Today when I went to go and move the tractors with the 2nd batch of meat birds, I noticed that one of the boys in the rooster flock was slow to move.  When I looked more closely at him, I noticed that his comb and wattles were deeply red, almost purple.  He was eating and scratching though, just moving slowly.  Later in the day he was still dark red and lying down in the coop.  He didn't even seem nervous to have me crouch beside him and look at him.
Of course I googled the problem.  Most of the posts on sites like Backyard Chickens suggested heart problems or circulation problems.  I worried that he might die of natural causes (which would be fine) but that the meat would then be wasted, especially if he passed away in the night or midday when noone would find him for a while.   So we called Michele's friend Marvin who is a sustenance hunter.  He agreed to put the poor guy out of his misery and then make use of the meat in exchange.
I feel badly that I don't have the strength to cull the birds myself, but I hope that whatever made the rooster suddenly fail won't affect the meat at all.  Marvin will let me know, so I'll post the answer then.

The layers have discovered the chicken tractors.  They have learned that every time the tractors move, there is leftover food in the space it had occupied.  They run out and scratch through the bedding and food that the meat birds have pushed out of the coop area, and clean it all up.  They will keep revisiting the area throughout the day, looking for treats.  Since we put the meat birds on a homemade diet, there is a lot for the layers to discover - oats, wheat, millet, flax, corn, sunflower seeds and roasted soy.  It's like an all-day buffet, and the ultimate in reduce / reuse / recycle!

Of the 6 chicks we hatched this year, 5 survived.  Of those 5, 4 were boys. When we got our new layers, 1 was also a boy.  So, 5 new roosters on top of our existing 3 was too much.  And as they have grown, they have started to try to figure out their place in the hierarchy....  The Barr Rock rooster has been living with the main flock and has started to mate with the hens.  3 roosters have been living with Amelia - all of them unusual and interesting too look at.  And Little Man has been living with his parents, but it's only a matter of time until he wonders if he's stronger than his dad.
So we took the Barr Rock, Little Man, and 2 of Amelia's boys to the sale today.  It's a weekly auction in Hagersville which is fairly close to us.  There is always a variety of poultry on hand and it's always busy.  Since all of our gents are "unusual", they will be bought as breeding stock almost certainly.   It gives them a chance to go to a flock of their own and have their own hens, as opposed to living under the shadow of older, more experienced roosters.  
It was sad to leave them there - I felt uncomfortably maternal about them and pretty guilty about giving them up.  But really, it's the only way to have a successful and calm flock - there can't be hoards of roosters running around.  So I hope that they went to good homes where there are lonely hens waiting for handsome roosters to come visiting!
We kept the handsome fellow that is pictured - he is the "mohawk" rooster, a frizzled cochin / polish cross.  He is an exceptionally unusual rooster and should sire some amazing chicks down the road!

Every year at our local fair, Michele volunteers to hatch the chicks for the educational "Old MacDonald's Farm" tent. This year was a disaster - we had a 4-hour power outage on the labour day weekend (some idiot drinking and driving smashed into a hydro pole causing a massive power outage) and then 1 week away from the fair, the thermostat on the incubator itself had a malfunction and the incubator got 2 degrees too hot.  The growing chicks could probably have coped with the power outage (they generate their own heat in the egg and so couldn't have gotten too cold right away) but the heat apparently is something growing chicks can't live through.  
As a result, none hatched.  Zero out of 200.  It was devastating.  
While the school kids were at their educational tour on Friday, we just put some day-old chicks into the incubator so it appeared as if they were hatching.  The hatching is a fundamental part of the "chicken life cycle" demonstration, and a part that all the kids enjoy.  
We had also brought Hudson, Beatrice and Little Man, so that the kids could also see some full grown (even if they are Bantams) and beautiful chickens!
On Thursday, the organizer for the educational day called to ask if I could lead the Sheep workshop - the gal that usually does that station got kicked by her horse and so couldn't make it.  I took in a fleece from the spring shearing, and had some other props to make the connection between the ewes and wool.  I was super nervous to begin, but once the classes start moving through (and there were 16 or so all day) all that nervousness goes away because you are just RUNNING.  The kids are noisy and excited and curious.  The odd trouble maker wanted to harass the animals, but overall they just wanted to touch the sheep and feed them!
We had 3 young ewes from a local sheep farmer (we didn't bring our own) that were actually quite friendly and sweet. One of them LOVED being pet so the kids got really lucky with her - she would just stand and take as much affection that they wanted to give out.
For the rest of the weekend, we worked at Michele's booth for the kennel, or we were back at Old MacDonald's Farm letting people hold the chicks - even adults love holding chicks!  It was an awesome weekend, just playing with chickens!

This photo does not do the reality justice - 2 ewes and 1 lamb got into the bantam coop! 
We came out to the paddock and Hudson and Beatrice were out of their coop.  This was a converted rabbit hutch that we used for Hudson, Beatrice and their son Little Man.  It was enclosed with chicken wire so that the chickens could run around outside of their coop, but so that the barn cats and alpacas couldn't get at them.
We'd noticed that at times the chicken fencing was pushed in - I thought it was from the alpacas trying to reach the grass on the other side of the fence behind the coop.  
But today that real cause was revealed - the ewes have been trying to get in to get the chicken's food.  
Today they crushed the enclosure, knocked the roof off the coop and somehow got themselves wedged in side so they could eat the food.  Then, of course, couldn't figure out how to get out.
Since the ewes are so skittish, as soon as we approached the coop (trying desperately to figure out how we were going to get these big ewes out of a space that is 2'x5'), the ewes totally freaked out and leaped out of the coop.  This freed up space for the lamb to get out through the door.
We packed the chickens back up, picked the coop up with the tractor and took it over to the main coop - we put the whole thing inside one of the runs so they have a bigger world, without getting picked on by the main flock roosters.
The ewes showed no sign of distress after their adventure, of course.

