Well, most of our original first batch of hens that we purchased last September have stopped laying eggs...they were mature hens, already had been laying for over a year. We were just so excited to get into farming that instead of starting from scratch with chicks we bought those ones already laying....we have only been getting 4-5 eggs a day from over a dozen hens. SO...we had a butchering day!! Some have been roasted with potatoes, carrots and onions, and others have not and were just laid to rest. Now we just have the barred rock beauties. So we took a "farm day" from school and we completely cleaned out the coop where the other hens had been living and freshened it up for the barred rocks.
The barred rocks are now mature enough that we can tell which is a hen and which is a rooster. We bought them from a local chicken farmer hoping for all hens....well, that's not quite what we got. We have 10 hens and 10 roosters! All we hear is crowing all day!! So 8 roosters are for sale, and if they don't get sold they will be our dinner. We went ahead and ordered 25 more barred rock hens from a hatchery (to be sure we get hens this time!) along with 25 cornish cross chicks. Cornish cross are the birds bred for meat...they are what you purchase in the store. Quick growth and lots of meat!! We are excited to get them...all 50 chicks will be here the first day of Fall, September 22! This weekend we are building another tractor so we have one for the barred rock chicks and one for the cornish cross....hope you all have a relaxing Labor Day weekend!
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