Last night, under cover of darkness, eleven imported farm workers were slipped into their new quarters here on the farm. This was done stealthily, of course, in order not to disturb the old hands who were already sleeping soundly … the fewer dustups, the better.
A friend of a friend is moving south and needed to find a home for her one-year-old hens … and that’s exactly what I was looking for, hens who are still young but already laying. A perfect match! Besides the wonderful fresh eggs for both table and sale, we benefit from the rich combination of coop shavings and manure that gets composted and added to our growing beds.
Our “old” girls – three years old, now, and ten in number – are Barred Rocks and red hybrid layers; these new hens are White Brahmas and Red Comets. The time-tested way to introduce new additions to the flock is to wait until everyone’s asleep, slide the new ones into the coop, and when they all wake up in the morning, there’s minimum fuss. Early this morning we heard some louder-than-usual squawking coming from the direction of Coop de Ville, but by the time we climbed to hill to take a look, all the ladies seemed to be just hanging out.
And then – a faceoff in the pen: a heavy young Brahma versus an aging Red. Size and youth won out (*sigh* -- what happened to experience and cunning?), and the Red suffered some minor lacerations. Thus a new pecking order comes into being. Regime change can be a bit messy.
Only 10 eggs were collected today, but since everyone’s got eggs in the pipeline, we’ll hope that they’ll settle in and resume normal laying soon.
They're all gorgeous, and so are the nest boxes. Ours are not only happier sans rooster, but I'm going through WAY less feed. Shoulda done that sooner!
ReplyDeleteI don't think I'll ever keep roosters again ... except to see if I can occasionally "rent" one for a few weeks in order to have some fertile eggs to hatch out.
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