Well, the longest day has come and gone and now we are counting down to Christmas!!!  A lady put a wanted on our local freecycle for Christmas decorations, so it must be getting near!!!!  I offered her my spare Christmas tree, but someone else gave her one first!

Anyway, chickens!  Well, we still have 17 meat chickens here, it was a bit hot Monday and Tuesday and Brian doesn't like hanging them up when its too warm as we only have the garage, but even that can get warm, we need an old tall fridge that we can adapt for hanging space.  They do taste better when they've been hanging for a few days!

The Babcock's are 12 weeks old now, and looking so grown up, but I forgot to take a photo.  I'll try to remember tomorrow, but I've sort of promised to help pluck chooks again!  Anyone would think I didn't have anything else to do!!!

The new Amberlinks are 2 weeks old and doing really well. I have one little runt, but she doesn't look weak, although the others keep pushing her out of the way and walking over her head!  But whereas they are all about 100gms, she is only 50gms!!!  Here she is on the scales and with one of her mates!

 She is soo sweet, and I hope she doesn't die as she's a perky little thing!  Touch wood, I haven't lost any of them yet!!!!

And this is them when they cuddle up for the night!  At least its SOME of them lol

  They seem to take it in turns as to where they sleep, sometimes they are down one end of the brooder shed, sometimes down the other end and sometimes in the middle, but they don't sleep under their lamps much,but as they are only 2 weeks yet, I'm loathe to leave the lamp off at night.  I don't have them on during the day unless we have a cold snap, and they seem fine.  We even had the window open this week and today I left a door open and jammed some wire in the space so they can't get out, but it isn't all open, there is hardboard up to 2ft all round the shed, including the doorways.

I counted the bags of chick crumb this afternoon, and so far in 2 weeks they have eaten 80kgs of food!!!  Bit more than the last lot of Amberlinks did!

They even fly up onto the top of the feeders now as well as walking around the edges, its like a little fairground in there sometimes!!!!

Last week we went to our local garden centre for a walk round, and they've started to sell POL chickens.  They had these chickens in a run inside the pet section.  Well it was so hot in there, and the 2 speckeldy's they had in the run didn't have any water, so I went and told an assistant, and she said she would go and tell the appropriate assistant!  Why she couldn't just go and fill the drinker up I don't know, but we waited quite a while before someone came to see to them. Anyway, we carried on with what we were doing, although the thought of charging people £19.95 each for a hybrid chicken was niggling me!!!!

 Anyway, the other day, I gets a phone call, yep, from the garden centre!  Help said the voice, we have started to sell chickens, yes I know I told him, we've seen them!  Well he says, we were wondering if you could supply us on  a regular basis, we sell about 20 a fortnight and we can't get a regular supply!  But I had to decline their request, as I haven't got enough chickens for my own customers, let alone someone else's!  But I'm not sure I'd like my chooks being inside that hot garden centre, they should have been outside, And if anyone is going to get nearly 20 quid for a chicken, it should be me, not the middle man!!!!!  

Another man who has started to make chicken houses asked if I could supply him, but I had to say the same,we only have room for up to 300 at a time, and perhaps 3 times a year plus the older chooks and the meat chooks plus my own laying hens.

 Hubby keeps looking at houses with lots of land, but like I've said before, I don't want to take on a bigger mortgage at my age!  And since we started keeping more chickens I don't have time for my hobbies anymore.  I used to cross stitch all my greetings cards then I started makng them in other quicker ways, plus I've got a computer to fix, but it all takes time, but so do the chickens.  Imagine if I had 20,000 to look after!!!!  Hubby doesn't do much to help, he doesn't even like clearing up the dinner things after I've done the cooking!!!

Still, I'm not going there! So I'd better leave this post here, but I'll be back soon and I'll try to remember the updated pics of the Babcock's for you!