A weed is simply a "plant out of place" as my horticulture professor used to say.
We grow kale year round. We harvest seed from a bed ever couple of years and that keeps us going. The seed has amazing viability life so storage is easy. The birds love it! It's is not as high in calcium as chard, but I never seem to have calcium problems as we range our flocks.
My breeding pens are seeded with grasses, kale, dandelion of course and clover. Next to the breeding pens is an area that grows an amazing amount of chickweed. I can rotate letting the birds out and they really appreciate it.
We are lucky to live in an area that is organically focused. We have an amazing feed available here, non pelletized that is all local grains. Peck and Scratch is the name. you can get it corn free, corn and soy free, but I always leave the corn in. My hens love it and feed is supplemental, so I feel the corn is a treat. Of course we only use GMO free certified feed.
Anyone else willing to chime in on my question about what traits you cull for when growing for egg production?
Wish we could grow kale year round - just too darn hot in TX for that.
I know you asked about culling the males in regards to egg production - essentially we cull the males in the same way as our females.
Part of it goes back to the breed standard for our birds (which I know some folks hate to hear about on this thread). Our breed standard calls for long backs and wide backs which are wide all the way from chest to tail. This is best viewed from above but you can also see it from the back with their *shoulders* wider than their butts. Both sexes should be wide all the way through.
We also examine them and check for things like pelvic width in both males and females. In our males, usually if they are narrow in the back, their pelvic width will be narrow also. Sometimes in the females though, they can look wide enough in the back, but in measuring them, there can be a fingers width, or slightly more, difference in the width of their pelvic bones, so we can't simply go by appearance alone.
On occasion we have had a male at the bottom of the pecking order turn out to be kept for a breeder, but not as a rule. More often, we find that the cockerels in the grow out pen that are at the bottom of the social order also wind up being too small and runty to be used, since size is an important factor in our breed. When taken out of the grow out pen and put by themselves, they can sometimes regain the growth and catch up to their hatchmates, but only if they are alone and not having to compete for food. Which in the case of an otherwise superb specimen, sometimes it is worth it to use them even though they couldn't hold their own in a large group of cockerels. But we have some hens that just dislike mating, they will actually fight with a cock till both of them are bleeding. So having a cockerel that takes a subordinate role in the grow out pen is probably not going to be able to get the job done with a hen that doesn't want to easily submit to mating.
As of yet we have not had a set time to cull, we will usually cull when we have time to do all our hands on exams of everyone at the same time unless there are just some obvious culls that we can butcher without examining everyone in the grow out pen. We've spent the last few years getting enough birds on the ground to cover for any losses of breeding birds as a larger priority while also emphasizing the other traits of size and conformation more often. Actual egg production has been pretty consistent and acceptable throughout all the birds even though we have not trapnested to only breed the hens that laid the best. We have always made note of who matured faster, but it was more in the middle of the list of priorities and not at the top, but we're working toward getting the faster maturity higher on the list of priorities, which will also help with not having to keep so many until they are over a year old.
