Chicken update

My youngest chickens (the group that a friend incubated for me) is 5 months old today. The two boys, unfortunately, are extra and will end up as dinner someday, but not yet, because they are still pretty scrawny.

I sold the two black/buff girls to a friend who has older chickens and hasn't seen an egg in his coop for over a month. The girls aren't laying yet, but they will be soon.

That leaves me with my 6 older buff orpington/cochin girls, 2 not-laying-yet 7 month old buff/blue girls, and 3 5 month old buff/blue girls. Oh, and my latest addition, a beautiful Blue Orpington rooster.

I added the blue orpington roo because he became available locally, and I want to breed him to buff orpington hens and get blue/buff orpingtons (my blue/buff girls right now are crossed with cochin, so they have feathered feet which get very muddy - orpingtons have clean feet). For $5 I couldn't resist him - and he came from a show home - he's HUGE and gorgeous!

So that's 14 birds gobbling up the food, and we get an egg every other day from one of the youngest of the buff O girls. I don't know if the older girls will start laying again someday. We'll just have to wait and see what spring brings.

Planning for next year, I put in an order with a hatchery for buff orpingtons. I ordered 25 pullets (that's baby girls) and 25 straight run (that's a mix of boys and girls, however they come out of the egg). The boys will be raised for food. I felt better about doing it this way, because in big hatcheries they sex the chicks and the boys go right into the dog food bin (you don't want anymore details than that). This way at least some of the boys will come here and get to run around and grow up. They'll still end up as dinner, but they'll get to enjoy their life for a bit first. One lucky boy will get to stay around and have his own flock of hens, because I'm hoping after this I'll be able to keep a flock of buff O's along with my separate blue/buff flock, and use the incubator to hatch and raise my own instead of buying from a hatchery.

I also plan to learn to butcher my extra birds for our dinners. Hopefully this doesn't sound horribly cruel to anyone, but I have good reasons. First of all, because I let my birds hatch and raise chicks, every year I have extra roosters, and that's a great use for them. Secondly, if I give them away or sell them at auction (like I did last year), they still get eaten, but I don't know how they are treated until then - at least if I take care of them I know they've been treated humanely from start to finish. Third, I will know what they ate and how they were raised, and I think that is better than buying factory farmed chicken from the store. I probably should feel worse about this part of the plan, but I don't, I actually feel like it's quite natural. Under those feathers, they are, after all, chicken!

So that is where my flock stands as of today, and my plan for next year. We'll see how it goes.


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Chick season is over

Chick season is officially over. My baby chicks who were incubator hatched just a couple months ago have graduated from the brooder, to the tractor, and finally to the big coop with the rest of the hens.

The batch of chicks before that (of which there are only two left - three of the six were roosters, and one hen I gave away in place of a hen I sold this spring that turned out to be a rooster) are almost all grown up.

They should start laying any time now. Aren't they lovely? I'm going to pair the blue/buff girls together with their blue/buff brother and see what next year's chicks look like. I'd better get busy on that incubator!

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A new Roo in charge

Two weeks ago I put my big blue roo up on CL to see if I could find him another home. I was going to replace him with one of my young blue/buff roosters that was coming along. I found a home for him a couple blocks away, so he is happily bossing around a new group of hens. He was such a handsome boy, I knew I could find him a home where he wouldn't end up on a plate.

After looking over my blue/buff chicks again, I wasn't sure about the cochin part of my project. Cochins are beautiful, but the feathered feet aren't great here in the NW, because they are muddy most of the time, then they are jumping on the hens with these big muddy mops, and the hens get filthy, and it's kind of a mess. So I decided I would wait and raise one more year of blue mix chicks, but this time with a blue orpington. I managed to find one in Sandy, Oregon, and a friend happened to be going over there for something else, so she picked him up for me.

 What a lovely boy!

He has striking black eyes, and lovely scalloping on his feathers.

So Thursday, when I gathered up all my extra boys and took them to auction, I let him out with the hens. They seemed instantly at ease, and relaxed. All the extra roosters were annoying them. The whole flock just seems at peace now. And the new roo is cock-a-doodle-dooing up a storm. Happy chickens.

The girls are just finishing up molting, and looking pretty good. Poor Beautiful had a completely bare back, and now it's covered in pinfeathers - that's new feathers coming in. She's my oldest hen. 

My blue/buff girls were camera-shy this morning

Navi is fascinated by the McNuggets in the brooder box. 

I took six chicks to auction that I felt confident were boys. I kept the best looking blue/buff boy (he's front and center in this picture), and all the girls - I hope! These kids are about ready to move out to the chicken tractor and get some grass under their feet - I'd just like them to feather up a little bit more, especially with the cool days we've been having. 

Getting rid of the extra chicks made a big difference in feeding them - I went from refilling their feeder twice a day to only needing to fill it every other day! I think those roos must eat twice as much as the hens!

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A day at the livestock auction

I had accumulated quite a few extra roosters who had worn out their welcome,a nd I decided to try a different way to get rid of them. I packed them up and my friend Martha joined me for a day at Woody's Auction in Woodland, WA - a genuine livestock/farm auction. No pictures for this post, pictures aren't allowed at the auction.

Some poultry people I've talked to had mentioned the auction to me, and I figured it was worth a try. It is just outside of Woodland on Cedar Creek Road, and looks like it has been there forever. The buildings look like they could fall down on your head. We arrived and parked in the field/parking lot and wandered up to check the place out to start with. Outside appeared to be like a flea market, or a garage sale, just junk of all sorts laid out on the ground. Then we came to plants and trees, and they were actively auctioning some of that stuff off to folks sitting on plastic chairs under a vinyl carport. We continued towards the buildings where we could hear crowing.

