And then there were two.... sort of

On Saturday Jake and I reduced our "laying" flock down to two. One grandma and one layer, that term being used very loosely. Curious (grandma/pet) and Oh Shiny (layer) were spared from Camp Freezer. Oh Shiny will end up there of course, but I couldn't leave Curious without a companion. Chickens begin to wander around and talk to themselves very loudly if left totally alone. We opted to reduce the flock size because egg production dropped off to nothing again.

The babies in the brooder box inside are getting nice and big, about the size of a small Flicker or a big Robin. It's still too soon for them to go outside as they aren't fully feathered. If it were warmer outside and the nights didn't dip below freezing they would be fine to be outside.



It's official, one of our babies is a rooster. Ugh! Which is fine really we'll just raise him until he starts crowing. Since one of our replacement layer birds has the audacity to be male, I opted to start more chicks and then take the best personalities for egg layers and the rest will go to Camp Freezer. The rooster is the black one speckled with white. Since they are sexlinked chickens the color does matter. Males tend to be grey/white/black, and females black/red.

Yesterday I went to our farm store and got 6 babies. 3 Wyandottes (the black and white ones) and 3 Red Star Sexlinks (the egg yolk ones). Coupled with the original brood box of 2 Black Sexlinks and 1 Buff Orpington, we seem to be over run with babies! It's all good though, I appreciate the meat they'll give us in the end, plus it saves me from breeding the rabbits as intensively.