Egg-citing Developments Ahead!

This summer our neighbor and part-time farmhand Jesse was busier than ever, and one of the reasons for that was because he was raising new pullets (young female chickens) for us to add more layers to our flock.

Several weeks ago we had moved one of our mobile chicken shelters to their place so Jesse could get them out on the pasture. However, the pullets thwarted their plans and ended up free ranging in their yard and barnyard, continuing to go back into their horse-stall-turned-chicken-coop at night.

Finally it was time to move them up to our pastures. But first we had to bring the chicken house back up the road!

Doug drove ahead to make sure no traffic interfered. Dad was on the tractor in neutral and used the rear forks to lift the front end, and Jesse's dad Martin pushed the whole thing from behind in his skid steer. I followed behind in the truck with the flashers on since it was a good bit darker than the photos appeared. You wouldn't want to make a lot of turns that way, but it worked!

We got it into the pasture off the road and left it there for a couple more days till I had time to pull it close to where the laying hens currently are.

However, there was still more prep work to do before we could move the pullets. Since the hens aren't laying as many eggs right now, we took 4 of the nest boxes out of their pen and gave them a good cleaning so they'd be ready whenever the new girls started to lay. It had been way too long since I'd given them a spraying, and after a summer of broody hens and chickens who would rather sleep outside in the cafeteria and nest boxes at night, those nest pads took a while to spruce up! All in all it probably took me close to a couple hours, and I had to call dad to help me move the second set to and from the trailer. The bigger nests are kinda heavy and awkward for one person to carry very far, and I guess two of those was my limit!

 Here's the tail end of hosing down the second of four nests.

Finally we were about as ready as we could be last Thursday, and we took our crates on the trailer down to Waglers' place at dark. Their whole family came out to help catch chickens. If our chicken math was correct, there were 243 of them! Then they graciously helped us unload them into the mobile shelter back in our pasture.

The next day the pullets spent the whole day inside so they would learn this was their new home and where they needed to return to each night.

One Saturday morning Bear and I went out and let them out. As you can see from the video below they were READY to get outside! They were also fairly skittish. But in just a few days' time they're starting to settle down a bit. Not only did they want to get outside that morning, they wanted to get far away from me and Bear!

We have a polynet electric fence between the hens and the new pullets. So as we opened the door to the pullet house and they flew out, it was apparently a spectacle for the hens to watch, and it was pretty funny to watch them all staring quietly at the newcomers!

Because we have a not-always-helpful habit of flying by the seat of our pants, when we decided to order chicks this summer, we didn't have the option of getting the red production birds (in my humble opinion, it's hard to beat what they bring to the table). So this is a bit of an experiment with some varieties we've not had as much or at all. One difference we can be pretty sure of is that the egg shells will be lighter colored. Good thing shell color doesn't affect what's on the inside ;) .

There are at least three different kinds of chickens in the new group, and according to the hatchery website, the Austra Whites should start laying between 12-16 weeks, the Black Stars between 16 and 20 weeks, and the Barred Rocks in the 20-24 week range. They're almost 16 weeks, so hopefully it won't be long before we start finding some "maiden eggs" in those (now much cleaner) nest boxes!