Chicken Farming, Redux

by Pa Rock

Farmer in Spring

I have had a couple of good years raising chickens at my retirement farm,  but the past several years have have been more difficult.

Last year was a particularly tough one for poultry at The Roost.  When spring arrived I had two birds, an old rooster and his bossy red hen.   In the spring I bought forty pullet chicks and three baby cockerels (roosters).  I had them for about a month with minimal losses, and they had begun growing pin feathers and becoming independent, although I still kept them in a pen and the chicken coop as a precaution against predators.  But not long after that, before they were old enough to begin working the yard independently, something managed to get into my very secure henhouse one night and kill about half of the young birds.  Over the next couple of nights he finished the mission.  

I suspect the villain was a raccoon.  They are bright, and very skilled at breaking and entering.

Late in the summer the little red hen who had lived at The Roost for several years suddenly started becoming very weak, and a few days later she passed away quietly, leaving the old red rooster a forlorn widower.    One rainy evening instead of going to the coop, as was his usual practice, I found him trying to roost in the rain on the back deck.  I led him to the coop, and he turned and fled.  Finally I carried him to the coop and watched as he climbed to a high rafter to roost for the evening.  He seemed fearful that something was either in the coop or had been in the coop the previous evening.  I searched the coop and could find no predators and no openings.

The next morning he, too was dead, mutilated by some unknown killer.

This year I resolved not to get back into the poultry game.

But last week a friend of my son's brought by four warm farm eggs that he said were fertile and presented them to me.  My son had told him that I have a good incubator and would welcome the eggs.  He said he would bring more in the following days.  (Five days later and he has brought two additional eggs, all of which are incubating nicely on my kitchen table.)

Today I went to a "swap meet" where local farmers gather to sell and trade poultry, rabbits, pigs, cats, and dogs, and even the occasional goat.   I was looking for a banty hen to mother the chicks when they hatch - and possibly a noisy rooster.  I didn't find the hen I wanted, and I did come across one rooster.  I expect to pay two dollars for a grown rooster at a swap meet, and the lady who had this one wanted ten!  I  kept looking!  

But (and here is the bad news) while I was at the swap meet I wound up buying eighteen banty chicks (six each of three different varieties) and ten baby guineas.  The whole menagerie is now in the "secure" room in the coop and under heat lamps, although six of the bantys are big enough that they have pin feathers and should do fine without extra heat.

So I am (temporarily, at least) back in the poultry business - and the good news is probably already spreading through the raccoon grapevine!  The raccoons at Rock's Roost are very smart, and they eat well!