They are very sweet birds! My farm friend loves the cock! They call him Dinosaur. He free roams the area around the house and takes care of all the broody mamas with babies. We need to get him with his girls to pass on his DNA to the next generation!
See how beautiful they are?!!! Mine came from Cheryl (The Omelet Ranch) when she had them. I know that there are several people here in N CA who have them.That is what I was going to suggest SPR they have a very similar pattern to Dark Brahma, This pic was posted by BYC member PeepsInc
We just put up a new death row pen at the farm to house all the young cockerels that I have hatched. We bought a portable car garage from Harbor Freight and then lined the inside with 6 ft deer & rabbit fencing. We left the covering canopy open on both ends for ventilation. It is 10 x 17 and should be big enough to hold them until they are processing age. We have 3 hoop coop breeding pens with a fenced yard attached to each and materials to build a 4th one but this car canopy thing went together much easier than the hoop coops. It is not quite as secure but there are 2 guardian dogs that patrol the premises and we set it up close to the house instead of out in the field. It will be interesting to see how it is working when I go to the farm on Friday!
Day olds usually need the warmth of a lamp or heater for several weeks till they feather out. A broody mamma fills this role (or rather the lamps heaters mimic her) I'm pretty sure new chicks are not a large bio security issue for your birds but your birds are more likely the risk to them. Ive read several posts by people here that seem to indicate that giving a broody day olds (usually at night) from feed store chicks is pretty normal.Now that we've finally gotten the ground broken for garden plots (free tractoring was definitely worth waiting for!) my husband's looking at the beds and thinking it'd be much cheaper to finally get a run built (the coop's 100 square feet. We have 7 birds, and a zone-induced maximum of 11. A run's not been a big priority) I'd been wanting to continue to free range in the yard, but I do see his point. He wants to just use that green plastic garden netting. The coop's secure, and I've been known to go run errands while the hens are out, so I don't suppose that'd be all that much different. However, there's a neighborhood dog that I swear must have wolfhound blood--that dog is huge! More importantly, he hops over our fence as easily as our boxer hops onto the couch (we've got a corner lot, so it's a handy shortcut, I guess). I've never seen him in our yard when the chickens are out, so I don't know if he'd ignore them or take them. Poking around, I've found this http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00004RA0N/ref=ox_sc_sfl_title_1?ie=UTF8&psc=1&smid=ATVPDKIKX0DER deer netting--2 rolls would completely surround all of the garden beds. Would it keep chickens out? It's 7 feet high, but comes folded in half--would the 3 and a half foot height be any good (our fence is 4 foot chain link, and none of the 5 older girls have over flown it--I just started trying to get the new girls to go out and explore, but they're barely sticking their heads out yet, so I don't know if/how high they fly (though, the smaller one got loose when we first got them, and I don't think she went above my waist)).
Also, I've asked this a couple of times--once, while there was an answer, it could've been to the other question in that post, and the other time got buried... Anyway, can day-old chicks be brooded in a pen in the coop, or do they need to be brooded elsewhere? I know that, if I were to hatch them myself, I could, and, if I were to get older chicks, they'd have to be quarantined. I just can't seem to find anything about brooding straight-from-the-incubator-and-into-the-mail chicks as far as quarantine needs.
Sorry for the wall of text!
Ive been looking but most of what I find is just the processing weights and times
