advice needed on starting a preservation center

[ninny]

My dream is to have a preservation center for heritage breed livestock. Im focusing on chickens frist. I'm wondering how you would go about doing it. I have four acres. I manly looking for ideas right now. I'm thinking of starting with javas. Would you allowed visitors? Should i just focus on one breed? Any ideas are welcome.

 

[EweSheep]

Sandhill Preservation would be the one you can talk with in sharing ideas however the focus on the breed standards were lost on them.

You would NOT want visitors at your place because of bio security issues. However you can send some photos of the birds that you have on your facility OR a nice videotape of the facilities.

It requires ALOT of money and time and red tapes and getting yourself certified would be the way to go. Start with one goal with one or two breeds and focus on the standards and qualities of the Javas you wanted. Do not lose that focus otherwise customers would get upset if they got a blue Java out of a black Java stock or some oddity of the confirmation of the breed that needs to be culled out. Start with the BEST, do not settle for less particuarly you think you are saving lots of money by going cheaply on Javas but they could have some problems that it would cost you more money in the long run. Ask alot of serious and hard questions to the breeders themselves, their goals with the breed and how they want to achieve it. Do not pick up some project birds like the Lavender Orps because they are still in the works but let the breeders themselves work it out until they get to the 100% Orpington look and consisent Lav color with NO ticking, blues, lacings, etc. If you ARE to do some project birds, indicate they are project birds and it will take several generations to get there.

Starting out with one breed is a good start without feeling overwhelming and once you get comfortable where you are at with Javas, then you can pick another color or breed.

I am sure others will chime in soon!

 

[Mrs. K]

I agree with the above. It has to be on a bussiness footing, and it will involve serious culling. There is a great deal of difference between having a few chickens, or having chicken pets, and having a business. Have you a great deal of experience with chickens in general? Do you have a set up for chickens that have been tested with chickens in there?

If not, you might want to start with some inexpensive chickens and make sure that your set up is conducive to raising and keeping chickens. Good draft protection, and predator proof. Also, if you want to free range, it will depend on your predators how successful that can be. I have very limited free range time, or I have chickens disappear, cause something got them. Not a real big deal, but would be bad if the hen was worth a great deal of money.

Mrs.K

 

[Mrs. K]

I see after going back to your post, that you have been here since 2007, so I assume that you do have experience with chickens. I am sorry I replied like you may not have had any experience. mk

 

[EweSheep]

Mrs. K :

I see after going back to your post, that you have been here since 2007, so I assume that you do have experience with chickens. I am sorry I replied like you may not have had any experience. mk

Well this BYC site has been around but I have been a member of BYC for a lot longer than that, from the BYC-Yuku site and I hated it Yuku BYC. If you can remember all the old BYC which are no longer here but still at Yuku site, you would be surprised how long it has been around. There are a few in here that has been on BYC for a lot longer than I have and I was a lurker for a good while before I decided to join up on the old BYC. When Yuku bought out BYC, it was a huge MESS and we hated the set up, slow downloads and not very user friendly site. So, two of the mods were selected I believe and they branched off and created this BYC forum. And it took off since then. The old BYC Yuku is still up but not very many folks are on there as much as this one.

I've had chickens since 1980's off and on so I do not think years does not count for experience. It is what experience you had LEARNED and taught by others is what counts. You can reap alot of knowledge in a short amount of time than some of us which it took years because we didn't have internet at that time. Now we do LOL!

No offense in what you were trying to say previously. We all go thru that LOL!​

 

[patandchickens]

I guess the question is, what are you trying to "preserve".

The thing about chicken breeds -- it is true of any livestock breeds, but chickens more than any others -- is that simple reproduction DOES NOT PRESERVE the breed. If you just allow them to propagate themselves, they fairly quickly stray from what the breed is supposed to be. Consider hatchery birds, and how they are generally not at ALL what they are SUPPOSED to be, for those breeds.

Even just preserving ONE breed is a substantial undertaking. You need to have many dozens of breeding birds, and produce hundreds of chicks per year that you cull down to only the most suitable ones. Thus, to really be a "caretaker" for a breed requires you to have the ability to house like a hundred or more chickens.

And that's just for ONE breed.

Notice that reliably-good examples of whatever breed do not generally come from people raising a whole lotta breeds -- including Sandhill -- they come from people who dedicate themselves to just one or a couple-few breeds.

For other kinds of livestock (since you mentioned them), this is a bit less true -- you can get by with just a couple dozen animals of a breed, IF you are willing and able to spend the money to do semen shipping and AI to make use of other farms' stud animals -- but on the other hand, two dozen cows take up a LOT more land and money than a hundred chickens do

Truly, think about what your real goal before getting all daydreamy about "some of this and some of that and a few of them too"

...

Good luck, have fun,

Pat

 

[Wifezilla]

You would NOT want visitors at your place because of bio security issues.

Joel Salatin allows visitors to Polyface Farms and even gets income from having tours. Whether or not you want the public involved is up to you. Me? I would be having public tours, Jr. Farm Hand programs, school events, lectures, etc... Public involvement is a great way to generate awareness, produce income, gather donations and volunteers, etc.​

 

[patandchickens]

Quote:
Joel Salatin allows visitors to Polyface Farms and even gets income from having tours. \\

Yeah but Joel Salatin is not running a rare-breed preservation center either. All his chickens or sheeps or whatever get killed by the gummint b/c they get something notifiable, or half them die of some non-notifiable disease, he would just go buy more.

If you have a rare breed, and having ten or twenty years' worth of breeding work with that group potentially be totally wiped out, biosecurity may seem like more of an issue.

This is why it is real important to figure out what you're trying to DO. Preserving a breed is *different than* being a rare-breed zoo or just ranchin' up some animals.

Just sayin',

Pat

 

[Katy]

Quote:
Joel Salatin allows visitors to Polyface Farms and even gets income from having tours. Whether or not you want the public involved is up to you. Me? I would be having public tours, Jr. Farm Hand programs, school events, lectures, etc... Public involvement is a great way to generate awareness, produce income, gather donations and volunteers, etc.

He's not into protecting anything but the income he gets from selling his ideas. If he gets an illness brought onto his farm he'll use the proceeds of those tours to replace what he's lost.

 

[Wifezilla]

As long as wild birds fly over your property or can land on your property, and rodents can come on to your property, "biosecurity" is a bit of a false sense of security.