ilultham

Obviously this post contains pictures of dead animals so please don't read if that kind of thing upsets you.  I had planned to process a batch of Indian Game chickens for the freezer this week. I was then disappointed when I found out that the day I had planned to do it the children were going for a sleep over at my mum and dads.  This is how far things have come with the children, it's so much easier with them that I now plan to do it so they can help. So I made sure we all got up early that morning and got cracking before they had to go! I had considered keeping the hen from this batch but in all honesty they were so wild. I don't think I've ever had such a wild hatch of chickens before, even thought he children spent so much time with them when they were younger.  As a team we've become pretty quick at processing the birds. I normally set the water to boil while we're having breakfast, ready to scald them to make plucking easier. So by the time we've disp...

The bucket nest boxes I originally put in the Heras Panel Pasture Pens never really worked very well, They just weren;t quite big enough and could cause hens to break eggs. But because I used these pens more for grow outs it didn't matter too much and I changed the one I used for the layers into a bigger nest box like the one in this post.  Currently I have all three of these pens with potential laying hens in. So it was time to upgrade the last two pens to have proper nest boxes, which can even stay in when raising meat birds in there as well.  I had decided on a blue food barrel as they are easy to clean, about the right size and cheap enough. It almost seems like a waste, but they only cost about £4 and if I was to build it out of new wood it would cost far more.  It's fairly simple to make. Cut just a barrel and take the middle section out of it, leaving the sides intack. I do these cuts with a thin metal cutting disk in a small angle grinder - creates a lot of plast...

 So with some really poor hatch rates from posted eggs I decided that it was time to buy a few hens so we could actually start to hatch out our own eggs. I already have some fine Indian Game cockerels to run with them.  There is a Facebook group about rearing meat for the table and through that I got in contact with someone who had some young Indian Game pullets for sale. So I took a trip into deepest darkest Wales (via a small saw mill that had some specialist timber I was after) to buy some!  Of course I ended up buying more than just this!  He sold a trio of Plymouth Rock Hens, which when crossed with an Indian Game will produce a great meat bird (And this cross was used in the orginal Chicken Of Tomorrow competition so I have high hopes). I also got 4 Indian Game POL pullets so I should be able to keep a pure flock of these going as well. But hopefully the Plymouth Rock hens will lay enough eggs in the next few weeks to get another batch in the incubator and repl...