Chickens for 10-20 years or more? Pull up a rockin' chair and lay some wisdom on us!

[NikkiMiChickie]

Thanks to Al, Fred, Walt & Bee for your answers on the thread-following question! I have located & subscribed to the Heritage thread started by Bob Blosi. I appreciate your input.

I have a BR that I have chosen from my small mixed flock to breed as a DP bird, mostly bc of all my girls, she grew the biggest. Shes also an excellent firager, as i free range all day, and she's feed thrifty - I've never caught her visiting the feeder except for a few minutes when the ff first hits the bowl. She outweighs everyone else by at least 2#, so I thought I'd save some of her eggs to set. I was looking at her more closely last weekend, and I'm pretty sure she has a pinched tail, or at least a more narrow tent than is ideal. She's just a hatchery bird, and I know nothing of SOP, but if I post a couple pics, I'd love your always honest opinion on whether I should in fact keep some of her eggs. The other hen I intend to set eggs from is my leghorn, who produces a perfect egg every single day. I thought I'd carry on those egg-laying genes. That's it. Everyone else's eggs will just be eaten

 

[NikkiMiChickie]

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[chickencowranch]

I have a question for the OTs: which threads do YOU follow most closely, and why?
My #1 thread is this here front porch, as RachelsFlock put it

I also follow, although less closely, the FF thread and the Road Less Traveled.
~*Cult of Bee*~ for sure!

i follow them as well along with PA united thread. The Pa thread most of them breed and hatch chickens so that gets boring.

 

[armorfirelady]

Thank you everyone for the well wishes.....I felt like a new Momma last night

.......and this morning I cleaned up the coop and kept an eye on them to see if I could see who is laying. I had an idea it was bossy hen.....and I was right. She was bouncing in & out of the nesting boxes this morning making noises I have never heard her make before & she was kicking out all the bedding & pecking at the ashes

I filled the nesting boxes back up and was working on turning over the DL (I hadnt done it in over a month- oops !!) and she of course was very vocal as I was cleaning. So I did it quick in case she wanted to lay another egg since she was not leaving the coop. Then I spent almost an hour watching her make a hen nest in the newly fluffed bedding.......but I had to work at 11 and she was still just laying there picking at the hay and stuff around her making her nest perfect. Its the same spot where I found the egg last night so I am guessing she is my layer. I do have to stay it was fun Chicken tv watching her make her nest and I noticed I could see her feathers in the vent area twitching so I am guessing she was getting ready to lay when I left. So my Mom will look later when she goes to let the dogs out. *sigh* Maybe when I am off next week I will get to watch her lay the egg. I know its silly to want to watch but I think its really cool !!!


Here is the hen laying. She has the biggest comb & wattles.....only one other hen has them close in size to hers. I think laying eggs makes them hungrier....they ate the whole bowl of FF I gave them at 710 and it was gone by 830....so I gave them some more and they had that half gone as well lol In celebration of the first egg they got a homenade suet cup. As you can see Bossy here loves her FF and her suet and is first to eat. And she has no qualms of pecking at another hen who is to close. Hence why i nicknamed her Bossy. She is also the one with her eyes o n the skies and alerts for the hawks. I think that makes for a good hen

Quote: Congrats to you Maven

 

[Ridgerunner]

Hi OTs and OT appreciators! Just wanted to say this thread has totally revamped my outlook on raising chickens and I really appreciate it.
Would you all mind laying some wisdom on me about my upcoming culling? I have 22 chickens, half of which are RIR and half Barred Rock (from a small local hatchery). They're 19 weeks old and 10 are cockerels. I need to thin down these boys and will probably do that soon (first time butchering since my middle school Ag. class in the early 90s!).
How many cockerels should I keep and how do I select them if there is not a whole lot of roostery activity going on? The largest BR just started crowing today, but I don't have a really good idea of his temperament. Some of the cockerels are not as developed as others, Is that important in making these kind of decisions, or will they just catch up later?
I did see one BR male trying to mate, but that's it. Also, I have some that have crooked toes; not so crooked that it interferes with movement. Should I weed those out, or is this not something that's a big deal? I intend to just have a backyard dual purpose flock--I'm not trying to do anything too sophisticated here.
Thanks for everything! I've really been enjoying lurking on this thread.

Definitely take Fred up on his offer. I have an idea others will weigh in with their opinions. That can be valuable for you and others that follow this thread. I’ll pay attention to what they say.

I'll go through a generic outline of my process. Some of this applies to the pullets as well as cockerels.

