Chickens and incubators

At the moment there are 13 Australorp hens which lay eggs and two, possibly, three roosters. I find this number sufficient to supply three to four dozen eggs a week to sell and still to keep us in good supply too. These big black birds are meant to be a combination bird meaning both suitable for egg and meat. The have a beautiful green tint to the black feather and the male bird is very attractive as well. They are good breeders and are shown extensively for their beauty. Apart from the manual labour of keeping the hen hut clean chickens are pretty low maintenance. A sprinkle of powder every six months or so for mites and a de-worming too, they take care of themselves. They love to take dust baths which I have been told aids in keeping the mites at bay. This custom seems to calm them down as well. Often during the course of the day you will see them rolling in the dirt, flicking it up onto their backs and then resting in the hole they’ve made. Chickens are good for the garden as not only do they fertilise the ground but eat the unwanted bug’s as well. I never seem to have anything that goes to waste from the kitchen because the chickens eat most of it. Between the rest of the animals there are always some willing recipients available for that which the chooks won’t eat. I find that with the farm stay students I have, the chickens are a soft approach to interacting with a live animal. Generally speaking they will eat from your hand and the children love to throw small chunks of bread over the fence to them. We have experimented little with the meat side and the only time we have prepared the birds for meat was when we knew we had too many males. Unfortunately they were too old already for the freezer and resulted in more tough stringy meat and were very unpalatable. Spot became the recipient of those birds. He did not seem to mind that they were on the tough side neither – why would he? In time I plan to try raising pure meat birds and will be able to report back on that then. Until then I buy my chicken from a supermarket. The 13 birds have three young ones amongst them who are not laying eggs at the moment. I get up to seven eggs daily or as little as three. The biggest concern I have at the moment is my client base. I have a senior ladies group who I supply every Friday but sometimes like now, I skip a Friday for a holiday or some other reason and then I'm backed up with eggs. I do have one other customer who takes two dozen at a time but really need another two or three that I can have as back up. It seems to be the age old problem with egg production. Where do I take my eggs too? In my next entry I will expand on what it was like bringing 42 incubated eggs into the world.