The second batch of chickens has moved from the barn to the tractors vacated by group #1.  This group seems split between roosters and hens, so we've separated the groups in the tractors: boys with boys and girls with girls.  If the young roosters are anything like young alpacas, they start noticing the ladies at a young age!  We don't want any fighting in the tractors as the boys develop so keeping some "bachelor flocks" will hopefully keep the aggression to a minimum.  No ladies to fight over.

It's all come down to this day.  The day we take the 64 chickens we've been moving, watering and feeding every day to the processors.  Let me say that by 15 weeks old, the 64 of them eat a whole 25kg bag of food every 1.5 days!
I have been dreaming about the logistics of it - how to catch and load the chickens, how long will the drive take and how to minimize their stress during the trip?  And so we wake up at 4 am and coffee in hand, go to catch chickens.  We allow ourselves 1 hour to load them but it only takes 30 minutes.  I squat into the runs, shut the door to the coop and so catch the birds in the run itself.  It's still very dark out, so they aren't very active, but the odd one does fight me for freedom.  We load them 10 to a crate so they aren't crowded, load the crates into the van and then go get ready (my clothes are so covered in chicken poo from kneeling in the run that I strip on the deck and leave my clothes outside).
The drive takes 1.5 hours, and we arrive in Wallenstein at Country Poultry Producers.

I didn't know what to expect, but I certainly hadn't expected a lineup.  You register at the office, go back to the farm driveway and around the back of the barn and join the lineup.   And we are are this distance away from home because there are not very many abattoirs that deal with small flocks anymore.  So we are one of many that have come from all over.
Most everyone else has brought their cages in the back of pickup trucks.  We brought the van, so that the birds would be protected from sun and highway debris as we travelled.  It was a good decision because a motor has broken on the line and we're just waiting.  Our chickens are sheltered from the hot sun by the van, and with the doors open they don't seem too hot.  But the birds in the crates before and behind us have ben left out in the sun, crammed into their crates, hot and cranky.  We eavesdrop, also, and discover that most of these birds had been loaded into their crates the night before.  So it has been well over 12 hours since they had water, or stretched, or could walk even.  They are sad and angry and pecking each other.  Our girls seem calm enough and aren't panting - the meat inspector says they look great.

We talk to the meat inspector for a while, gaining some knowledge about poultry processing.  I notice a hen hiding behind some crates at an open door, who eventually comes out of hiding and starts pacing on the loading dock.  The meat inspector says that birds often escape.  When I look back to the hen, she has jumped on top of a pile of the crates.  Soon a group of Mennonite boys bring the broken motor out the door and the chicken jumps to the highest pile of crates and disappears.  Of course I am rooting for the chicken, as hypocritical as that might seem.
The men behind us have come from Alliston and we exchange notes on feeding, predators and the benefits of various breeds.  
The man in the pickup truck in front of us has spent his whole life living in the town next to the one I grew up in (which interestingly is only 20 minutes from the processors).
Finally the new motor is installed and the action begins.  The trucks slowly start to pull forward.

If you look closely at the photo you can see a DIFFERENT hen running through the corn field - another escapee. As our van inches up to the loading dock, I imagine a whole colony of escaped chickens, living in the corn field.
The next 10 minutes is unsettling for me - unloading the crates quickly enough to keep up with the young Mennonite boys that pull the chickens from the crates and send them down the line.  It's reassuring to know the chickens won't be sitting in their crates on the loading dock waiting to be noticed, but I hadn't expected to be so.... immediate.
Off we go to spend the day keeping busy while they do the invisible work of transforming our flock into future meals.  I am really excited to hear what our customers think of our birds after so many weeks of work.  After seeing the condition that the other birds showed up in, I am convinced more than ever that people should only eat what they know.  I want people to come to our place to see how we raise the eggs and meat because then they know what they are paying for.  Conversely, if they were to see how "inexpensive" poultry is raised....  well we would have a lot more customers.

At 3 weeks the chicks have all their feathers and they practice flying.  They also like to get up onto things to roost.  They also like to play fight, to figure out their position in the flock.  But like all kids, the fighting stops when the food comes out, or when they are chilly and want to huddle together for warmth.  The summer hasn't been that warm, so the heat lamp is often on during the night, and we'll find them sleeping together just outside the ring of direct heat from the overhead lamp.  Then morning comes and they're squabbling again. 

We went to feed the barn chickens - Hudson, Beatrice, and their 2 chicks.  One chick is missing.  There is no sign of a predator which must mean a cat jumped over the fence into the run.  And all along I've been a supporter of the barn cats - catching the mice that always seem to be everywhere.  But I had stupidly thought they would leave the BARN CHICKENS alone!  Like the house cat George leaves the chickens alone - she knows they are not hers to eat.  Yet it seems the barn cats don't know that rule.  I am going to have to rethink their place in our happy family.
RIP little chicken - you were guaranteed to be a very cute hen.

We added 40 more broilers to our barn.  The learning curve continues.  This time we moved the brooder into a stall in the barn so the chicks would be warmer and safer from predators (not that we have had problems with them yet, but why take a chance) and it would leave room for hay.  
There are more white ones than red coloured ones... it will be interesting to see how different they are than the first batch.  This is another group of "Frey Special Dual Purpose".  The brochure says the white ones are male and the red one's female, but we didn't have any white in our first run.  I will have to watch for fighting, I think.  With smaller flocks in each tractor, hopefully they will have more distraction and the fighting will be kept to a minimum.