Our introduction to keeping chickens, the high's, the lows and pics of our journey.

[NovaAman]

Hey Ben. About their diet. I have been feeding the same diet for the last 2 years to all my birds because of the varying ages. I use a flockraiser or finisher. Free choice calcium. I should say I supplement their foraging with those, since they spend most the day, from 8 am when I let them out, till they put themselves up to bed. I feed them Kent/Blue Seal and when they are out of that, I will get Sunfresh flock raiser. ACV in their water, left over noodles, chicken carcass, even scrambled eggs when we get WAY to many. I let them be as natural as I possibly can for the most part and I have never had better eggs. Even the store bought organic, cage free are NOTHING in comparrison to mine. I let my birds forage for their meals. BUT They ALWAYS have fresh water and full feeders. In the summer months, it's nothing to go 2 weeks on a 50# bag of feed, even with 50+ birds most the time. I think I have like 45 birds right now.. Mass shot...

This is only about half of them...

 

[Fancychooklady]

More taunting!

 

[NovaAman]

Wow, that girl in the bottom pic sure looks rather stern. LOL. They are nice looking fatties!!

 

[Fancychooklady]

Wow, that girl in the bottom pic sure looks rather stern. LOL. They are nice looking fatties!!

You would too if the rooster had tried to rip your comb off. That's why it's flopped forward. We now call her " flopsy "

 

[NovaAman]

Last roo that tried that here made rather nice soup. That's what glass mole roosters are good for.

 

[Fancychooklady]

Last roo that tried that here made rather nice soup. That's what glass mole roosters are good for.

Nah, he was just young and stupid, bit like a teenager. He has grown into a beautiful roo and looks after his ladies very well.
King Henry

 

[EverMystique1]

Yes, he HAS grown into a beautiful roo. Very beautiful.

So, Ben, since I ran staggered hatches all summer long in my Little Giant, I actually spread the cost out a bit further, didn't I? For nearly 2 months, I had new chicks hatching every week.

I did the original math to figure out just how many chicks I needed to hatch (based on the cost of $3 each that a friend paid for her RIR chicks). I also did the math based on how many pounds of meat in the freezer would also equal the cost. It really isn't much. I did buy the optional turner, but had 2 horrible hatches. Took it out when I started adding eggs as I collected, and suddenly, it was chick haven hatchery in my dining room. So, that doubled my recup costs. But that low of cost per egg is awesome!

Thanks for digging your geek out.

 

[Bens-Hens]

I started to look at multi and staggered hatches, kind of blew my brain lol, so many variables involved. I could have a look at a longer period and maybe mock up some scenarios but again it would just be a guide. I want to do a float test vs egg weight first. For those above figures I had to just assume a few things, like that the incubator was full, and the eggs went full term for a 100% hatch. Not exactly accurate, but for use as a tool to gauge how much power one uses compared to the other it was sufficient.

I guess it depends how big you are into it, if you have a market to sell the extra chicks, then bigger is better, if you are doing a once a year seasonal hatch then something smaller is better suited I think, costs a bit more to run per egg, but lower start up costs. I would love to have enough people interest to buy from us to justify more hatches lol.

Day 12 of this hatch comes to a close.....2 more sleep until the big Day 14 candle and weigh in, that's where the rubber meets the road for us where any that slipped my radar first time around will be removed and then on the home straight to fuzzy central!

 

[Bens-Hens]

More taunting!

Oh yeah Lisa....I will save a spot for them in my flock hehehehehe, just have to have a good plan first so I don't get skinned by the little lady!

 

[joannefiddler]

Fancy,
How long did it take your young King Henry to become a gentleman? I've got a ~18 week OE roo that practically scalped one of my Australorp layers (I posted about it in the injury thread). I've now got her in a separate place recovering (hopefully), and I've taken the advice of another poster and provided him with a red "love pillow" to hopefully take some of his awkward tension out on. He is quite lovely and doesn't seem to be abusing the other gals...but I'd love to know there's hope for him! He's never aggressive to me, I use the "walk through" approach and he always gets out of my way.