Eggs (week ending 3/5): 26
Eggs (year to date) 398
A busy weekend. You've no doubt already read my soapbox about how I took care of the cat problem. It was facilitated when, on a trip to Tractor Supply, I found that they had live traps on sale. For $25 I picked up a trap sized for possums, raccoons, and yes, domestic cats. Inside was another, smaller trap, sized for... I don't know. Chipmunks. Rats. Mice. Voles on steroids.
The local TSC also had chicks in stock, so on Saturday, after the cat problem had been resolved, I went and picked up a dozen Cornish Rocks. They're meat birds, and the plan is to butcher the females at about 8 weeks as fryers and the males at about 12 weeks as roasters. I use the word "about" because I use what I call the "margin of error" method of farming. I figure that God put a margin of error into things when he created nature, otherwise things would simply die out after a while if optimal conditions weren't met. This means that I don't hover neurotically over a brooder, fretting if that day's temperature is 95o or 96o Fahrenheit.
What I do is cordon off the back quarter of the coop and use it for a nursery. I don't call it a brooder because people who use actual brooders might gasp in horror if they saw what passes for one on my farm. It's my little nod to political correctness. Anyway, I give the chicks everything they need. Fresh litter, water, plenty of food, and a well-placed heat lamp. There's a wooden barrier to block the draft and four feet of chicken wire to let the rest of the flock see the newbies but not get to them. If they're cold, they huddle together under the lamp, and if not, they space out. They're stupid animals, but they're not that stupid when it comes to their own survival (unlike, say, turkeys). They've got good instincts for self-preservation.
I've raised 27 chicks this way and have lost only one - a mortality rate of just under 4%. But I also take a few common sense precautions. For example, yesterday snow was blowing from the north, which meant it was going right into the coop. So I kept the door closed. Between the heat lamp, the other birds in the coop, and the festering deep litter manure in 3/4 of the coop, the chicks were fine. Ditto today - no snow, but temps in the 20's. Door closed.
This is where the "almost" comes in. These conditions are not the optimal ones that you find written down everywhere for raising chicks. This means that they may not grow as fast if they're using food to stay warm instead of grow - which may add a week or two to the butchering schedule on the other end of things. But on the other hand, I know that if there's a real cold night, I don't have to rush out at 3am to check on chicks because the temperature in the brooder may have dropped a couple of degrees a few days ahead of schedule.
Maybe that's why I like this whole chicken thing so much.
Still, I'm thinking that perhaps I should build a brooder as a summer project. This summer is supposed to be a chicken tractor, with an eye toward using it for meat birds. The thing is, the set-up I have now makes the most efficient use of my coop space. If I have a brooder, where am I going to put it? I'll have to think about that.
So last Saturday, naturally, was spent setting up the nursery. This involved digging out the deep litter from the back quarter of the coop - two wheelbarrows worth - putting down fresh, setting up the draft barrier and fence and setting up the brooder lamp. I also took time to clean out the live trap and hang it up in the tack room - then I cleaned out the tack room. Everything is in order and the chicken world here is spinning in a greased groove. For now, anyway.
