The chickens and the bees...

  All of the hens and roosters have flourished with their free range lifestyle.  The roosters and hens have grown into beautiful animals with shiny feathers, and fully bodies. Their feathers are absolutely glorious from all of the scratching they get to do around the property.  They still enjoy their unlimited freedom around the property, and head to their coop at night. The roosters enjoying parading around the ladies acting  like men with their harems. 
    In the beginning of December, all of our hens began laying eggs on a daily basis.  We have built six nesting boxes for the ten hens, and they appear to be appreciative of them.  The ladies are averaging at least 5 eggs a day, which is about one egg from each hen every other day.  Partridge rock chickens normally produce about one egg each day, so we hope to see an increase in egg production as we change the lights in the barn.   In addition, our bantam girl has an egg about every other day.
  When we purchased the chicks as a straight run group (unsexed) we knew that we may end up with more roosters than we desired.  Since we had too many roosters, we have processed four of the partridge rock roosters.  It is certainly not our favorite task, but there were simply too many roosters.  We chose our two roosters  based on their temperament, size, coloring, and feathers.   We did decide to keep two roosters of each breed, so we will always have a back up.  We believe reducing the numbers was a smart idea to ensure fewer dominance battles between the roosters.
     We plan on incubating the fertilized partridge rock eggs, and bantam eggs this spring/summer.  A local friend has offered to lend us their incubator with the promise that we will give them some chicks.  We are excited to hatch our own eggs and look forward to this new experience.