I had been told to bring my poultry at about 10:30 and they would put them in a cage, and then hang around for the auction at noon. We walked through and looked at the chickens, ducks, geese, doves, phesants, and rabbits already awaiting auction - there were a LOT. More than I expected! When we asked about bringing mine up the guy showed us where to go, but said he was all out of cages. So my birds were left stuck in their carriers until auction time. I had my big black roo in a small cardboard box and I felt sorry for him because he couldn't even turn around, but it couldn't be helped. Our Lot # was 80! That tells you how many were ahead of us.

We walked around the sale barn and peered into the dark stalls at the goats, sheep and pigs. This was a small livestock auction, they do horses and cows on another day. There were some goats that looked awfully skinny, though there was a cute ewe with two little lambs at her side which was pretty tempting. The weaner pigs were cute little guys. After having a look around we went into the auction ring and had a seat on the bleachers and waited. We ran into some folks we knew, like the chicken lady from the feed store, and passed the time chatting.

Finally, it got to be time to start the auction. They started out with 20-some bags of red potatoes. Then came some bags of animal bedding, and a straw bale, then a seemingly endless supply of fresh eggs by the dozens. Finally they got to animals. I had my eye on a couple buff orpington hens, but they way they do it is that if the lot is for 4 hens, you bid on the price of one hen, then you buy all four in the lot - so it's a 'by the head' price. The hens went for $12 each, which is a fair price, about what I would expect to pay on CL, except there I'd have at least a chance to find out more about them - here all I could tell is what I knew by looking at them.

Some of the animals were sickly looking, plucked, skinny, but the majority looked just fine. Most of the  poultry was young roosters, people were bringing them in to get rid of them because they were harassing their hens and eating them out of house and home - same as me. Big roosters went for about $9 - small for around $5. Roosters at the beginning of the auction went for more than ones at the end. Most went to an Asian couple who were buying most of the roosters and ducks, I'm guessing they have a restaurant. Everyone there seemed to know them.

There were probably 100 people bidding. People were buying up animals, some asked him to break up lots so they could buy just a single rabbit as a pet and they did, and the auction runner handed the kids their rabbit to sit up in the bleachers and hold.


After a long time my lots came up. The auction runner pulled my big black cochin out of the box, and held him up flapping and sqwaking for everyone to see. They bid him up to $5 or so. Then he brought up my carrier with the three young roosters and the white cochin hen who has been laying weird eggs, and he pulled them out and held them up for all to see - I think they went for $3 each. Then the last carrier had 6 of the 4 week old chicks from my incubator batch. I picked out the ones that I felt confident were roosters. No point in feeding them for another month or two if I could get someone else to take them. And someone else did, for $2.50 a chick. So my animals brought about $32, and the auction house will keep a piece of that. They said they'd send a check if I didn't want to hang around and wait for it, and the long line of people waiting to pay told me I didn't want to wait for it.

We left shortly after my lots were through. It was already heading for 3pm, and Martha had a dog walk to go do. We went outside and located my carriers and got the runner to put the birds in one of their cages which was empty now, so i could take my carriers home. Martha said it would be interesting to come again sometime, but to drop off the birds early, so they could be in one of their cages, then come back later to see the auction, or stay late enough for the sheep/goats/pigs next time. It was an interesting experience. I'm not sure if I'd want to do it again.

Update: I got my check 2 days later! My birds sold for $38 and change, they kept $11 for their commission, so I got about $26 back. Not bad, that will pay for 2 bags of feed. I wish I'd known how this worked before I resorted to giving away all those big roosters earlier this summer.

Plus my hens are so much happer with all those extra roosters gone, I got two eggs this morning - yay!

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Chick update plus a BAT!

The baby chicks are doing fine, even in the hot weather. Everyone is eating and drinking and hopping around.

So cute! Let's hope for hens!

The main flock was enjoying some treats.

When I noticed that one of my black hens appears to be a rooster. It was the gangly look that caught my eye. That means that out of those 6 chicks, I got three roos - and I only need one.

It was hot so I let Navi have some sprinkler time

She loves it!

Some of the sprinkler was hitting the water trough, and I thought it made for a pretty picture.

Ok, you probably want to know about the bat. I saw Navi sniffing something on the ground, and then backing away like she didn't like it. So I went to see what it was, and it was a dead bat! Eww! I picked it up and set it on the fencepost and took a picture before tossing it off into the brambles. That's a 4x4 inch post, so you can see how tiny it is. Like a mouse with wings.

Excuse the picture of a dead critter, but I think it's just so interesting to see one up close.

Giant ears for picking up sonar. What an interesting animal. Still, I'm glad the dogs didn't eat it - that's why everyone has their shots!

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Chicks - again

The last chicks for this year. I gave 18 eggs to a fellow chicken fancier, and she put them in her incubator. 12 hatched, and she thought one more was going to hatch tonight. That's actually really good results for an incubator. So today I went and picked up the 12 new babies, fresh out of the eggs...

It's very hot today, they don't even need the light, but they will need it later when it cools off. Right now they are all just laid out flat, occasionally getting up and moving around a bit.

When she offered to take my eggs I moved the hens I didn't want eggs from out of the flock, so I was careful to only collect buff hen eggs, and of course the father is Big Blue. Our of these 12, 6 are grey and 6 are black - how interesting!

My previous batch of chicks from my own flock have just moved in with the big chickens.

I know they are technically just 'mutts', or 'Barnyard Mix' as I prefer to call them, but I think they are lovely and interesting.

Particularly the buff/grey ones.

And the black girls look pretty nice too. One has red spots on each shoulder.

So I'm excited to see what these Barnyard Mix chicks turn out to look like. 

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