Well, our egg shortage problem should be over soon. Today we bought 1000, one year old chickens. That's a lot of chickens! We can't keep them all, but we have already found homes for about 300 of them. We would like to sell 150 - 200 more. We have culled out most of our older hens that weren't producing well. These birds are Production Reds, a cross between Leg Horns and Rhode Island Reds. The are about a year old and were laying at a 90% rate before they were moved.
We were advertising to find some young hens to buy. A man from Iowa called. He was selling 1000 chickens for an Amish farmer. They came out of a cage free operation so they will have to make some adjustments. They will probably slow down or even stop laying for a while. Hopefully it won't be to long. Grampa Tom has been busy picking up eggs all over the place today. It will take them a while to figure out where to lay and how to forage.
We have already started feeding them hay, but we aren't actively pushing them out on the pasture yet. There's not a lot of grass out there yet and if they stay close they will be less like likely to lay out at the edges of the pasture! The one thing I don't like about them is that their beaks are clipped. But almost all confinement birds have clipped beaks. I'm looking at this as a sort of "rescue". Poor things!
Once they get into the their spring laying flush, we will have way to many eggs. Last year we gave our excess eggs to the food pantry in Nauvoo. Hopefully we will be able to help 2 or 3 food pantries this year.
God Bless You All!
~Grama Sue
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