Can you clarify re: culling and replacing flock?

[aart]

I'm hoping to start breeding from 2-3 hens in August,

Curious, why wait until August?

 

[Mosey2003]

Curious, why wait until August?

My new cockerel won't be ready to cover hens until late spring. The girls should be laying well by August, so I'm hoping for maximum hatch capability It's not set in stone, but I figure about then should be right.

 

[shedinator]

Our approach, with semi-limited space (1.5 acres, only .5 acre really accessible for livestock at present, and 1/3 of that space is garden for half the year):

Late Winter/Early spring: Hatching time for the chickens. Not gonna lie, this step is hypothetical. We didn't have a rooster for a long while, then lost a rooster to predation, then another to illness. So, fingers crossed, we'll be hatching some chicks in Feb and March. Depending on hatch numbers, order supplemental birds from hatchery or local breeders.

4 weeks later: Move fully feathered chicks to outdoor tractor until they're grown enough to integrate into flock.
Begin incubating turkey eggs

Late spring:
Sex juvenile chickens. We don't raise sex links at present, and have turned out to be quite bad at vent sexing, so we sex them as juveniles. At that point, if our cockerel count is lower than our meat need (which it will almost certainly be), we arrange for meat birds to be acquired to round out our totals, timing them to move into the tractor when the turkeys are ready to join the adults.

Late Summer: process cockerels and broilers

Fall: Process turkeys, as well as hens who no longer lay well. They're leg banded by age, and will usually be processed at 2 or 3 years unless we have reason to think they're still laying steadily.

Early Winter: assess current flock size to determine incubation needs for next year. Target is 25-30 productive layers. Return to beginning of cycle.

 

[Mosey2003]

I'm really hoping that I might be able to get Dad on board with cleaning out the rest of the cattle barn so that I could actually have two full pens plus a brooder and supply area. It would suit me much better to be able to separate cockerels and pullets until they were old enough for me to pick any potential keepers. So much infrastructure with breeding!

I want to make some tractor type pens too.

 

[aart]

So much infrastructure with breeding!

Boy, there sure is!!

 

[aliciaplus3]

It's just my husband and I but somehow we need to have a flock of 70+ to function on a system between eggs and meat. I really only eat the boys unless a pullet/hen needs culled, if I have a hen past 1 year old it's because she's pretty nice for her breed and will get sold as part of a breeding group between 2-3 years old. If they're not for the breeding pen or my utility layer group then they're sold at POL. Those sales then take a chunk out of the feed bill.

I was pretty disappointed in the small frames and poor meat quality in the hatchery grade birds of most varieties, it gets spendy when you go to a breeder, so I went ahead and spent and then started my own program once we knew we'd be eating spares. Now we're starting to see some pretty good size on boys at 16-22 weeks.

My favorite are the Bresse. Laying machines for the girls, incredible baked/fried/grilled/pulled boys. 2nd favorite are Marans, they're put together a little different, have more dark meat and thicker skin. Then I have 2 projects I'm playing with as well.

Luckily we had an old barn to turn into a coop, a 9x6 coop we brought with and just finished an 11x9 cockerel grow out coop. I maintain 4 breeding pens for chickens and 3 for Turkeys, with more brooder space than my little kid heart ever dreamed of.

Previously we were urban so I had an average flock of 12-14 without a rooster (most times...lol). We're coming into our 3rd year at this new scale and we have a system now.

I start hatching Nov/Dec. Mostly because the freezer is getting lean. We have winterized grow out space, I have 3 empty pens at the moment and all brooders are empty. Time to refill! My goal this next season is to hatch larger, quarterly batches. I'll need to hold back 18 pullets as a minimum.

Here's the kicker though. Since I'm breeding for improved birds and certain traits, meatiness included, I need to grow out at least 60 to get a large enough grouping for the 30% of a hatch that turns out really nice, leaving me with my 18 of new breeding quality pullets. Only a percentage of birds will turn out pretty close to being ideal, when all merits are considered. The other 42 of that group of 60 is what pays for the feed bill when they get sold as POL pullets.

Half of a hatch, generally, is going to be boys. So now I go from a batch of 60 to a batch of 120. Of the 60 boys, that's 1 cockerel a week plus a couple for the year in meat. If I spot a REALLY nice one, the total package, great attitude, correct for his breed, looking extra meaty... he gets a life-saving green legband as a potential breeder. On average I have about 7 "stud" roosters around.

Growing out 120 birds at once gets costly and takes up a lot of space. Last year I didn't grow out enough. We're out of Turkey already and only 5 cockerels left in the freezer. So I have 41 eggs in the incubator right now, 5 are Turkey. The first tester hatch, the first pen filler.

Once I've hatched myself to "full" I start sorting/selling. Extra breeding stock I let go of in the Spring rather than Fall, the prices are higher and I'm going to need a pallet of starter feed.

