Hello, friends, While you in the "north" are wrapping things up to get ready for the cold winter, here in Central Florida we are entering our best time of year, as far as I'm concerned. Summers here are far too hot for too long, and very humid. We rejoice when the first cold front finally reaches us, and this year it was later than usual--October. It is very dry and the cost of hay has gone up. The summer rains that usually flood us also make the grass grow lush and thick, so this winter we are going into the season with scarcely a green sprig in our pasture.

But--the air smells like fall, and we are planting the cole crops and English peas that grow well for us during our cool winters, and hoping for some rain without flooding.

Has anyone out there seen an advertisement for a southern hatchery that sells chicks year round? In the Spring I have bought 100 chicks at a time, and then sold 75 of them at a local auction for enough to pay for the 25 I kept, including postage. I would like to do this now, too, and get a flock raised up to sell in February when the price is really good for pullets and cockerels. I already know about Ideal Hatchery in Texas, but they are too high for my budget. My eventual goal is to have enough laying hens of my own to be able to hatch chicks in the incubator and sell them year round myself, but that is something that I have to work up to gradually. (I did hatch some really nice White Rock chicks that are now about seven weeks old, but they are my replacement layers for Spring.)

I have found that people don't pay any more for a two month old chick than they will for a day old chick, so I sell them at less than a week old or wait until they are mature for it to be worth the amount of feed money I will have tied up in them. That's just the way it is here.

-- Lela R. Picking (stllwtrs55@aol.com), October 26, 2000

Answers

Hi Lela cant help you on florida hatcherys but was wondering where you got the white rocks? plan on getting chickens in the spring and rember them from child hood. best regards Bob in s.e.ks.

-- Bob Condry (bobco@hit.net), October 27, 2000.