First, any that show traits you don't want, don't breed them. Those crooked toes for example. That might be genetic or it might be that the incubator was too hot the first few days of incubation. But I don’t take that chance. If a chicken has a trait I don’t want, genetic or otherwise, I don’t breed it. Depending on your goals that could be color, pattern, size, behavior, egg laying, anything you don’t want or anything you do want. A critical component of this, you need to know what you want. If you want to show chickens, eye color is probably pretty important and you need to know what that color is. If you want good egg layers, eye color is probably not so important.

With cockerels it is kind of rough to determine how they will behave when they are dominant if you have a dominant one. The dominant one has a strong influence in how the others behave. I Iook for a cockerel that is near the top of the cockerel dominance tree. With same age cockerels, dominance is all about personality. A dominant rooster has to have the personality to take control of his flock. You are not likely to get one of those if you select a cockerel that all the other cockerels are picking on. It does not have to be the one at the very top, which is nice if he meets your other criteria, but it needs to be one near the top.

I tend to keep cockerels that mature early. Meat is my major goal other than the behavior of the flock so I want a rooster that gets to butchering size reasonably soon. I find that these are also usually the largest when they reach maturity and often have a more dominant personality. Not always but often. I had one this year that got big really early but all the others were picking on him. He did not make the cut. I don’t always keep the absolute biggest, but I sure don’t keep runts.

That’s about as generic as I can get. I look for the ones I want the offspring to be like and breed those, male and female. The rest don’t breed, which in my flock means they get eaten. With some people, the breeders are kept in one place and the others are kept separate for production. However you want to do it.

 

[Fred's Hens]

Thanks to Al, Fred, Walt & Bee for your answers on the thread-following question! I have located & subscribed to the Heritage thread started by Bob Blosi. I appreciate your input.
I have a BR that I have chosen from my small mixed flock to breed as a DP bird, mostly bc of all my girls, she grew the biggest. Shes also an excellent firager, as i free range all day, and she's feed thrifty - I've never caught her visiting the feeder except for a few minutes when the ff first hits the bowl. She outweighs everyone else by at least 2#, so I thought I'd save some of her eggs to set. I was looking at her more closely last weekend, and I'm pretty sure she has a pinched tail, or at least a more narrow tent than is ideal. She's just a hatchery bird, and I know nothing of SOP, but if I post a couple pics, I'd love your always honest opinion on whether I should in fact keep some of her eggs. The other hen I intend to set eggs from is my leghorn, who produces a perfect egg every single day. I thought I'd carry on those egg-laying genes. That's it. Everyone else's eggs will just be eaten

Yup, she's pinched up alright. She's also got that leaning back stance of so many hatchery birds. Still, if she has other virtues, such as size and willingness to forage, those are good, homesteading, utility features. What cock bird would you put over her?

 

[al6517]

I am not a believer in crooked toes being the result of high incubator temps, I have on many occasions hatched multiple breeds in the same hatch and only those with the genetic propensity to throw crooked toes from the same breed do so and the rest do not. I know this guy who has crooked toed birds and he hatches the fire out of them and they are all crooked toes and he just continues to breed and hatch from them and they just all have bad feet, but he doesn't care. I think the myth of high bator temps vs crooked toes originated from hatchery stocks poor genetics which are not culled and then being incubated by those folks in those super cheap unrealiable foam shoe box bators. That has led to the wide spread BYC myth, since so many people use hatchery stock and those crappy bators................. hence the legend grows.

 

[Fred's Hens]

Here's a photo, not a particularly good one, but a photo of three utility BR pullets from a year or so back. I just grabbed this file, quick like.

Notice the pinched look of the two on the left. While not a great photo, the pullet on the right is chesty, heavier, not pinched and just plain a better choice for utility, homestead birds. The two on the left are rejected, while the pullet on the right is much more likely to be selected.

If you want to breed what you have, you gotta start somewhere. I've a "idea" in my brain about Rocks. It's the matrix through which I pass information. These old time photos help me alot.

 

[NikkiMiChickie]

Hadnt noticed the leaning back stance, but now I see it, especially in the 3rd picture. I have a barred Cochin roo that I really like. Also rather sturdy and meaty, matured more quickly than the other cockerel I had that I have since culled. He crows a few times in the morning, watches out for his flock, and calls them to any good food supply he finds. If a hen is late getting back to the coop, he's waiting for her out front. Too late, and he goes looking for her... When he finds her, there's an awful lot of squawking that takes place as he flogs her all the way back to the coop. I've never known one to make that mistake twice, and I never have to do a head count. So long as he's on the roost, I know everyone else is in their place. His picture is my avatar, but he was only 4-5 months old when that was taken. I'll see if I have anything more recent.


So what I've read about pinched tails means the hen is harder to successfully breed... So even if I want to save her eggs, there's a good chance they won't be fertile, right?

 

[NikkiMiChickie]

Thanks for the comparison photos, and the old-timey photo. Big difference between those birds and my poor hatchery girl!