3 brown (1 small)

Swam routine.

2 of the young hens are laying. 2 more should start in the next week or so. The other 5 sometime in October.

I moved the young birds into the coop to roost on Thursday night. Will check to see if they are roosting in the coop or reverted to roosting on fence. Slaughtering a couple of older hens will make the young birds less stressed in the coop. Young birds aren't really developed enough physically to move up in existing pecking order.. removing a couple of non producing hens will shake up the order and might have the two younger hens that have started to lay move past other old non producers.

It seems pretty clear that there are 3 or 4 older hens producing brown eggs - collecting 2-3 brown eggs daily and regular production is about 1 egg/36 hours... 4 hens laying over 6 days should be 16-20 eggs. So 3-4 older birds are very erratic or not laying. I need to identify which two of the old flock need to be processed for stew soon. Will cull the entire old flock as new hens come into production and their eggs get larger. My guess is the 2 americaunas will stay through next summer, 2 - 3 productive brown egg layers will stay into rainy season, perhaps all the way until spring.

Next year I want to do one order of chicks - 3 americaunas, 2 brown egg layers and 20+ meat birds. Would like to have meat birds finishing in mid June - chicks arrive April 5? that would give 9 weeks until June 7, 11 weeks June 21. Process 4-5 per week. If my feed store wants some 3 day old brooder chicks I may do 2 orders ... 14 layers, 10 meat birds, then 10 layers, 14 meat birds. All the second cohort of layers would go to feed store at 3 days...spread the cohorts by 3 weeks. Which puts some additional meat processing June 28 - July 12.

longer term I think 20 meat birds a year. Keep laying flock at 10-16 hens, with a preference for the low end of the range. so 2010 would be meat production, perhaps brooder chicks to feed store.