Fatjay picks up chicks!
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Yander
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That is a great looking looking coup. That's almost exactly the amount of time it took for our chickens to start laying.
We just started getting eggs from our chickens couple weeks ago. I let them out about 1 in the afternoon to free range and then put them in about 6:30. We also have a lot of coyote around us and I don't want to have to watch them all day.
I have 18 total 15 of them are laying hens. Only getting six to eight eggs a day so far some of the breeds don't start laying until later. I hear you on not wanting to sell eggs we also need a lot of eggs as to our kids and my dad.
@EddieWalker @scaredychicken I had no idea that you guys had so many chickens. I'm new to chickens it's a little bit of a love-hate relationship lol.
Some of my larger Columbian wyandottes are causing me grief. They are big birds also a meat bird. I think they may end up in the freezer. They take off and when I try to get them back in it is a real pain. The rest of the birds seem to go right in.
My golden comments are hard to keep in but they are already laying and they are supposed to produce 300 plus eggs a year.
And I have six silver laced wyandottes. They seem pretty well behaved and just follow what the roosters do.
We just started getting eggs from our chickens couple weeks ago. I let them out about 1 in the afternoon to free range and then put them in about 6:30. We also have a lot of coyote around us and I don't want to have to watch them all day.
I have 18 total 15 of them are laying hens. Only getting six to eight eggs a day so far some of the breeds don't start laying until later. I hear you on not wanting to sell eggs we also need a lot of eggs as to our kids and my dad.
@EddieWalker @scaredychicken I had no idea that you guys had so many chickens. I'm new to chickens it's a little bit of a love-hate relationship lol.
Some of my larger Columbian wyandottes are causing me grief. They are big birds also a meat bird. I think they may end up in the freezer. They take off and when I try to get them back in it is a real pain. The rest of the birds seem to go right in.
My golden comments are hard to keep in but they are already laying and they are supposed to produce 300 plus eggs a year.
And I have six silver laced wyandottes. They seem pretty well behaved and just follow what the roosters do.
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lman
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It looks like you forgot to teach one chicken how to read.First day of laying, got 3 eggs! Chickens born on May 27, it's Oct 11, so 4 months and 14 days. No idea who layed them. 2 in the morning, 1 in the evening. Hopefully moving forward egg production will pick up, no more buying eggs!
And of course, we have one bad egg.
EddieWalker
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I believe meat birds need to be harvested at 10 weeks. My wife wants to start getting Cornish broilers, so we've talked about it, but haven't committed to it yet. For me, it sounds like a very busy day butchering and cleaning chickens that I would rather spend doing something else. I'm also not seeing the cost savings compared to buying them at the store compared to buying the chicks, then the cost of feed for 10 weeks, and a full day of labor cleaning them.
In my experience, the first eggs tend to have super soft shells. After a week, the shell gets harder and they don't break as easily on you. I've had them crush just by picking them up. They will lay pretty good as long through Fall, then slow down in Winter, then pick back up again in the Spring. Average is every 30 hours they lay an egg. So you might not get as many one day, then extra another day. It's never going to be the same every day. After 2 years, they slow down. By the time they are 5, you are pretty much done getting eggs.
A chicken that lays eggs is almost worthless to eat. They just don't have very much meat on them, and the older they get, the tougher the meat becomes. Butchering roosters is also pretty much worthless if you wait past 10 weeks. It takes about 4 months for them to turn into the devil. We always wait for that to happen because we're always hoping for one that isn't pure evil. It happens, and we have a few that are really nice. But I've killed hundreds that where horrible. We've tried pulling the breasts for dog food, but it's not really worth the effort. Better to just shoot them with the 22 and dump them in the burn pile.
In my experience, the first eggs tend to have super soft shells. After a week, the shell gets harder and they don't break as easily on you. I've had them crush just by picking them up. They will lay pretty good as long through Fall, then slow down in Winter, then pick back up again in the Spring. Average is every 30 hours they lay an egg. So you might not get as many one day, then extra another day. It's never going to be the same every day. After 2 years, they slow down. By the time they are 5, you are pretty much done getting eggs.
A chicken that lays eggs is almost worthless to eat. They just don't have very much meat on them, and the older they get, the tougher the meat becomes. Butchering roosters is also pretty much worthless if you wait past 10 weeks. It takes about 4 months for them to turn into the devil. We always wait for that to happen because we're always hoping for one that isn't pure evil. It happens, and we have a few that are really nice. But I've killed hundreds that where horrible. We've tried pulling the breasts for dog food, but it's not really worth the effort. Better to just shoot them with the 22 and dump them in the burn pile.
Yander
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Especially when you can go to Costco and buy large rotiseree chickens for $5 and they are good. We pick up two every time we go and my wife pulls the meat off and puts it in mason jars and freezes it for cooking with. Talk about cheap meat. My son and DIL work there and they use those chickens as "Loss leaders" to get people in the door. Though that could change in an instant.
As the price of everything creeps up, i dont' want to rely on costco's $5 chicken. There were times where costco wasn't carrying them in the past 2 years. Shows how unreliable our system can be. This is why I'm doing chickens. I dont' want to rely on a system that is not reliable. I'm planning to do meat birds as well next year, just want to get everything set up and producing eggs for now.
EddieWalker
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That's my wife's argument too. Price of chicken breasts used to be $1.99 a pound. In the last year and a half, it's been going up almost every month. I buy 6 to 10 packages at a time that weigh around 7 to 8 pounds at Walmart about once a week. I need to buy more. I think it's up to $2.89 a pound now. Still not worth raising birds in my opinion, but if Walmart runs out, we're in trouble. We use chicken in our home made dog food.