At the end of June, my broilers went to the processor. I'd hoped they would go a week earlier, but when I called for the appointment the processor was booked full, so we pushed them out another six days. Unfortunately in that time we had a very hot spell, and a bunch of that smoky air from the Canadian wildfires, and I lost two of the bigger birds in that batch three days before their date with destiny. The rest of them did okay through the 90 degree temps and hard-to-breathe air, and weighed in between 5 pounds and 7 pounds!! Big chickens. Perhaps I fed them a bit more than they really needed.
That left just two Brahma pullets in the grow-out pen. I'd purchased them at the same time as the broiler chicks so that I would have some replacement hens this Fall. At first they were confused as to where their bigger, greedier, bossier flock-mates had gone, but they quickly got over that when they figured out there was no longer competition for the feeder.
They stayed in the grow-out pen until last week, when I moved them to the coop with the big hens so that I could put some unexpected new occupants into the grow-out pen. When I'd gotten these Brahma pullets in May as day old chicks, I'd gotten just two even though ideally I'd like six new pullets a year to replace my older hens with. The last two years, DD2 had taught science in summer school and had hatched out chicks with the students (chicks that ended up at my house when summer school was over). I assumed that this year would be the same, so I refrained from buying more than two laying hen chicks and only bought those because I didn't have Brahmas in my flock any more and I missed that breed.
Well, DD2 isn't teaching summer school this summer. And the new science teacher isn't hatching out chicks. So, there wasn't going to be a plethora of chicks brought to me at the end of July afterall. Well shoot, now I was behind the eight ball on replacement pullets.
Until I got a message from DD2 early last week. One of the other faculty members was rehoming her flock of chickens. Was I interested in 5 hens ages 2-3 years and/or 4 pullet chicks that were 4 or 5 weeks old?
Hens, no. I have 2-3 year old hens and they're slated for culling this fall. I don't keep old hens, this isn't a chicken retirement home.
Chicks, you betcha! That would give me exactly the amount of replacement pullets I'd wanted. So currently living out in the grow-out pen are four Mystic Maran pullet chicks.
The Marans will stay in the grow-out pen and get a little bigger before being integrated into the coop with the Brahmas and the older chickens. Their move into the coop is timed to coincide with when my new batch of broilers (that arrived on Friday) are ready to leave the brooder and live outside until their induction into freezer camp.
Meanwhile... at the same time the first batch of broilers was about to go to the processor, my lone cherry tree was producing a bumper crop of cherries. One day the tree looked like this:
and two days later I was picking a big bowl full of red ripe cherries
Three days after that pie was made I picked the rest of the tree, and put up 14 cups of pitted cherries in the freezer. That made a total of 20 cups of cherries from that tree; the biggest yield it's ever had. Typically I'm outwitted by birds and raccoons right before the cherries turn red. This year, I'm the victor.
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