Yesterday I stopped by the Rural King for a new lawn rake... The weather has been wonderfully warm and breezy and I have accomplished mucho spring clean up this week...looks good, feels even better! Not too surprizingly, they had baby chicks in by the truckload. Six or seven galvanized water troughs were set up with heat lamps and ground corn cobs for bedding. The chicks were straight run, of course. This is the only way you can buy them here unless special ordered. Two whole troughs were Cornish Cross--one trough held chicks a little older than the others. The other troughs were divided up into various other unidentified breeds of straight run chicks. Some look like Rhode Island Reds, Cinnamons and Barred Plymouth Rocks, which we have had before...but still it would only be my best guess, not being so familiar with identifying breeds of chicks. The Rock Cornish Cross, I do know for sure.
I have spent today and yesterday cleaning up the chicken run and getting it ready for about thirty Rock Cornish Cross. These are for the freezer. At the same time, I need to be able to choose maybe half a dozen of a layer breed. I was thinking about ordering older pullets ready to lay, but maybe I will just get the chicks afterall. We are doing ok with the number of eggs that we are still getting from our two remaining three year old hens for now. I worry about whether older pullets would come back to the coop to roost since they would not have been raised here. I don't want hens that I have to keep locked up all the time. I was hoping to have Leghorns this time. I wish I knew someone to ask about bringing in older pullets to a free range situation.
I did place an order for fifteen Toulouse geese for the freezer. I hope our Africans will adopt and care for the new goslings. They were all very protective of the goslings that were hatched here two years ago by one of my geese. I hope they will do the same for the 'orphans' when they come. If they don't protect them, I will have to concern myself with keeping them safe from the barn kitties...after all, they look like just another bird to four kitties who are used to hunting!
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Hi,
ReplyDeleteI have recently got two new pullets to add to our flock and they always take themselves back to the coop when it gets dark. The first couple of days they perched on the clothesline at dusk (very tricky when you're vertically challenged) so we kept them in the coop for a few days and they stopped doing that. I think they like the security of knowing where to go.
Thank you, Greenfumb. That is reassuring to know. So I still have a choice between older pullets and pullet chicks. I have heard that you have to introduce older chickens slowly to the existing hens so they don't get picked on. Either way, I think I might have to wait until the meat birds are gone.
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