For the first time in two years, I took an entire week off work. What a joy! I drove down to see family in North Carolina, and enjoyed some time on the beach, excellent seafood, and sleeping in past 9am! I was only gone 5 days, but I could tell a difference in some of the younger birds' sizes upon my return. Quite amazing how quickly they can change. I'm absolutely thrilled with the 3 month old lavender orpingtons, and the buffs (albeit only 8 weeks old) are feathering out very nicely and are going to be beautiful birds. I am also quite impressed with some of the partridge rocks.. even just at 8 weeks some of them are already showing nice feather patterning, especially the stock I obtained from Joel Gilman. I'm still waiting anxiously for the silver penciled rocks to feather out. I've been complimented a few times now on the Welsummers, which have some of the best leg coloring I've seen in this breed. I'm very excited to be getting a roo from Gibson/Barber lines, which I think will compliment my birds nicely.
As the chickens population on SLF is expanding (not in numbers at the moment, but size of the birds!) a most important order of business is additional coop building. I've added 2 new coops in the last month, and another will be added this week. I'm also working on a design for breeding pens, and hopefully will be able to build a few of these in the fall. There's only so much work I can do in the extreme heat.. we can run to air conditioning, the birds can't! Each coop built will have anywhere from 50-100% shade. Along with fresh, cool water and some chilled watermelon, all the birds seem to be doing just fine.
I do have a few birds available for sale right now: a 10 week old Cochin cockerel with excellent size, a very sweet bird and outstanding leg feathering; an 8 week old Exchequer leghorn cockerel, and an 8 week old black pullet (maran cross). Roo's are $5, and the pullet is $10. Please contact me if you're interested.
