Friday, June 19, 2009

Hundreds of chickens

The chickens are about ready to go out on pasture. This has been an interesting flock to brood; half black australorp, half pearl white leghorns. The leghorns are more excitable, more flighty. So they've been teaching the australorps to freak out, too. As a result I can count on waves of chickens to flee and then approach me, like waves lapping on a beach when I'm feeding them each day. It's been interesting.
As they've gotten bigger their food intake has increased. Right now they're drinking 12 gallons of water a day and eating about 60lbs of food a day. That's for 550 birds and a couple of goslings. We've stopped using the smaller feeders and started bringing the food in with buckets. Two five gallon buckets of food a day, three 5 gallon buckets of water. Good for the biceps.


1 comment:

Adam said...

WOW! That's a huge flock. What are your plans for all those birds? I'm guessing for egg production?

Good luck to you with them!