Last year we added pasture tractors to grow birds out in. That worked out really well and we'll build a couple more. 9x6 heavy duty, walk-in height, never-flat 10 inch tires troll the back field easily. Those are sitting empty now too, they're not winterized. In theory I could roll them into the barn and use them as winter pens.

With maintaining a breeding flock totaling 50 and growing out another 30-50 at any given time, our feed bill grew to close to $250/month. My husband started panicking. LOL Turkeys can really pack it away! To negate that feed bill, 17 birds a month need to go at a price of $15/ea. Turkey poults and POL pullets fit that. If you can sustain the sales during grow out, the cockerel meat at the end is free. I only had to explain that to my husband about 55 times.

If we relied on old hens for meat, we'd never have enough. Unless I phased out about 60 hens a year. Since we've given the boys a purpose other than being given away (not many takers in our area, if we weren't prepared to eat them, my hatching would have to be dramatically scaled back) we have ample meat after I've reached that 120 mark of chicks to grow out.

I don't sell day old chickens, I grow them all until gender is known. The center of our entire project is creating better breeding stock for the next generation. Hatch, grow, select, cull, repeat.

It could be done with a smaller breeding group, though I grew weary of weekly hatches from a small number of hens. I store eggs for hatching over 7 days, so I need the number of girls that can give me the eggs I need in those 7 days, without having to do it every 7 days over months. I'd like to collect over 7 days and then wait a month or 3 before setting again. I can't keep up with my co-workers that want eggs for eating, so I have an out for spare eggs. They're scrambling for more and they HATE hatch season. Haha

The age overlap will be the clincher on if we run out next year. I'll need to sustain 20 cockerels at a time in each grow out phase, from brooder to grow pen to pasture finishing.

Course I could save us all the hassle and just put 20 CornishX out into those pasture tractors every 8-10 weeks. But then I'd need a huge deep freezer and a husband willing to process that many at once, or pay out for processing. I'm fine with plucking/processing but the deed itself is my husband's thing.

I like the Heritage birds for their ability to keep on keeping on out in a field until you're ready for them 3-5 at a time. If all of our dinners were chicken based, we could go through 3 a week. To reach that though, then I'd be looking at 156 cockerels a year. Broken down quarterly, that's 39, so I'd have to set about 90 eggs to get close to that in one hatch, supposing the hatch rate was high.

Reminding ourselves at the cash register at the feed store that the pullets will pay us back. Then we sit down to chicken dinner and we're reminded that it's all worth it. Hatch, repeat.

It took me 20 years to come around to this point, now I'm a total chicken nerd. From when I was 7 years old until about 30, they were pets. My perspective on it all has changed dramatically, the deeper I got into it. I still have my favorites out of the flock though, my Bourbon Red tom turkey is my buddy.

Sounds like you have quite the system! My intention is similar, but maybe not as disciplined. We have selected several breeds to focus on and started to hatch in those directions, my dd fell in love with the Nn and we have some decent stock to work with, we just finished our first hatch for the year and ended up with 3 black Nn and 5 white/buff Nn. Of course we can't have 30+ roosters so when the extras reach a decent size we butcher 6 at a time till we get the numbers back under control. Old hens that are not great layers and do not fit our breeding goals also get butchered. I have had limited success selling POL pullets as so many in our area advertise their older hens as "good layers" and offer them for $5-8 a head. Most folks here think they are doing me a favor by taking them off my hands and want them free.... but I love my birds and enjoy the fresh chicken and eggs so i will keep heading forward

 

[Mosey2003]

I'm going to try to sell some POL pullets this year just to see if I can recoup some costs, but if not they'll either go to the laying flock or the freezer. I need to be more serious about the money.

 

[aart]

I'm going to try to sell some POL pullets this year just to see if I can recoup some costs, but if not they'll either go to the laying flock or the freezer. I need to be more serious about the money.

Same here.
Selling is a PITA, it's very time consuming and I'm not good at it(dealing with the people).

 

[RUNuts]

Selling is an art. Sometimes I wish I were better. But I don't have the time for the silliness. Trying to sell hens last year, specifically the Leghorns. Found a buyer who wanted the brown egg layers. So sold the other half the flock and kept the Leghorns. Totally changed the flock dynamics. I'm still surprised. But buyer was happy. Flock culled.

I used the proceeds on CX and filled the freezer. Worked out well.

 

[Mosey2003]

It seems like nobody wants Barred Rocks in my area. Absolutely not if you can't sex them (luckily I can pretty well rather early). But even then, it took me 3 weeks to move I think 10 chicks, at $4 each. I see lots of posts from "farms" that never have any replies, varying kinds of "fancy" birds like Cemani, 55 Flowery Hen, the like. Sometimes Silkies move fast, sometimes not at all. Sometimes BLRW move, sometimes no.

Only sure thing is if you advertise 1 year old active layers for $5 with a group discount. Which, frankly, sucks. I'd rather eat the bird most times.