AAchicks
Chirping
- Jul 11, 2018
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I thought I would share a small project we have going on. Our birds are layer breeds. For some reason this year the broodies only wanted to be broody in the nest boxes and not where we would relocate them to. So for the few hatched we did this year, when a hen would go broody, we would leave her be, place eggs in the incubator until they hatched and then stick them under the broody at night and move them to a separate pen the next day. On our last batch, we had 2 hens go broody and only 4 of the 9 eggs to hatch. Both hens wanted the babies, so we decided to attempt some broilers.
Tractor Supply had both Cornish Rock and Red Rangers they had just gotten in that day, so I picked up 4 CR and 8 RR and we stuck them under the two mamas along with the 4 EE that hatched. Everyone got adopted and the two hens are co-parenting. We left them in the grow out pen for 1 week to bond. The timing was such that our garden (a 50x40 area) was done for the year and we had let the weeds take over. So we cut the weeds down so the chicks could be seen and move the 2 mamas and the 16 chicks into the garden.
Our plan is for the mamas to teach the chicks to forage in this safe area. Once the broiler chicks no longer need the mamas, we will remove the mamas and EE chicks to the layer pen and leave the broilers for a bit longer in the garden pen. Once we are confident they know where “home” is, we will let them totally free range and then get locked in the garden area at night.
At this point they are 1 day shy of 2 weeks old. The broilers are just now starting to show a size difference from the EE’s. They adore their mamas and act exactly like the EE’s in they let mama scratch the area and then dive in for the goodies. They have a feeder in the pen right now for free access food but I hardly ever see them at it. Despite not seeing them at the feeder, their crops are super full! Once the food is gone from that feeder, we will move to feeding 2x a day so they spend the time foraging and not sitting at the feeder. I expect to process the CR first and then a few weeks later the RR.
If people are interested, I will post updates as we go along. Here we are at almost 2 weeks into our project:
Tractor Supply had both Cornish Rock and Red Rangers they had just gotten in that day, so I picked up 4 CR and 8 RR and we stuck them under the two mamas along with the 4 EE that hatched. Everyone got adopted and the two hens are co-parenting. We left them in the grow out pen for 1 week to bond. The timing was such that our garden (a 50x40 area) was done for the year and we had let the weeds take over. So we cut the weeds down so the chicks could be seen and move the 2 mamas and the 16 chicks into the garden.
Our plan is for the mamas to teach the chicks to forage in this safe area. Once the broiler chicks no longer need the mamas, we will remove the mamas and EE chicks to the layer pen and leave the broilers for a bit longer in the garden pen. Once we are confident they know where “home” is, we will let them totally free range and then get locked in the garden area at night.
At this point they are 1 day shy of 2 weeks old. The broilers are just now starting to show a size difference from the EE’s. They adore their mamas and act exactly like the EE’s in they let mama scratch the area and then dive in for the goodies. They have a feeder in the pen right now for free access food but I hardly ever see them at it. Despite not seeing them at the feeder, their crops are super full! Once the food is gone from that feeder, we will move to feeding 2x a day so they spend the time foraging and not sitting at the feeder. I expect to process the CR first and then a few weeks later the RR.
If people are interested, I will post updates as we go along. Here we are at almost 2 weeks into our project:
