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MMelton67

MMelton67

Chirping
Jul 24, 2023
90
233
86
Southern Indiana
Greetings, everyone.

My wife and I have just started down the small homestead type farm with a goal of producing eggs for sale.
We have a small, not quite 5 acre property in Southern Indiana. We intend to increase our chicken flock over the next year to around 50 chickens.

We purchased 8 Lavender Orps and 8 Barred Rocks from Hoover's Hatchery on the 19th of June. The all arrived alive and in apparent good health and still seem to be doing well though I believe they have developed coccidiosis. I'll be hunting for posts on that shortly and/or posting a thread about what I'm seeing and what I've done so far to treat it. We also ended up with 1 rooster in the Rocks even though we ordered all female.

We also got 4 Pilgrim Geese the same week of June. 2 males and 2 females. They are doing fine and I've become quite fond of them. I have them in an 8'x16' main pen and take them out to 'pasture' in a 5' x 10' tractor for 6-8 hours each day. They are a day shy of 10 weeks old as of this posting.

I look forward to learning all I can from this place.
 
Thanks for the welcome, everyone.

@Jenbirdee My plan is to let them free range during the day when they are older...still unclear on when they reach that age: 6 months? 12 months? The first tractor I built for them was only 4x8 and 24" tall and I noticed every time they came back into the main pen they would immediately stretch their wings. So, I built the 5x10 and it's 32" tall. Much bigger and I wouldn't be able to move it up and down the hill. I am already feeling like they would follow me from one location to the other but want to wait a few more weeks to make sure they'll come back into the pen at night. I sit in the pen with them for a bit ever evening when I move them back in and they are starting to interact with me physically now. I've ordered Dave Holderread's bulletin on Pilgrim's and am hoping his books gets back into publication. Any thoughts/tips/advice are most welcome!
 
LTAY1946 said:
It's not uncommon to get a few roosters when ordering all pullets. Sexing at day old is often only around 85% accurate in non sex link chicks.
Click to expand...
That makes sense. We're not bothered by it though we had planned on holding off on roosters till we had the infrastructure to keep layers away from roosters until we wanted to naturally increase the flock. We like the Rocks so much we're ok with letting that happen sooner. The Orpingtons have been really dramatic so far compared to the Rock's apparently laid back attitude about life in general.
 

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