The week ending 10/16: 42 Eggs
The week ending 10/23: 36 Eggs

Not much has been worth discussing over the last couple of weeks. The egg count will be up by the end of this week - laying is up again as we're having a beautiful extended Indian Summer. My daughter collected eight eggs yesterday, and the count has been up all week long.

The Rosses, I think, are ready to be processed now. Of course, this happened after I went ahead and bought another bag of Grower/Finisher. They're getting about the right size now, and one that is developing a prominent comb and wattles was body slamming the reclusive White Rock the other day (a future roo, no doubt). They're also starting to get a little brave, venturing outside to try and scavenge scratch with the others. The other day a couple even made their way into the tack room to hang out with the White Rock. So it's time. I'm thinking the end of next week, when the bag of their feed is about to run out (besides, that's going to be the first free weekend I can take them in).

I decided this morning to cull the White Rock when I send the Rosses in for processing. I don't think she's laying. she's miserable, and when she dares to show her face around the others, the roosters brutalize her. I know she's at the bottom of the pecking order, but I don't think making her go away will change the dynamic all that much - she spends most of her time in hiding, so she's not around to be pecked.

This could be a mistake. But then, this entire thing has been one interesting learning experience.

What a difference a little electricity makes!

I came home Tueday night to find the power back on. So I put the heat lamp back over the Rosses and reset the timer for the coop light (on at 5am, off at 9pm). The next morning when I went to open the coop door, they were all up and ready to get out and start scratching around, doing their chicken thing. There wasn't the stampede I get in the summer, but better than their lethargic high-school-student do-I-have-to-get-up-now attitudes they've had since the power was turned off.

I'm still going to have to keep the Rosses for a few more weeks before sending them to the b*tcher. But they did hit a landmark today - I opened the fence that divided their part of the coop from the rest of the residents.

I did this for two reasons. First, they're at the age where the chick feeders are empty within seconds of my putting them down, which means they're ready for the hanging feeder. I only have one (until tomorrow, payday), but I thought they could learn to use the one that the big chickens use. Also, for the last couple of days, one of them has found its way over/under/around/through the fence, so it has officially outlived its usefulness.

Checking on them this evening, I wondered how they fared after a day in the real world. The answer: fine. One of them got brave and found its way into the goat pen, but then couldn't figure out how to get back (Note to self: on the evolutionary scale, Rosses are the closest in intelligence to the dinosaurs - Aviagen isn't breeding for intellect).

Another plus to letting them out has to do with the White Rock that is at the bottom of the pecking order. For the last week or so, I've had to take her out of the tack room because she takes refuge in there. But tonight when I locked up the chooks, she was sitting happily in with the others - relieved, no doubt, to be free from the stress of being on the bottom rung of the ladder.

Today's final observation comes from watching the Rosses enjoy their freedom a little this evening. Even though they're only about 2/3 to 3/4 the size of the grown hens, I noticed that their breasts were huge - almost as big as those on the full growns, but looking front-heavy because they're not fully grown yet. As my dad would have said (using his Lil' Abner voice), "It ain't natcheral."

This prompted me to wonder whether or not they were actually ready to be processed, but last year's experience with Rosses told me no. Last year about this time was when we transferred the two chicks we had out to the barn - and they were showing physical sex characteristics (we knew we had one roo and one hen), and their peeps were giving way to clucks. Those two were kept in optimal conditions.

So another couple of weeks and the White Rock will be on the bottom of the ladder.

All in all, a pretty good day on the farm.

The last week brought 40 eggs - nothing to complain about since the days are getting shorter and cooler, and my light in the coop is still without power.

As a result, I postponed the Rosses trip to the butcher since they're not of proper size yet. I went ahead and took the heat lamp out of their part of the coop - by the time the power gets restored, there won't be much point in having it on them. They've already used enough food energy to stay warm that they're behind in growing, which means I'm going to have to buy another bag of food for them. Might as well keep them around to finish it.

