only 24...?
how about "culling" weeds/brush to make room for MORE PENS! not helping am I? lol
what's cooking in the bator?
My chickens have pretty much consumed all of the weed and brush in my backyard where they free range. I'm constantly amused to see them stretching their necks as far as possible through the lattice surrounding my garden in an effort to consume whatever weeds and nutgrass is growing there. From time to time I bring some of my most manageable girls into the garden to help me weed. And I've actually started considering ways to utilize the unusable parts of our property, which is pretty much terrifying my husband. My comment of, "Honey, I think we should get a backhoe," was initially greeted with enthusiasm, followed almost instantly by a look of dread and panic.
My hatch: They're basically going to be barnyard mixes since I never got around to setting up breeding pens. My 11-lb dominant NN rooster spent a lot of time mating my Biel girls and my White Rock girls, so their eggs make up over half of this hatch. I may get a few pure Biels out of it, or I may not. My Ameraucana mix rooster managed to sneak in a couple sessions with the girls too, so it will be like Xmas for me. The rest of the eggs come from my EEs, a few from my Barred Rocks, a few from my Australorps, a couple from my NN/Cochin girl, and one from my largest Dorking mix girl who's about to be culled for eating everyone else's eggs. It will be interesting to figure out who fathered all of those eggs, but ultimately I'm moving towards making everybody a NN.