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Excellently stated!!!!!

I also planted some salad-type purslane in a run, it was the first thing to disappear.

My chickens also like daylilies, and hybrid purslane, and they dig up anything in loose soil!

I don't know if chickens eat kudzu, but goats love kudzu, and poison ivy, and wild roses. Angela

yes, last year with my Dorking hen. She spent 2 days in the nest of her choosing before I put her in a nest of my choosing, (still in the same pen,) where she spent one day before moving back to her original nest. Then I moved her to a new pen, and gave her some wooden eggs to sit on, which she...

yes, we feed them our culls when the carcasses are so poor I don't want to fool with making stock from them. Surprisingly, the LGD that is most protective of the chickens will not eat them while they are fresh, but LOVES any eggs she can find. The LGDs that only guard the chickens which stay "in...

You could just give the next chicks to the hens, instead of making the hens sit for 3 weeks. Angela

Why didn't you spatchcock him? (Cut him into right and left halves.) Angela

You may want to consult an incubation text, I seem to remember that malpositions may be caused by incorrect temperature during incubation, and that seems like a fairly high percentage of your hatch. Angela

That is my understanding, yes. Since sex would not affect the comb and egg production cannot be judged in cockerels, (and those are the only 2 traits you expect to deal with,) growing cockerels out would waste your money. In reality, I have seen so many surprises in this new, unstable strain...

I read the answer to this question on one of the old threads on this forum, one that has gone inactive. I believe the advice was to breed your outside hen to your most promising cock bird and grow out their offspring for evaluation. You then breed the best pullets from that mating back to their...

I can't justify a cabinet incubator for this hobby, and have been extremely pleased with my GQF tabletop styrofoam incubator. It is ~$150 new from Amazon, and literally all I have to do is plug it in and add a little water weekly to keep the humidity up. It has a large viewing window on top...

When small, they are easily cooked like quail or Cornish game hens. A little bigger, say 12 weeks size, they can be spatchcocked and baked or barbecued. This season, I am going to take a stab at canning their itty bitty breasts/thighs/legs, as we are fond of a quick chicken salad. Angela

In Brian Reeder's An Introduction to Form and Feathering of the Domestic Fowl, he writes that the slow and fast feathering genes have been the subject of much research due to their commercial value. These genes allow hatcheries to feather sex day old chicks. Most of the feather growth-rate genes...

Where did you come by that information? I started raising a new strain last season, and their feather growth rates were all over the place, but did not correlate with carcass growth rates. None of the reading I did last year, (and I read everything I could find on feathering,) suggested a link...

Bass, trout, shrimp, crayfish are some options.

I use a wine fridge as my hatching egg storage facility, the humidity seemed fine; as in the air cell was exactly the expected size. The eggs should only be stored a week-10 days at most or you will see a lower percentage hatch rate. I doubt that earth from root vegetables would hurt anything...

In regards to fermented feed, all the research I have read strongly supports fermented feeds for all us non-ruminants. From personal experience, I recommend against fermenting anything with fish meal in it-ugh! The moistened feed is much more difficult for the birds to bill out of their feeder...

For what it is worth, I bought h&h feed, it is local for me, and fermented it. My birds did a lot better when I switched to Purina.