for running around is 250 feet by 180 feet as I only had enough money to fence in 1/4 of a city block that was purchased by the family some time ago and the worst part is I am just outside the city limits and I get domestic pets coming over to do damage to the flock so I had to register my flock as live stock so I could protect them ......
Did I answer your questions
gander 007
