Can't Hold Us Down

Today was a "chicken freedom day" because, well...the chickens demanded it.  Once I realized that there were more chickens outside their pen than in it, I yielded and propped their gate open.  They seemed to enjoy roving around the backyard and free ranging.  Riker the rooster strutted around like he owned the place.

Enjoy it, little rooster, because your days are numbered.    With only one week remaining in my CSA, I have our family friend Enzo on speed dial.  As soon as I have enough eggs for next week's baskets, Enzo will come and take all of our old hens and Riker the rooster away.  He and his family will process them for stock.  Old laying hens are, in my experience, terrible for eating.  They are like eating rubber elastics.  It is so much messy work to process them just for stock, that we opt for the easy route of simply having Enzo take them away.

Once the old hens are gone, I will move the (now not so baby) chicks into the big coop to live with Beemster the rooster and the ducks.  The chicks will be safer from predators in the big coop, have much more space, and will be warmer as the nights get colder.

I am not interested in mixing the chicks in with the old hens because the process of establishing a new pecking order is brutal and will likely result in most of my beautifully feathered baby chickens losing huge numbers of their back and butt feathers.  The old hens are not laying well anyway and will lay worse and worse as the daylight hours decline, so it is time for them to go.

The baby chicks will not start laying eggs until November so we will have to reduce our egg intake until then or (gasp!) buy eggs for a few weeks at the store.  We have not bought eggs in close to a decade.  We also have a ridiculous number of pickled eggs in the fridge; maybe we will just eat those instead.