Bob Blosl's Heritage Large Fowl Thread

[punky rooster]

Wow, this thread has been very quiet lately!
How is everyone's hatching going?

Mitch

 

[Yard full o' rocks]

I have a BOATLOAD of chicks on the ground and the last hatch for this season is due a week from Sunday. Here are a few pictures of my Columbian Rocks and Barred Rocks that are growing out

Spending all my time right now trying to keep everyone cool and watered!!! 98F here yesterday with NO relief in sight.....uuuggghhhh

 

[KyBlue]

Yard full o' rocks, those are some nice birds! The Columbians look like they are part emu.

Huge frames on those birds!

 

[centrarchid]

Yard full o' rocks,

How long does it take your Columbians to reach broiler size and at what weight? I am looking for a heirloom meat breed that would be suitable for free range in pasture under protection of guarding dog.

 

[Yard full o' rocks]

Quote:
Centrachid

Mine free range daily under the protection of my "yard cat", LOL, a rescue from the hunting club. I do feed them laying pellets but they free range mostly. Right now my first hatch from January is 11 cockerels and 1 pullet (lucky me, huh??). Just weighed a few last week and the boys were between 4 1/2 and 5 1/2 lbs already at 4 1/2 months. Not sure what size "broilers" need to be, but these are some BIG FRAMED birds. I am planning to process a few (my first ever) in a month or so. WIll let ya know how they eat

To be honest, it appears my BRs from Reece bloodlines are actually growing faster than these CRS

Take care

Scott

 

[punky rooster]

Quote:
Go with Buckeyes. Better foragers, and do better in free range conditions....

 

[Chris09]

Scott,
Those Columbians are nice, they might just be your best yet.

Chris

 

[WallTenters]

Honestly can't wait until chick season is over, I need a bit of a break! We will be setting one more hatch in a week or so, then waiting until fall. Phew! Sadly, I lost a whole hatcher (about 50 eggs) full of eggs this week, errr. So now we have to get more.

We only bought 25 chicks this year, so far they are terrible, tons of inverted spikes, four with OBVIOUS wry tails, even at only one and a half months old, and sizes all over the place - they look like they could have come from four different breeders. Just not a good year for us buying chicks/eggs. My friend's son had two dozen bantam Japanese shipped, there was a huge kick mark in the box, only five eggs did not have the membrane broken, only one made it past day 7 candling, and that one did not hatch. Poor kid.

Really not a good year chicken wise all the way around. We've been fighting with the Americaunas and the Marans, lost one nice Orpington rooster, had a terrible time fighting mites with all this unusual humidity this year, and the weather is just barely warming up so we've had to keep all the chicks inside a lot longer than we are used to. Frustrating!

 

[Chris09]

Quote:
Mine is just beginning to get going. LOL For some reason my hens are off to a slow start.
I do have a lead on a 400 egg incubator that I have to look at and if I do get that I will be a happy camper.

Chris

 

[WallTenters]

Woohoo Chris! Hope you get it!!! We have a cabinet incubator (Sportsman) and then two foam ones we use just for hatching. I really like the foam ones as hatchers - it's easy to get the humidity up in them, and with the little windows it's nice if I need to pull chicks out when it's getting a bit crowded in there.

I think this year has really thrown all the birds off. We're having tons of hens start to go broody right now - normally that would have happened two months ago.

. Well, I hope it's a nice summer, if it ever gets started. Today was beautiful, first day I could have line dried clothes in two and a half weeks!