The chickens keep hatching every Thursday morning. They spend five weeks in the brooder house. They are then sorted into males and females. They go into separate chicken tractors in the field. The males are too aggressive at the feeding trough and the females suffer a little if we leave them together.
Here they are moving through a field, which had a summer mix of cover crop, which means that the recent frosts have killed it. The chickens are eating the residue as they move down the field. They have roosts inside these houses and the height gives them room to fly. The house protects them from predators, of which the Hawk is the main problem These chicks are a easy, tasty morsels for any one of the resident Hawks on the farm. We want the Hawks to eat field mice and gophers not our chicks.