Any offspring yet from the Garry Farms roo yet? I was curious how they were turning out.
Bad news, I went up to Stephen's and found out the Garry Farms roo succumbed to the heat when we started having those super high (110-118) degree days. I have a very small number of his eggs that I am getting into the incubator now, so we will just have to hope and pray we get some chicks from those.
Jbolt on here also got a few of his offspring in the batch of chicks I gave her recently, and Stephen should have a small number of his "kids" in the 60 or so chicks he is raising. Still, it is a real blow, as we fully intended to use him for an entire year or more as part of the program. Interestingly, the last pure Sussex rooster we had, also died from the heat up at Stephen's last year. Same thing - he was OK with up to 105 degree temps, but died when the first "real heat" came on.
Interesting note, Stephen is moving. This is good news/bad news. Good news: He's moving further north to Camp Verde, which will mean lower temps for the chickies and few if any heat deaths. So it will make his place a GREAT place to raise the Spring chicks!
Bad news: It will make getting eggs from him to hatch out a lot tougher, as he will be two hours north of me. So it will mean a lot smaller gene pool for hatching eggs out down here, as I can't afford to drive four hours total very often. (Unless he plans on visiting the Valley every month or so, in which case maybe we can coordinate pickups.) No more "chicks for everybody!" bonanzas when we have an excess of eggs that are going to waste! LOL.
However, we now have Jbolt starting to develop an Aloha flock closer to town, which will be a huge help.
