Chickens for 10-20 years or more? Pull up a rockin' chair and lay some wisdom on us!

[perchie.girl]

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What's that? BLM land?

Bureau of Land Management

http://www.blm.gov/wo/st/en.html

Its mostly unmanaged and un fenced and you can lease great portions of it for running cattle. I dont know the regs on it....

 

[centrarchid]

perchie.girl :

So I am curious... How many chickens would create a sustainable flock. Enough for biodiversity .... and enough to consume. Say for a household of two people?

Also I have eighteen acres with no fences between all my neighbors and a straight shot to BLM land. It is possible once my chickens start free ranging they would cover quite a few acres in order to find tasty bits to eat.

https://www.backyardchickens.com/forum/uploads/72852_boulevardbackdoor1.jpg

Anything green for most of the year here is in the form of Chamise and Ribbonwood. Both are shrubby plants that the Goats just love. There is also Filagree (dont know the actual name) which is a plant that grows only about an inch high out here they make a seed that has a corkscrew on it and will drill itself back into the soil All parts of the plant is edible. But everything eats it. So the chickens would be competing with rabbits rodents and wild birds. What I was going to ask is how do I know they are getting enough to eat.... outside of weighing them. And keeping the feeders full for when they return.

Two very different answers. Biodiversity is both a function of time scale and how often you import new alleles into flock. With totally closed flock without occasional imports and time is indefinite, then hundreds of actual breeding birds needed which is not practical. If your flock is part of a local landrace where exchanges of breeders is relatively frequent between chicken keepers, like in truelly olden days when many of the less refined breeds where developed and used over the millenia, then minimum size for food and fiber kicks in. That is a function of your protein and / or energy needs met by consumption of poultry products. Then you need to figure how many birds and eggs do you consume annually? Then you need to consider how many breeder hens and roosters are needed to supply said products plus replace themselves before they are retired or lost (predators, disease, trade). You will be limited by productivity of your landscape and availabilty of feeds and feedstuffs needed to supplement the landscapes ability to meet the flocks nutritional needs. Their is also the issue of seasonality of production and its vulnerabilty to natural disasters (i.e. drought). Lots feed into this and is reason chickens on farmsteads generally supply only a small portion of old time farmers nutrition. Chicken on scale we enjoy today is a very recent event.​

 

[Dead Rabbit]

Quote:
that does make sense...........heres another one to think about. pure cornish. this was one i was considering one time. they are meaty birds. not the best at reproducing, slow growing, but good at foraging. and can reproduce. or use a cornish brood cock over another meaty type, that can lay. and make your own hybrids. then you can use the hybrid type offspring, and breed back to either side of the cross and still produce meaty types that lay to some degree.

never tried it, but it was somethin i was considering. course like most things, it sounds like it would work on paper. true life my dictate differently.

 

[navasima]

AH - thanks perchie girl!

 

[Dead Rabbit]

Quote:
Two very different answers. Biodiversity is both a function of time scale and how often you import new alleles into flock. With totally closed flock without occasional imports and time is indefinite, then hundreds of actual breeding birds needed which is not practical. If your flock is part of a local landrace where exchanges of breeders is relatively frequent between chicken keepers, like in truelly olden days when many of the less refined breeds where developed and used over the millenia, then minimum size for food and fiber kicks in. That is a function of your protein and / or energy needs met by consumption of poultry products. Then you need to figure how many birds and eggs do you consume annually? Then you need to consider how many breeder hens and roosters are needed to supply said products plus replace themselves before they are retired or lost (predators, disease, trade). You will be limited by productivity of your landscape and availabilty of feeds and feedstuffs needed to supplement the landscapes ability to meet the flocks nutritional needs. Their is also the issue of seasonality of production and its vulnerabilty to natural disasters (i.e. drought). Lots feed into this and is reason chickens on farmsteads generally supply only a small portion of old time farmers nutrition. Chicken on scale we enjoy today is a very recent event.

a good breeder really doesnt need that many brood pens. a brood cocks and 1/2 dz or less brood hens and you could breed for decades.....secret is selectivity. cull hard. and start with good brood fowl.

