The Great Chicken Experiment Continues

So we are in the process of hatching out our own chicken eggs. We decided to hedge our bet with an additional 18-gallon tote with another dozen eggs. I'd do two dozen, but we only have three layers and some eggs are needed for our use.

That's the other need for more hens, the egg production. While we have five hens, one has taken to laying her eggs halfway down the ravine. Although she occasionally surprises me by laying an egg in the box, one just hatched out a chick and is busy teaching her how to be a free range chicken. Yes, the baby is a pullet so Mel won our bet. Two of the five are older girls and lay sporadically.That leaves only one hen who actually lays her egg in the nest box.

Our free range chickens in happier days

This behavior will change during winter when they are penned up for their protection. But then, egg production goes down to them laying every other day for the hens. The hens we've got two will be entering their 4th laying year and the current layers will be three is the spring. We need a new batch of layers. Here's hoping at least three of the upcoming hatchlings are are the RIR/Buff crosses. It will allow Hoo-de-hoo (Buff Orpington rooster) to have a flock of his own to rule over instead of the running/mating/running from the RIR rooster (Lil Red) he's doing now. He'll have Goldie, the new hen, and three more hens to keep him occupied in the spring. He'll have to step up and grow out of his teenage behavior of just getting him some. 😀

credit

So if we only end up with ten out of twenty-four hens, I'd calls this experiment a total success. I can cull the roosters at 13 weeks or they get big enough to do so. The Buffs and RIRs are hard pressed to reach culling weight at 12 or 13 weeks old. At least that's our experience with these two breeds. It's closer to 16 weeks old before their size and weights hit the broiler mark.

I can handle harvesting two a day at most on my own and that's it. Without a chicken plucker machine, turkey fryer setup, a large work stations, and extra hands...I ain't gonna do it. I can foresee dozens of chickens that will need to be culled in just one cycle. Of course, she might just sell them at the local farmer's auction too. That would be the best option.

Even though Mel hates killing animals, she's not opposed to someone else doing it. When it comes time to cull out a dozen or so undesirables from her business, she'll find a processor to handle that aspect of the job for her. I don't mind harvesting and butchering chickens for our homestead and our needs, but she wants to make dog food from it to sell. So that's all on her.

Sort of like this.

Meanwhile, I'm getting closer to raising and breeding quail. I've dismantled two of the stand alone rabbit hutches. I've torn the ripped, rusted wire out of them, mainly the bottoms. They were built with 1/4" hardware cloth originally. I'd have to raise the bottoms up by at least a foot anyhow for the quail. With the current 30" height of the hutches, the birds would break their necks if startled. Most quail people set their heights of their cages 12"- 18" so this won't happen.

When Mel originally built the rabbit hutches, she left a gap between the upright cages for an oil pan to slide underneath to catch the droppings. A couple of things happened to make her system not work as planned. 1) she didn't allow for wiggle room to allow the wood supports to swell. 2) She didn't allow enough of a gap to allow us to pull the pans without dumping rabbit poo on the lower occupant.

She built the cages by the pan's size 47 x 25 x 30. The cages fit over the pans perfectly. If she'd lowered the drip pan opening by 6-12 inches it would have been totally perfect for the rabbits and us. I learned from her mistake coming along a full year and a half after they were built.

Having dealt with hardware cloth before with building rabbit cages, I knew just what to do to prolong the life of the hardware cloth bottoms on the cages. Brush them first with latex paint. No, not the type you paint your house with but Plasti Dip. It forms a coating around the welded wire mesh similar to the coating on shelving wire. It will last for many years. It also helps strengthen the Closetmaid or Rubbermaid wire shelves. I haven't found 1/2" cage wire on the market, but this is the next best thing.

It's about $6 a can for 14.5 oz. Although they sell this in a spray can also, I choose the liquid kind that I brush on with a small disposable brush. I find I get a thicker, more uniformed coverage of  the hardware cloth. I thought of buying 1/2" mesh hardware cloth instead of 1/4" because of the thicker coverage on the wire with Plasti Dip. I'll pre-cut the bottom pieces first. I just paint it on both sides and let it air dry for a couple of days. Waste not, want not. This way I can paint over the rough cut areas, encasing them to reduce me looking like I ran through a thorny patch of briars.

I'll be placing center support beams across in inside of the tray holder too. Something that was missing from the original design. I'll raise  the position of the drop pans where they were originally but raising the bottoms of the hutch up will give me ample space and ease of cleaning the droppings pan in and out. I'll have to clip the hardware cloth at the front of the cage to accommodate the new drip pan placement.

I'll do the same for the second cage. I plan on keeping a small trashcans underneath the cages to store ground food and oyster shells so they'll be right where I need them when I need them.

So that's what we've been up to this week, how about you?

Y'all have a blessed day!

Cockeyed Jo