Chickens...Small, Medium, Large

Johnny and the girls and Chase built the pens.........3 in all.

Emelie's chickens are 16 weeks old now, and getting big. We should see some eggs in a month or so. She has 5 varieties, but I'm not sure what they all are... This picture was taken last week. The kids are eating watermelon while discussing chicken farming w/ a neighbor boy.

Marissa's chicks (below) are 1/2 grown. She has Red Star and Black Star. We have amazingly had no fatalities w/ her flock!!! Even her ornamental chick, which the hatchery sent us free, has survived! Marissa calls him (her?) Mohawk. See if you can pick Mohawk out of the group! HA!

Allison's Cornish Cross chickens (below) are our meat birds. They should be ready for slaughtering in 5-6 weeks! Amazes me that they can grow big in that short a time! I'm 1/2-dreading....1/2-anticipating that day! Several people have indicated interest in buying the chickens we raise/slaughter...so we may get another set of meat birds after this time around. Hey, the Amish lady I used to get chickens from in Indiana always had my 40 birds killed, gutted, de-feathered, and cooling in ice water by the time I got there at 11 AM! She was amazing! CERTAINLY we can get 40 done in a whole day, right!??! Hmmm....we'll see!

The neighbors find this "mobile chicken pen" idea very intriguing. The pens are moved every day to new grass, so it's a version of free-range, the grass isn't turned brown and icky.....and it keeps the birds out of reach of the dogs/weasels/racoons/skunks/etc!!!

The egg-layers are going to be a source of income for Emelie and Marissa.

The meat birds will do the same for Allison.