Waiting for the birds

The coop is built and the birds ordered. There is no shop that one can go to and just pick up 75 live chickens...oops!  

The 1 to 3 days old chicks will need an incubator style cage when they arrive Friday or Saturday, sort of like a brick oven,  for a few days until they get strong enough to be let loose in the large cage. 

After discussing the project further, Maud and I decided it would be best to start with both egg production and meat production  to give time for everyone involved to learn about raising chickens and to start marketing for future sales location to see what would be most profitable.  100 lbs of feed costs US $32.50 and will be used in a week by the 50 chicks that  will be ready to be sold on the market in 6 weeks.

We have also ordered 25 “prêtes à pondre” hens of the Israelite type because though they are more costly to purchase ( US $ 12.50) they will not only produce a high quality brown egg per day but will retain their resale value as meat hens, selling for $ 8.50 each, once they stop producing in 18 months.  

Day 1 chicken coop foundation

Day 3

Icee hand sawing rafters

Day 5 Ready for the last touches

Andy, Bellegarde, Icee , RT1 trained, gave up their Sunday to  have construction go faster.  Today  is  Wednesday and the coop is done!

I HAD NO IDEA about the complexity of chicken farming!!!!and I can only guess the remaining challenges. 

It will be interesting to follow the evolution of this project.