We got an opportunity to buy a 21 bird Orpinton flock from the Hsu (pronounced shu) family farm, so now we have 32 hens and two large roosters. Five of the hens are Rhode Island Reds, the balance is all the larger Orpingtons.
 |
| Chicken politics: They stick together by order of age and rank. There is definitely a "pecking order". |
 |
| The big coop, built in May, holds thirty birds. We now have thirty-two. But eight of them are still living in the broody coop. |
With this amount of hens we now have about a dozen free range / organically grown eggs per day. This is enough to sell, but not enough to be profitable. The egg business is not intended to be profitable. Much as with many of our crops it is intended only to break even and pay for itself in free food and for free factors for other things made with eggs. Self sufficiency is not only about profit, it is about non-dependency.
Eventually these hens will provide offspring to replace the birds which age out and become meat for the table. We expect that the hens will last about a year or so before failing to produce enough eggs to earn their place in the coop; but we have no mechanism in place to track them at present, so all are safe for now.
Eventually these hens will provide offspring to replace the birds which age out and become meat for the table. We expect that the hens will last about a year or so before failing to produce enough eggs to earn their place in the coop; but we have no mechanism in place to track them at present, so all are safe for now.
We have had three fights for dominance so far. Two were between Rhoda, our Rhode Island Red, and one of the new older hens. The other was between Goldie, our Wyandote hen and another of the new girls. The third was a classic "cock fight" between the two Orpington roosters (Biff Buff, and Rodger: the new guy). I think Rodger won, but it is hard to tell. Ms. Hsu worried that the roosters might try to kill each other, and this might happen (only time will tell). But I have seen flocks with more than one rooster, so we hold out hope for an amenable settlement between the two roosters. The real problem of two roosters is that the hens take a bit of hard treatment as the roosters try to mate with as many as they can.
For now we just hope that they are all happy little egg layers.
 |
| Pleas RSVP if you can come. Click here for the RSVP thing. |
At the end of the first day, nobody wanted to go into the coop to sleep. So we spent about an hour rounding them all up, one by one, and throwing them bodily into the coop before closing the automatic coop door. This was both for their safety and also to get them used to regular coop life.
ReplyDeleteTypically, chickens are creatures of habit. Once they get the idea of returning to a coop in the late evening, they are in before the door closes.