Chickens

This has been a BAD year for the chickens. Both the layers and the fryers took a beating.
Raccoons just destroyed us this year. we lost several fryers from out first batch. this really killed us. we also lost 19 of 21 of our hatched chicks and 9 of our 18 layers. We finally cought, trapped and poisened them. I hate to do this, and I dont mind sharing, but the costs have been huge. We have lost most of our egg sales, and the price per # went up on the broiler/fryers.

We also were hit with another problem with the first batch of chicks we got.
While we ordered the Vantress X chicks we got the cornish game X. Our normal weights with the Vantress DRESSED averaged 6-8# each. these averaged 4# dressed. OUCH..

we do have another batch going, and they are about 3 weeks out from slaughter and are looking much better.

Not a whole lot more to say here.