Blue Moon Valley Farm Chickens Blog

The wonders of Fall October 16, 2011

Wow, it has been a few months since last posting. Sorry all for that. Flock is doing good. Sold last 6 of chicks that a friend bought for laying. Have been slowly moving rest of chicks over to big coop. At this time we stand at 25 total mostly pullets and hens. The cockerals are growing well and are very large. Besides Spike I have 3 others almost his size. I do have a few that will go to either new homes for mixed flocks or become food for dog.

Since I am now on a new computer I have to reload my chicken software. Glad I bought the disk. It is Zooeasy program and can be found on the net. Luckily we were able to save data from it so I can just switch it over. I will be banding the chickens soon as some are indeed large enough for adult bands. This comming year I will be keeping more records than before. I have seen an improment in size as well as shape in the offspring.

The nice thing is with more roos the chickens are forgaing farther. A couple have there own ladies following already. But most are just too young yet. The older hens have been rough on the new cockerals. Most have no tail feathers since they keep getting pulled out. I am sure that will change soon as Spike start to come into his own. With Beta gone now, Spike is top cockeral and he grew up in big coop. All the others are in small coop.

Out of those in the small coop I have been looking them over real good. Since I feed only in the morning that is my time to sit and watch. It works well in being able to see faults or things I want to correct. Right now with weather the way it is sitting for an hour or 2 is fun. One thing I have notice strongly in the cockerals is Alpha passed on his comb to many. But on the good he also passed on his size. Spike has his comb and is almost his sire double in looks. Now if I can see if one of the others that look like him but gets the correct comb I will be happy. I have 2, I am watching as their combs are not curved up front but straight all the way back as a single comb should look. I am not worrying about how many points right now just getting that thumb print curve gone.

In color everyone is good. I do have a couple to watch but they are the hens and it is a lighter neck thing. I have one cockeral that has a weird wing feather thing going on. Last outside feather comes to a long point. Might be fun to see if that moults out but I have him listed for culling. Pullets that I sold, the last bunch were all sold with longer tails than I wanted. All those I kept were much better in that area. I have a few pullets from my first hatching that are just looking great in body. Much better than moms and larger too. It will be interesting to see what they lay in egg size next year. My hens now only lay between lrg and xlrg. I am hoping the breeding them up back to standard of perfection size they will increase egg size. I kept and hatched only my largest and most uniform eggs. It looks too have worked well. Time will tell. At this time I am still waiting on the first to start laying. Should be I hope next month.