Cubalaya Thread For Sharing Pics and Discussing Our Birds

[wood&feathers]

I do have one hen who could really give folks the idea cubalayas are noisy. She is LOUD, by far noisier than all the roosters put together. She "weaned" her babies (they just clung to their other mama, the wheaten hen) a couple weeks ago. I swear she practiced the egg song at full volume all day every day for the last week. She finally laid an egg today.

The wheaten hen and my white rooster are actually very quiet by chicken standards. It will be interesting to see if the white hen's daughters inherit that trait. There are 4 pure white pullets and one cockerel from her. I need to take more pictures, particularly head studies.

 

[cubalaya]

some of my hens are crow headed i guess but if they have a nice full tail and good size, will breed them anyway. selecting the thick head, short beaked ones in the next generation or just all around nice looking cubalaya to standard will be my goal for some of the colors. will add asil to my wheaton line to shorten up the beaks and fix a few other things. will try to trade gallorojo this fall for a nice wheaton hen from his line. in a year or two will try to add some sam brush blood to the bb reds. i really need a good silver wheaton hen in the near future. the blacks and brown reds are looking good. whites are getting better each generation.

 

[cubalaya]

going on lockdown today. have a few cubalaya eggs in the bator. didn't mean to shut the thread down with my crowhead comments. looking at cubalaya pics from the past, i think most of us are doing a good job with the breed.

 

[troyer]

Feeding raw peanuts to my young cubalayas.

 

[gallorojo]

Wow, you have got a lot of birds there Troyer!!

Right now I am down to 8 wheaten pullets that have good heads and hopefully good tails, 2 black mottled pullets, one white pullet, 2 black pullets, one red pyle cockerel, one brown red cockerel, and 6-7 decent wheaten cockerels. I have some very promising wheatens this year with great heads and beaks, nice size, and good tails so far. I'm excited to see how some of the youngest cockerels mature, I have some very stocky little guys as of now. I think the size issue has been basically corrected here, and great progress was made this year on the heads and tails on the wheatens. The other colors still need a lot of work, although I did switch out my breeding pens at the end, and put wheatens with blacks/whites, and vice versa. Some of those chicks look very good as far as type goes, and the type is what needs fixing in the whites, blacks, etc....

I will probably keep what's left into late fall and then do one final cull down to maybe the best 4-6 birds. I already culled out all the crow heads, runts, slow feather-ers, ones with choppy feathers, and extremely high tails. I am not culling for any thing color related this year.

 

[troyer]

In this last week I've souped out 30 that did not meet my criteria and I've got probably another 150 or so to go through later. We'll be eating well for the next year with every thing that we have souped and all the younger ones that still need to be sorted. Our freezer is filling up, another thing with having so many culls is that I have chicken to eat that I know is good for me. I know what they have been eating and just knowing that they don't have the antibiotics and drugs that most of the store bought ones have, give me a lot more peace of mind knowing that I"m eating chicken that won"t harm me.

 

[gallorojo]

I actually have not put any birds in the freezer since early spring. We have 2 chest freezers, and both are full still from earlier. I killed over 100 chickens the prior year, plus about a dozen turkeys, 20plus ducks, a few geese, 2 goats, and a lamb this year already. I have just been selling the culls cheap to make room. I hate to do that, but we just can't use more meat, I have my Mom's freezer full as well. Well, you've seen our place already Troyer, we try to raise most of our food here, so we can have healthy food for less money. The best thing I've found to do with the Cuba culls is to put 4-6 in a big pot, and simmer real low a few hours. Then, pick off all the meat, and freeze in 1 or 2 pound bags. That saves a lot hf freezer space, and you can thaw out just what you need for soups, sandwiches, casseroles, burritos, etc. I want to start canning some meat this year as well.

 

[troyer]

Canned chicken is very good. My Mother always canned all our old layers every fall to make room for the new point of lay pullets. We never used our production layers for more than 1 year.
One good way to use the canned chicken is this: once you've got it canned you can at anytime open a jar and and roll the chicken in a coating of flour, salt and black pepper and fry it up for a stick to your ribs meal, chicken made this way also goes well with mashed potatoes and gravy, chicken noodles and canned or frozen sweet corn. Of course then to help it settle well you also need good bread and butter with some pickles. After eating a meal like that for lunch it"s easy to work hard all afternoon and not feel exhausted / fatigued for lack of energy.

 

[cubalaya]

y'all making me hungry! we also eat our culls and grow a lot of our own food here. we have used almost all our canning jars on the veggies this summer but would like to can some chicken this fall. we used all heirloom seeds this year and little commercial fertilizer. saved a lot of seed for next year. ate some fresh turnip greens yesterday. i plant these around the end of july and the chickens eat off them until december.
that white one on your lap in the second pic looks extra good. i have one that looks like her twin sister. free range makes cubalaya tamer than pens. i have one brown red hen that follows me around like a dog that came from chris. she turned out real nice.

 

[wood&feathers]

Beautiful flock Troyer!
Here's a picture of my best young pullet


She knows she's good too - here she is in a stare down with the bottom cockerel