TheCrabsHomestead

Successful hatch completed New Years Day 2014! We hatched 16 out of 20, 2 passed the first and second day, and we now have 14 Healthy Happy chicks! One of the deceased was very weak, and the other could not open one of its eyes, so I trust mother nature knew what she was doing. With death, there is also life and we love healthy baby chicks!

Check out their new home that Papa Crab built for our new babies! We call it the Redneck Television 🙂 because it is so fun to watch them move around now that they are more active!

And one week later they are moving and grooving! We have one yellow chick, I am sure it is a Rhode Island Red. We do not have a Red rooster, but we do have a Plymouth Barred Rock Rooster whose mom was a Red, and his dad was a Rock. He is a beautiful Roo! Dark feathers with tints of green and red. I am positive that this yellow chick’s mom was a Red and the dad was the Mixed Rooster. From my understanding, if the mixed rooster’s dad was a Red and the mom was a Barred Rock, then we could call him a Black Sexlink (sp). But since his dad was a Rock, he is a Rock.

We are in the process of incubating 20 more right now. Coming up on Day 8, the first candle day. We are working on a self sufficient meat supply four our family and are looking at slaughtering the chickens when they reach 6-8 weeks of age. Depends on their size of course, but we now have 10 hens laying and 2 roosters, which we will replace slowly with a couple of chicks from our new hatches. This is why we are consistantly hatching. Hopefully this new plan we have ensures our chicken meat consumption for the future months, chicken broth I can preserve via pressure canning, and continuous egg production from our 6 month-1 year chickens. We no longer have Rhode Island Reds, as we slaughtered all of the hens this Fall. Well all but the newest yellow one! Not sure if we will keep it around or not, I am still deciding. Either way, we are in full chicken making swing here at the Crab Homestead!