Winter here in Western Washington, this year, is muddy. So the farm is muddy, the chickens are muddy and the ducks are muddy. The ducks, however, really enjoy wet weather!
The chickens could live without it.
The new flock is getting a look at their new nests that I just recently put up and trying to figure out what they are for. And I might say they better figure out pretty fast what they are for because 95 hens eat a LOT of feed. Since they aren't yet paying for it they are making me pretty anxious. Lay! I was talking to James tonight that maybe we out to do a whole lot more fencing so that they can get out further into the brush to forage. That would save on feed. Right now they have a fairly small spot to forage in and it gets depleted quite quickly.
We have one rooster in the bunch of 95 and he will not be able to keep up with all these hens. So he will be butchered soon and sold to a nice little lady who seeks rooster and only rooster for an old folk remedy she makes for her arthritis. She swears by it, but it's got to be a rooster. You can't just walk into the grocery store to buy a rooster, so she comes to us and is willing to pay a handsome price for him. :)
We also have an odd colored hen this time around. I ordered 100 Rhode Island Reds and this is red but she is a much brighter red that is a very orange red. Wonder what she is.
The old hens that are in the garden have created a barren wasteland of the garden, which is what they were suppose to do. It is now time to put them back in their other pen so that I can lay down some black plastic over the garden for a couple of months. The plastic will act as an insulator to heat the ground to help speed up decomposition of roots and chicken manure that the chickens so graciously left behind while they foraged. This will make great fertilizer!
All in all everything is going well. I am anxiously awaiting the new flocks first egg and hope that new adventure will be in full swing very soon.
