When chickens are roosters
We have historically bought our laying hens from a farm in Hanover. We bought pullets (vs chicks) so we were certain they were hens and would be laying soon. It’s a great place, but since it’s a bit far we looked for closer options. We found an impressive middle schooler in Powhatan who has a business selling chickens. These chickens were a little younger, but we had confidence they were hens and it all worked out.
A word of caution to any of you considering chickens. In the past two years, we allowed Cora to pick the breeds (which she loves to research). We historically only had Golden Comets which were hardy and great layers. It turns out we should have stuck with them. 😜
In fourth grade, Powhatan schools have a program where the kids watch fertilized chicken eggs become embryos and eventually hatch into chicks. Most of you know our daughter is very fond of chickens and this school program inspired her to REALLY want chicks. We have a few friends who hatch their own, so after A LOT of hesitation on my part, I relented, and we got 6 chicks with hopes of increasing our egg production and having younger chickens as older ones phase out.
As of today, of these 6 chicks, there are 5 roosters and 1 hen! So, there goes our hope for an increase in egg production. We have generally been against roosters because they can be aggressive, they are loud, and mainly, they don’t lay eggs! But they do provide protection, and this could allow us to grow the flock if we let some fertilized eggs get hatched out by a broody hen (Cora’s ultimate dream). Then we’d have more hens that will eventually lay, but also more roosters of course!
We currently have 32 chickens – 6 non-laying (too young or males), and likely a few that aren’t laying due to age or stress. With the heat and stress of introducing new members to the flock (or some other unknown reason like breed 😉), we generally get ~16 eggs a day on average. Minus the eggs we personally eat, we get about 1 dozen eggs a day we can sell. We’d like to be able to provide you more. More eggs necessitate more hens.
We have a great coop and run and we let the chickens out in the evenings to forage under our supervision. I built an extension to the run to allow half of the run to recover, but if we end up getting/having more chickens, we may need more space. Now that we have an actual tractor, we’re considering a mobile tractor coop I could move around our farm. Plus, we could then use the chickens to improve our soil health and eat insects. We’ll see what the future holds. Hopefully more eggs, but I won’t count them before they hatch. Ha!
Upon telling Cora we cannot keep all five roosters, she has settled on three. So we need to re-home Domino and Spunky. Interested? Know someone who is?