Chickens: 6 weeks old. Do we have a couple roosters?

Hard to believe that Christine brought the chicks home six weeks old today.  They have grown so much since the last post.  The biggest weighs in at about two pounds.  The smallest is just over one pound.  Three of them have really started developing brightly colored wattles and combs and are quite a bit bigger than the others.  So we checked one of our  guides for chicken raising.  The news isn’t good: they’re probably cockerels (young roosters).    They’re actually bad for egg production because they mostly will just harass the hens.  We make keep one of them.  The rest… best not to talk about it kids around.  Can you say “pot pie?”  Sorry boys.  We’ve been lucky so far.  We still have all 12.

The Caouette Chicken Coop / Toolshed - Under Construction

They outgrew the little plywood box that I made for them when they were just chicks.  We moved them into our one bay of our garage into a pen that I made one evening.   It’s made from some welded-wire fencing that we’ll use to fence in the made run.  If the picture looks a little red that’s due to the heat lamp.  They’re fully fledged out (have all their feathers) but the past few nights dropped below freezing.  The lamp combined with some extra pine shavings kept them nice and toasty.  Soon they be moving into their permanent coop with fenced in pen.  It’s coming along.  I still have to build and hang the doors for it, nail on the cedar shingles, build some access ramps for the chickens and hang the fencing.  They should be moving in sometime in early June.

T-minus 14 weeks until fresh eggs….