Last Weight and New Surroundings

Many of you know about Wyatt's Science Fair project for the coming school year, especially those of you who have followed his meat pen project for this past county fair and his interest in sustainable heritage meat poultry.  The meat birds he raised peaked at around county fair.  The red broilers took another six weeks, and they ended up the size of the white broiler hens rather than the same size as the meaty males.  The Delawares, which are standard bred poultry of a traditional dual purpose breed, and this was when their weights seemed to finally plateau at a size around the same as the red broilers

This is the cockerel.  He is very striking and rather mild mannered, though he really doesn't care for being held for long periods.

This is one of the hens in the bucket being weighed.

Then Wyatt gave her a ride- atop his head- to her new home in the big pen.

Here is another of the hens.  They did fill out beautifully, with nice large breasts and beautiful conformation.  Wyatt selected these, as they were also dual purpose, and he could watch their development over time.  This way he could decide what direction he wanted to go with them, and they would still make an excellent addition to the laying flock.

Here they are getting acclimated to the big pen.  It is larger than the pen they have had to themselves, and they have a big tree to sleep in.  Several of the hens in this pen have learned to open and close the gate to their pen, so they sneak out to forage but return just ahead of Wyatt for meals! (I keep saying I am going to get it on video, but they are faster than me!)

Here are two of the fluffy ladies pecking around beneath the tall Mesquite tree.

The ladies of this pen are getting their first roo protector in a little while.  This should be interesting to watch!

The other fun thing- Wyatt is ready to write out his results for his project now!  Or as soon as football season is over, anyway!