While I was doing laundry and inventorying freezers he went up and started cleaning out the brooder and dismantling it.
While I was at the barn inventorying the running freezer, I wiped out the empty freezer and got it started. He was preparing to pressure wash the brooder.
This is this week’s jobs: cleaning all the chicken equipment in Tuesday, and cleaning this butcher shop floor to ceiling on Thursday.
With the brooder out of the cold room, the cold room is ready to be washed down on Thursday or Friday.
Meanwhile our son spent the day mowing down the parking area…
and the south turnout area and doing some weedwacking. This is the staging area for the outside stations of plucking and scalding.
I got a surprise when I went over the figures from the freezer inventory. It seems we didn’t eat much chicken all summer. I guess between the heat and how busy we’ve been, the 1 or 2 times we got take out each week really added up.
It seems out of 87 birds, excluding the 18 we need for new layers, we only needed 5 birds, and all we needed off them were whole thighs. I had managed to compile a list of people for 56 of the birds, but thought I would only be selling 40 or so. But it looks like Freezer Camp is going to be pretty small this year, just the 7 new roosters, the old rooster, and possibly 3 broody hens from the layer flock. I need to find homes for 6 more young pullets and I will have sold the whole flock. I also listed the old flock, in case anyone wanted already laying birds. So far, no takers.
I guess I should be thankful to covid for this, as I probably couldn’t have sold them all like this last year. Next January I will have to be more careful about ordering chicks…
Tuesday the propane tank arrives, and possibly the excavator and plumber. I will be in the barn cleaning all morning. I also need to bag up the onions and get them in the root cellar.