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My situation is that I am an older (61) disabled female, living alone on my mini-farmstead (purchased last July 2010), with limited resources to get my sustainable farmstead off the ground and up and running. Hatchery birds were the best I could do this year. I tried for several months to work with a breeder within an hour of me to get some heritage breeder stock, but he just strung me along and never produced any chicks until I had to buy hatchery birds or wait until next spring. I started working with him in early April and at the end of June he was still promising chicks "within the next month."
I don't intend to to "replace" my stock yearly. Heritage birds or not, they eventually slow down on their laying, so will have to have replacements. Although I enjoy all of my chickens, their purpose on my farmstead is for food, not pets or eye candy. I feed Countryside Organic feed and scratch, so when their useful life as laying hens is done, they will become stewing hens, so there will always be a need for younger hens as the originals age out. I have friends who gripe about the price of the Countryside feed, but they view their seven year old hens as pets, and wouldn't dream of eating them, so they get very few eggs for the price of the organic feed they consume. Also, I intend to eat the excess roosters and excess hens, so I will need a steady supply of replacements for the freezer and stock pot. I am going for the highest and best use for all my poultry, which includes eating their eggs and their meat.
I have been mentoring with Joel Salatin/Polyface Farms for the last two years (I live just a few miles from him) and I really didn't feel the need to contact breeders across the country. I will never be a big operation, nor do I want to be. My intentions are to raise as much food from my organic gardens, fruit & nut orchards, bee hives, and maple syrup from my maple trees, along with eggs and meat from my pastured chickens, raised the natural way, with broody hens, to keep me out of grocery stores and away from sub-standard foods trucked across the country or from China. That's what "sustainable" means to me.
Though I don't know Joel personally; I have read his books. He seems to be quite knowledgeable and would be a good mentor. Your definition, now that you elaborated a bit, of sustainable is close to my own.
There is nothing in the world wrong with hatchery stock. I was just saying that if you want heritage stock that is up close to the weight it should be then a breeder is the way to go. Breeders don't have to be close to you for you to get stock. They can mail their stock as easily as a hatchery.
I wish you all the best with your project it sounds very do-able.
