They are everywhere!

[spectrumranch]

Chickens, chickens & more chickens.

We use chickens to incubate alot of our eggs, we have 6 GQF incubators, but use broody hens to hatch alot of our eggs.

Over the years we have bred a flock of chickens for the purpose of setting hens- which I usually refer to as our "brood stock". We keep between 150 to 200 hens for this.

Well this year we sold most of our eggs, so did not need to use that many broody hens. We have only used about 25 hens that are raising foster chicks. The rest of the hens are running around loose on the farm and they keep showing up with new batches of chicks. In the last week over 12 hens have appeared with a minimum of at least 10 chicks each- one hen has 17.

ADD to this that we already have about 450 young chickens in the brooder barn.

Some of the adults:

Some of the 450 young birds: (there are purebred chicks in this group too)

 

[miss_jayne]

well, i think there is only one answer. follow directions very carefully.

1. pet all the pretty chickens. so cute.
2. unplug the Sportsmans.
3. put Sportsmans in boxes with lots of padding around them.
4. address them to Dollhouse Farms. (go to website for addy)
5. put in mail.

see! problem solved!

pretty chickies!

 

[Happy Chooks]

Holy smoly! I bet you go throught TONS of feed!

 

[Appaloosa Hill Farm]

Quote:
Sounds like a great plan!

I think I'd be giddy with chickens cuteness there. And donkey cuteness. Very pretty birds!!

 

[Buckhorn Farm]

WOW! that is a LOT of chickens, but so pretty! I am not letting my DH see this!!!!!

 

[Guinea Goonie]

Your are SOOOO bad.

Funny thing. I think I have one of every one of the ones you have in your pics !!!!

 

[spectrumranch]

Miss Jayne!


Rough count from last night:

Brooder barn- 450 strong
adults in milk barn- 138
adults in west addition 30 some
chciks in west addition 150 strong
chicks in brooders around 100
plus the purebreeds in breeder pens yet. (Yokohamas, Sumatras, Pheonix, etc)

Then there are ones that roost in the camel barn, zebra barn, old chicken coop and old grainery, and I'm sure there are alot of hens on nests hiding.

Yes they eat alot---We sell all the surplus to suppliers for the asian market. So glad the young stock is ready to start going- that will help with the feed bill. But since we are cutting back on pheasants and selling out our 20 colors of Ringneck pheasants; we will not need to keep as many adults- so I will be culling them hard too. IT is really hard to narrow it down to 50 hens- there are so many I want to keep.

 

[stuckinthecity]

WOWW.

That is wayyy too many chickens for me. lol
Maybe take some of them to the next trade day?

 

[EricT]

I though I had a lot of chickens

 

[onthespot]

Thanks so much for posting this! I feel SO much better now, with just my piddley little o'l maybe fifty odd extra birds to delete from my program! Whew!!! I'm in better shape than I thought!