Flock Reduction News

Well, today was the final day for eight of our old hens. It has been a long week, trying to decide which ones we need to say goodbye to, but we had to do it. At the Co-op potluck last Friday we agreed on a few that had to go, the egg eaters and slugs brooding in the nest boxes all day, old baldy who would not survive the winter without feathers and one araucana with a similar problem. We enjoyed our group meal, honoring the little rooster by consuming him, and left the decision up to me to finish the list of those to go.Matt and Wendy have gone off for a much deserved vacation to the northeast. It's not easy to transition from raising chickens who are treated like pets to being a real chicken farmer, but it really had to happen eventually. Chicken farmers butcher chickens and people eat them. Those are the facts. With luck the chicken has had a good life and is put to rest humanely. This was true for our birds. I had isolated 8 of them over the course of several days and put them in the little girls pen and coop, transferring the new ones into the big coop at last. Lots of adjustment problems and pecking order issues of course. But they are settling in finally. The young ones are still mostly keeping to themselves, generally in the back pen, but they all come in the main pen at night together and all are roosting together now. Frank and I got the cage from Matt and Wendy's place. Jeanne and Keith guarded the hens in the cage after we caught them, and Frank and I captured them one by one and took them to the car.

We took eight to the Emu ranch this morning. The white, two buffs, one barred rock, two rhode island reds, and two araucanas with few remaining feathers. The hardest decision involved Esmeralda. She has been such a survivor, but she is so nasty and anti-social that it began to seem she would not work well in the coop this winter with the rest. It is very likely she would have ended up attacked again, or she would continue to attack others. I decided to let her go, and Frank agreed. Then we tried to catch her. She was of course the last to be put in the travel pen, after scratching Frank in the head when she flew up in his face. She was determined to the end, which made it all the harder. We drove them to the farm, put on aprons (Jeanne and I went) and Patty and Irvin taught us what to do to assist them. They want to barter their services with us for our eggs, since they don't keep chickens anymore. So they will come get about $25-30 of eggs as they need them. They have a very clean and humane indoor operation there. But I had to stay outside while Esmeralda was being processed, I must admit. She really got to me. Four of them gave us one final egg each, and of course Esmeralda was one of them. I will honor her by eating her last egg myself. She bit everyone often, was scrappy and mean, but she won our respect and I feel terrible right now just writing about it. But if not now, in the spring, and we had to look to the communal needs of the whole flock over the winter. They had good chicken lives. We were told they looked healthy and well cared for.

We now have 23 left for winter, and will of course add more in the spring. All was peaceful this afternoon and they roamed the yard doing bug patrol. Total of 12 eggs today, but four of them were post-mortum deliveries. Only one little one laid, at least we only found one. Hopefully they will settle down now and get going. All went into the big coop together without hassle tonight and settled down to the usual bickering about roost space. Matt had put in an extra roost, but I took it out as they seemed to be more secure and quieted down better when closer together on just two. Plus with three it was hard to get to the nest boxes to check. We shall see what works. I've been turning off the red light at night the last few days to get them settled in faster, but left it on tonight as they seemed quiet earlier.

Peggy, chicken farmer