My 1 year old hens are laying wonderfully. So, despite what critics say you can have a wonderfully successful 100% free range home layer flock. I have 14 hens and 2 roosters right now. The hens are: Rhode Island Reds, Barred Rocks, Americaunas, a Buff Orpington and a Jersey Black Giant. One rooster (Mr. Evil) is in permanent lock up until we get around to butchering him. He kept attacking the kids... so that's the end of him! I'm getting more eggs than we can use, and finally sold some today! First time I've sold any of my home grown goodies!! I'm pretty excited about that. The girls are 100% free range, get scratch grains in the AM and all our household food scraps. They get no commercial feeds, no medicated feeds, no 'yucky stuff'. The eggs are fabulous!
Part of maintaining a free range flock is backfilling any hens that go missing. Hey, it happens, and I figure the health benefits to me and the birds are worth a little attrition. I have 19 chicks brooding as replacements for my laying flock. 3 are home hatched babies from the homemade incubator the kids and I built (now that was a contraption! I can't believe we got anything to hatch. Will have to make a post on that). The picture above is of my home hatched babies. I literally hatched them in my hands as they were having a hard time getting out of their very tough shells. The little runt in the back is one of my feed store chicks. Mean little bugger had to go in with the bigger birds as she was picking on the other babies her size. They are a Rhode Island Red (daddy) x Jersey Black Giant and Buff Orpington (at least I think that's what their mommas are!)
Here are the other babies. I have 6 Black Australorps, 6 Rhode Island Reds, and 4 Barred Rocks. Soren and I changed out their shavings tonight and they had so much fun taking 'dust' baths in the new shavings! Soren LOVES watching the chicks.
