Update About Our Chickens

We've had a lot going on the past couple weeks. As you know we got meat chickens last week (see here) well 3 of them died on Saturday. My husband went out to go check on them and they were already dead so now we are down to only 4 meat birds. I guess I will ordering some this week. We aren't sure of the cause of death but some of the birds we get from our local farm auction aren't always the healthiest but that's just a risk you take. Most of the birds we get from the auction are fine but we've had our share of unexplained deaths but that's part of homesteading, right?

The other week we picked up some layer chicks at the local feed mill. We got 15 Isa Browns, 2 Buff Orphington's, 1 Americana, 5 Blue Cochin's. We've had these for about 2 weeks and haven't had any problems. Though we have may layers right now our thoughts are to keep some of the new ones and either sell the current layers we have and/or raise the chicks until their pullets and sell we're not super sure. These chicks are doing great!!!

Our First Meat Chickens

We just got our first meats chickens this past Saturday. Of course we were ready to get them since my husband built the chicken tractor the other week (see Chicken Tractor) but I wan't expecting to get them this weekend.

Chicken Tractor

It seems like every time I go to the grocery store the price of all natural chicken would go up and the quality would go down. Last week when I purchased the chicken it was the last straw I went home and told my husband that we need to start raising meat birds. We currently do have layers birds but not meat birds so this will be a new adventure.

New Chicken Run Fence

This weekend we had beautiful weather and it once again reminded my why are we are trying to homestead.    The smell of the fresh air, the plants coming to life and being around the chickens really was beautiful. I admit sometimes I forget in the winter since we can't really do anything outside because of  all the snow, except shovel and snow blow.

Raising Chickens: Part 2- Raising Older Chicks

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Now that you have chicks that have fully feathered the next stage of raising chickens begins.  This next step what me and my husband call the "teenage stage” and at this stage we move our birds outside and in our transition coop. We came up with this when we already had full grown pullets and didn’t feel comfortable putting the chicks in with them. 

Raising Chickens: Part I-Raising Chicks

Like I have mentioned in my first post we have quite a few chickens and we have had our fair of raising chicks this past summer. We weren't really prepared for raising chicks like we should have been when we brought our first batch home. First off we really don't have a good place to raise them in a ventilated, draft free area.