More Chicken

Picked up 100 pullets today down a Mt Healthy. That makes 151 chickens on our farm-all for eating, none for laying. We took the chicks out of he box hey came in, gave each one a drink of water and put them out on grass in the sun. leaving them to their own devices while we ate lunch and caught a bit of the race at Talledega (Jeff Gordon won which will make my friend Rosie quite happy). During lunch we decided that perhaps it would be a good idea to turn the brooder lamp on and put them in the tractor and shut the door after Eugene ran up there a couple of times to check on them.

So I went up to the peeps and one by one put all 100 into the tractor. This was not too hard to do as most were falling asleep and were very easy to catch. I was dubious that with 100 chicks there would be enough room under one brooder lamp (we have always done 50 at a time in the past and that is what we are set up to do comfortably ) but they seemed quite happy and content and well spread out but not so much to tell us they are too warm and need the lamp raised. They will likely stay inside for a day or two so they get used to the idea of the brooder lamp and know to get under it when they get chilled. After that they can come and go at will.

The older group of 51 birds is halfway to table weight and will go to the killers in another 3.5 to 4.5 weeks. These are our experimental batch of chicken cuts. In The past we have offered whole birds only. But after asking people on my email list what they would prefer we decided I would be well worth getting some of our birds processed into cuts like wings, legs, thighs and boneless breasts. If these sell well for us we will do more.