Overpopulation

So as the chickens have been getting bigger the task of caring them has been growing as well.  When we sized out the coop and the run it was always designed with a maximum number of 10 birds in my head.  We currently have 12, including Jaina, the massive cornish-x hen makes the mess of two or three regular chickens due to her non-stop eating.

Cindy and I have talked about the possibility of re-homing some of the chickens to make things more manageable although the sentimental part of me hates that idea.  Since we raised 11 of the 12 chickens since they were a week old it makes the idea of casting any of them off hard for me.  I think this idea is less difficult for Cindy to endorse since she is the one that does the overwhelming majority of the clean up and daily maintenance.

I think part of the problem is we have set a chicken cleanliness standard that is far above average.  Each and every day Cindy is doing a very thorough cleaning of the coop, by the time she is done the inside of the coop looks pretty pristine.  Most chicken care handbooks you read will refer to coop cleaning as a weekly task, not daily.  She also is in the chicken run multiple times during the day trying to pick up the various “presents” the chickens leave.

Last night she said that she has felt sort of trapped because of all the chicken maintenance which is 180 degrees opposite of what you normally hear about chicken care.  It is not supposed to be something that demands so much time each and every day. I told her that maybe she should start letting the chickens free range for more of the day.  She has been paranoid about letting them roam around unless she is somewhat actively watching them because of hawks.

I told her that the chickens are old enough/big enough to be trusted outside more.  If you let your chickens free range at all you are exposing them to additional risk there is no way to deny that.  It is just a matter of weighing that risk with both the chickens quality of life and your sanity.  Allowing them to roam a good part of the day across 2+ fenced in acres allows any mess they create to be widely distributed instead of it being concentrated in the 8′ x 12′ run.  The property has a number of spots where the birds can hide/shelter themselves including various landscaped areas as well as the two storage sheds.

For now I am not ready to pull the trigger on thinning our flock.  I am sort of assuming that Jaina’s lifespan will not be all that long due to her size.  She already has outlived the typical cornish life span by several weeks.  We also might just need to be a little less fanatical about the excrement collection schedule, shit happens.

The amount of rain recently appears to finally be exceeding the capacity of the sandy soil to absorb it meaning standing water is starting to pop up around the yard.  This signifies the start of the part of summer in Florida I really, really do not enjoy.

This weekend I have a number of things to do just like pretty much every other weekend the last 15 years of my life.  A lot of them require me to be outside which means it will likely be a miserable slog.