Poultry slam

We currently have eight hens and they keep us well-stocked with eggs most of the year (the exception being in the fall/winter when they’re molting–I know; what a stupid time to molt, right?–and daylight hours are low).

We also have one rooster. Roosters are generally useless, unless…you want to hatch out chicks. And Kid1 does, for no good reason, really.

On May 3rd, our incubator (because we don’t currently have a broody hen) hatched out 7 chicks. Last time we hatched out 7 chicks, 6 of them turned out to be roosters, and we ended up eating them–see the aforementioned comment about uselessness.

Here they are 24 hours after hatching. The one in Kid1’s hand is still rather damp.

The heat lamp makes everything look red.

And here they are again, 2 weeks + 2 days old. They’ve grown a lot, and are proficient poopers. Hey, everyone needs a skill, right?

They’ve also started to perch on things, so the Spousal Unit put in sticks. But a couple of the more precocious ones (they’re precocial but some are more advanced than others) like to leap up to the edge of the cardboard enclosure and perch on that.

Not this one though. Greta Garbo here just wants to be alone.

On the one hand, we’d like them to be all hens instead of roosters. On the other hand, we will be slammed with an avalanche of eggs once they are all laying. We give away a lot of eggs, but we should start selling them, too.