The Rosses also had a visitor for a few days. The White Rock Pullet I had was so picked on and bedraggled that I put her in with them. I was having to go pull her out of the tack room every night as it was. She was a little bewildered at first, but caught on to the system after a while. Yesterday she released herself on her own recognizance - since she was the only one using the perch, she no doubt got up high and flew over the chicken wire. So now she is back with the others. This morning there was a rubbery soft shell egg under the perch, near where she'd spent the night. I'd suspected that she hadn't started laying yet. Now she's the last of this last batch of chicks to start, We'll see how long it is before she seeks refuge in the tack room again.

One other story from a week or two ago: After seeing the bad reaction the family dog had to picking up a toad in her mouth a few years ago, I thought the only predator they had would be something cold-blooded like snakes. Not so. The other day one of the Red Sex Links had one in her beak. She put it down and played with it a little - it was still alive - then she picked it back up and, looking around suspiciously, snuck under the hibiscus bush to enjoy her, um, treat.

I should also note that mornings I've been putting the chicken scratch just outside of the goat fence so the chickens could step through and peck away without the goats trying to take the goodies for themselves. The other morning when I was running behind in dealing with the goats, I walked out of the barn to see the chooks all waiting for me in the place where I usually scatter the scratch.

Also want to note that science is right - being inconsistent with a reward more powerfully imprints a behavior than consistent rewards. Case in point: sometimes when I have an old piece of bread or some stale crackers, I'll go out on the porch of our house and call the chickens over for a treat. Or if the chickens are ranging near the porch, I'll find something to toss out to them.

My wife, on the other hand, doesn't toss something out to them every time she is on the porch. The result?

When the chickens see her on the porch, they all go running up to her in the hopes that she has some goodies for them. They don't do that with me, even though I usually do.

Ain't nature grand?

That's 36 eggs for the last (incomplete) week of September; a record 229 eggs harvested during that month; and 10 eggs collected in the first two days of October. I suppose all this time I should have been counting the weeks as complete and track eggs by 52 weeks instead of 12 months. But then I would have needed something like the standard broadcast calendar, which is used by the industry I work in (advertising). These calendars break months up into units of either four or five weeks, each with seven full days, which run from Monday to Sunday. So, for example, the broadcast month of October 2004 actually started on Monday, September 27th, with the first week ending on Sunday, 10/3. That way media billing is more uniform, as opposed to breaking up a flight of spots and billing half in one month, and half in another. Or something like that.

But I digress.

A week from Friday the Rosses are supposed to go to be processed - but I don't think they're going to be ready. The power is still not on to the barn, and I think the lack of a heat lamp for the last 19 days, with fall beginning, has slowed their growth. Basically, without optimum temperature, or at least elevated temperature, they're using more food energy to stay warm as opposed to grow. They'll get to maturity, no doubt about that, it just won't happen in 42 days. Right now they're still peeping and aren't showing any physical sex characteristics. This time last year I knew I had one roo and one pullet. Right now I still don't know.

Unless they do some incredible growing in the next 9 days or so, I'm going to have to give them another couple of weeks to flesh out, so to speak.

Meantime, things are pretty stable in the farmyard. Rocky's crowing is still pathetic and sounds like a New Year's Party Horn. Roger is still boss roo, but he still gets pushed around by the surviving Reds. My daughter is trying to track when her doe goat comes into heat so we can have her bred next month for a spring kid... and there's another part of the barn that we have to prepare as her new home.

Also, on November 7th is a "Chickenstock" up near Medina, where area members of the Backyard Chickens Forum gather to exchange food, chicken lore, chicken advice, and chickens. I'm hoping that someone has two or three Ameraucana pullets so I can add a little color variety to my eggs (I'm currently getting dark brown, light brown, and an in-between brown the color of a chocolate Necco wafer). It's called putting a little fun into the process.