I can see it’s been awhile since we posted on the site.  That’s not to say a great deal hasn’t been going on here.  There has. Breeding season is in full swing.  We should be producing some great Chanteclers this year.  We have also received a lot of orders for chicks this season.  As a matter of fact, it’s exceeded both our expectations and are ability to deliver chicks to everyone who has contacted us over the last several months.  So we will be determining what we can produce and contacting everyone who wanted chicks to let them know whether or not we can deliver birds.  As you know, it’s first come, first serve.  So we won’t be able to get chicks to everyone.  But next year we will ramp up production even further and should be able to meet the demand.

Well, it’s been awhile since I’ve posted on the site.  My work schedule made it difficult to update the site.  But a fair bit has happened during the interim. We incubated a large quantity of eggs this Spring and sold a lot of chicks.  The fertility rates could have been higher but I attribute this to the incubators more than anything.  Trying to get them properly calibrated proved more bothersome than normal.  We also sold a lot of pullets this year and still have a few available for anyone interested.  Use the contact page to get hold of me.  I also entered some Chanteclers at local chicken show in Fergus.  I’ve included a bunch of photos from the show.  A bunch of the Chanteclers and other chicken breeds as well.

Well, it’s been several weeks since I last posted.  I have just been amazingly busy at work.  But I have a moment now and thought I should fill everyone in on all the new developments.  Firstly, I stopped recording egg weight and production.  Mostly because the chickens started eating a lot of their own eggs.  So it was obviously throwing off the egg counts.  But I did get a fairly long sample period with a lot of interesting data.  But recently we changed out the food we were feeding and the chickens stopped eating their eggs.  We think they weren’t getting enough protein and that’s why they were doing it.   As soon as we changed the food, they stopped.  It was that quick and drastic.

I have two more chicken coops.  We added two adjoining coops in the barn and I will be able to split my stock up and increase my numbers.  I will ad some pictures on the weekend.

I have also had a huge number of people wanting chicks and will start incubating eggs soon.  I won’t be able to meet all the demand but we will see what we can do.  I should have chicks withing 6 or 7 weeks.

Today, January 15, 2010, I hit my first TEN EGG day.  With the number of eggs that were laid yesterday, I estimate I may have thirteen of my hens laying now.  Not bad for early January!  Also, just posted a new archive entry.  You can see that here.

We just had a huge thaw.  This was the state of snow until a few days ago.

But almost all the snow melted and the chickens happily went outside for a few days.  Even with most of the snow off the ground they seem to want to go out more.

I just updated my site (it uses WordPress) and I’m using a new ‘pro’ template to give the site a more professional look, and to add increased functionality. Hopefully everything is working properly but if you notice something not looking quite right in your web browser then send me an email with the page particulars and I’ll look into it.  I use a Mac and mostly Firefox as my browser.  I have checked the site using Windows (Internet Explorer 7, Firefox  3.6) as well as on a Mac (Firefox, Safari).  But different platforms and browsers render HTML differently and it’s not as seamless as it could be.  I would appreciate any feedback.

Also, a new section was added to the site, an Archives page, which you can access on the top of every page.  At this time, there’s just one entry there but I hope to put something up regularly.  It takes a fair amount of time to transcribe the research material and to format all the graphics that might accompany an entry.  But over time I hope to amass a definitive amount of historical material on the development of the Chantecler.

On the chicken front, all is well.  I am averaging around five eggs a day (5.45 according to my Excel Spreadsheet). And the average weight of my eggs in December was 53.2 grams which is well above the 48.8 grams I got in November (although November only had 13 days of laying)  I just started to band hens that were sitting on eggs.  In that way I hope to determine which of my 18 hens are laying.  In a month I will be selecting my 5 best laying hens and crossing them with my best rooster.  I will be incubating the eggs and producing my first show birds.  I just got my new Hovabator incubator with an automatic egg turner and can’t wait to start raising chicks.

This morning I got up early and caught my extra roosters to be sent off to the processors in Dundalk, Ontario. I did it before dawn and they were all quite docile and easy to catch. I can’t believe what a calm breed of chicken the Chantecler is.  This was the first time I had ever sent off Chickens to be butchered.  I found it a tad unpleasant but I think that’s mostly hypocritical guilt on my part since I eat chicken regulary.  And  if I’m going to breed them,  I will need to cull extra roosters.  That’s just the nature of raising animals and being a farmer, something at which I’m quite new.

I hope, with seven less roosters around, the hens will start laying more, too.  I have been told that with too many roosters the hens are always bothered and stressed and this decreases egg production.  It will be interesting to see if this occurs. My food costs should go down by a fourth as well as I was feeding the roosters for no good reason.

I took the seven roosters to the Dundalk Poultry Processors located here just south of Dundalk.  They charged three dollars a bird.  I dropped them off at eight-thirty in the morning and picked them up at four-thirty.  The woman who runs the place said that there wasn’t much fat on them and that when I roasted them I should cover them, add a bit of water, and cook at a low heat. I plan on roasting one tomorrow night.