Saturday

Well, I missed posting yesterday. Mainly due to the fact that I was exhausted from not sleeping well for several nights and it finally caught up with me yesterday.

Today we are processing the Jenk's Hatchery FryPan Special meaties. I'll tell you what, I'm very ready to get this done and over with. These dudes take a very long time to grow out and my attention span is just over 3 months - the time it takes for the Freedom Rangers to reach harvestable size.

A lot of these dudes have started crowing and I'm not cool with that. Yes, I knew that it would happen, but still they started crowing weeks ago. Most of the time it's entertaining because they aren't good at it yet. There are a couple who I would say were over-achievers and were quite good and loud!

What we have learned about these meaties:

1. They are not especially smart. I suppose that's true for most birds, but it took these dudes to figure out the routine in the evening. The Freedom Rangers caught on fast and would generally be ready to be locked in. All without having to chase a few around the paddock to get them into the Chicken Tractor. 

2.  There are three different breeds in this FryPan special and they are all different. The light colored boys were mostly friendly and allowed us to pick them up and set them on our laps at time. There was one dark gray meatie who was just a bully. He would run around and pick fights with the other ones. And the speckled ones were very skittish. They didn't necessarily care if we were near them, they just didn't want to be grabbed. For any reason.

3. As I mentioned before - they are very slow growing. Today we are at 15 1/2 weeks. We could have done nearly two batches of Cornish Cross in the same time-frame. The Freedom Rangers were not nearly as long, but also were a much nicer meat bird which made it more enjoyable to grow them. 

4. Personality - these birds weren't mean, but they were super curious and would not hesitate to start pecking on your leg or arm or whatever after they saw something interesting. As they grew up with the turkeys, we would spend most evenings trying to console the turkeys because the meaties could be so spirited. The turkeys got over the meaties pretty quickly so it wasn't all that bad. 

We may be processing these guys a little early, but I didn't want to be out at the end of the month doing the job in what would most likely be the typical weather for the Pacific NW fall season - RAIN. It can be done, but nobody wants to be in the rain if they don't need to. So, really, we lucked out today - mostly cloudy with a small chance for rain or showers or misting. 

Today was also going to be the day that we promoted some of the laying hens to Freezer Camp. However, that changed when I took one of the ladies that had spent the evening out (bad girl!) and locked her in with the meaties. They immediately started to attack her. Okay, so I guess they get to stay with us a little longer, not much longer though - they are just hanging around and eating food and not laying anymore eggs! Just a bunch of freeloaders. They are sweet hens though, but have outlived their purpose on the farm.

Just for the sake of curiosity we are planning to grow a batch of Cornish Cross. We want to see how different they are compared to the Freedom Rangers and if it will make a difference letting them out on grass instead of confining them to a small space like those big commercial poultry barns that house thousands and thousands of chickens. 

Okay...I'm not going to get started because this is not the time for this subject. What it is time for is some more prep work for our day today!