An old Farmer told me this about why I got so many roos this year.....

[quiltnchik]

Quote:
So it's a geograpical thing. OK, if I am sizing this up correctly.....West Coast and North are not on the same cycle as the South and Davaroo.

Not that I don't want to hear from you (esp. if you can prove Davaroo wrong

Now the challenge has been cast......

What about it fellow southerners? Is it true?

ETA: By the way I interpret south quite liberally, so you could live in Montana and be a southerner at heart!

5/6 of my chicks this year are roos and I live in VA

 

[Chicken Girl]

Weird! I got 4 roos out of 5 babys my hen hatched out in March! And we do have a few more bunnys! LOL


Chicken Girl

 

[Kelpie]

This year I hatched several batches of chicks myself for the first time, I never get a good hatch rate but the ones that do hatch I usually get 1 cockerel for every 3 or 4 pullets. I think this is very interesting. I love old farmer advice.

 

[Iceblink]

Well, on the one hand if that is true it is super sweet as I was just thinking about getting into raising rabbits for meat, guess I better get started.

On the other hand, I wonder of there is a coresponding cycle where there are more hens than roos. And if there were, what other animal would breed in abundance? Probably still rabbits.

 

[rooster-red]

The rabbit population here has exploded this year, but...

This is the second summer since my outside cats died.
They used to keep the rabbits in check by hunting and eating them.

 

[beefy]

5 out of 7 o fmy chicks are roos this year. and i found a dead rabbit in my yard yesterday.

 

[19hhbelgian]

Well, we always have a bunch of rabbits around here... I think it has to do with the abundance of alfafa hay fields

Anyway, last year, all 3 of my mares had filly's. This year (I only bred 1 mare) but she had a colt - out of 10 foals, this is only her 2nd colt! I wanted a boy, so it was great. Glad I bred her for an '09 baby

There is usually some truth to the old lore... The whole saying may not be true, but yeah well, it's fun to hear

!

 

[txredneckmedic]

theres always some truth to what the old timers say

 

[BeardedLadyFarm]

By all accounts the hatcheries have had trouble keeping up with demand this season, due to the increased interest in raising your own food. Some say demand is up 200%.

Don't you suspect that maybe the "straight run" chicks are getting watered down with the unwanted roosters this year? It's better to sell them than dispose of them when demand is high...

I suspect more than a few extras are making it into the "pullet" shipments too. I got one...

 

[Davaroo]

Quote:
Probably because the "old-timers" have been around far longer and have much more wisdom than most people these days. There are many things my 80-year-old mother has said that have been true, so why doubt the word of someone who's "been there and done that?"

I've also been seeing more rabbits this year - never saw them much around here before...

I only wonder why we leap to assume that, just because someone is old, they know it all. You see a few rabbits, so you assume this old guy was right all along? Maybe someone killed the local hawks, so more rabbits are around. Or perhaps the neighbor moved and took their cats with them; I don't know.
The point is one doesn't know, in these things, one leaps to a conclusion because of a good story.

There are indeed some well said things from a long time ago - I refer to them all the time when it comes to poultry management. But there are also foolish things.
I've heard oldtimers say that you can dangle a needle by a thread over a chick to determine its sex, too... which is also rubbish. The more lurid the tale, the more we are likely to believe it.

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In asking my question, I was saying that there is a lot of "wannabe science" that goes around, everyone having their pet theory. Some of it is sound, some based on nothing but lore or manipulation. You should weigh what you hear based on good sense, a bit of understanding and investigation... no matter who says it.