 

[navasima]

Quote:
that does make sense...........heres another one to think about. pure cornish. this was one i was considering one time. they are meaty birds. not the best at reproducing, slow growing, but good at foraging. and can reproduce. or use a cornish brood cock over another meaty type, that can lay. and make your own hybrids. then you can use the hybrid type offspring, and breed back to either side of the cross and still produce meaty types that lay to some degree.

never tried it, but it was somethin i was considering. course like most things, it sounds like it would work on paper. true life my dictate differently.

Yeppers! That's what I'm noodling....... Lots of learning to do! The big problem for me is lack of foraging. My current yard is "Albuquerque Natural" (please read: rocks, dirt, sandy dirt, more rocks....).

 

[centrarchid]

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I think the dual purpose option is viable when birds are truelly free ranged and quality complete feeds are either unavailble or too expensive. Yes, they (dual purpose breeds) will not be optimal for either meat or eggs, but they will require a smaller number of breeders to support a given low level of production that would supply a families needs. When I was a kid we had a tri-purpose flock made up of American games (a few hundred birds). When hens were kept in hen house we might get 120 eggs per hens not part of breeding program and maybe 40 or so from hens that gave a brood before June 1. A good 75% of all chicks hatched before June 1 were made part of Sunday dinner before their first fall and virtually all hatched later met same fate. They were only about 2.5 pounds while alive when taken to chopping block so a good number of birds where required to feed 12 people at dinner. The surving 25% of early hatch birds that were male were used as games and many of those that lost found there way into potpie or dumplings if my Aunt had any say. Despite some saying such dead roosters are unhealthy to eat I recall no problems consuming such birds. During my great-grandfathers time and before the same birds where also plucked for feathers to be used in pillows and heavy blankets (games not so good for this) so in that case they were quatro-purpose. They were very prickly blankets according to my grandparents but they did keep you warm when frost formed on ceiling above you.

 

[perchie.girl]

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Wow that's a lot of brown, not how I picture California at all.

I am not an OT at all, but as to the discussion about DP vs CX meat birds, I would think there are other factors not mentioned like can you have crowing? (urban environment), How set up are you for mass scale processing and storage? Does your area lose electricity often? (large amount of meat loss in freezer) How good a predator proof area do you have for long term housing vs short term?

LOL I live in the San Diego High desert in a nub of the Snoroan desert at the top of Baja California. Two miles from the Border with Mexico and mile and a half from paved road. Its a mild desert climate decent temps most of the year but annual rainfall of less than ten inches. Irrigation is almost an impossibility for me. So No grass or plant material that is not indigenous. Though I am considering some Aquaponics to grow some fish for me and greens for all my herbivores.

Crowing and Buck Wheating are all received by echos from the rocks behind the house.. The majority of my flock will be Guinea Fowl. And They do Range pretty far. When I had them last I would holler Chick Chick Chick when I brought out the feed the there would be Chi-Chi-Chi-ing, then the whole flock would fly from the big boulders over the house and into the yard..... lots of lizards in there.

I am at the end of the power grid.... literally and we do lose power usually when it rains or snows. Sometimes the 60 MPh wind gusts knock it out too. Or a drunk.... ahem. I have a big freezer. But I was more thinking of keeping no more than a few birds in the freezer at a time. Long term storage would be in the form of canning. Oh and most of my poultry keeping will be guinea fowl. My poultry house is going to be 24 x 24 and fortified. the intention was to raise Guineas and sell keets on Craigslist as well as hatching eggs and eating a few. I did start out with forty keets but disaster struck in the form of predators and it left me with seven. Long story. Wont happen again. My fault. I will be starting up again in spring. And will be adding Sumatras for my first chicken breed. eventually I want some Ameraucanas and some Wellsummers. Extra roos will be allowed to free range with the Sumatras or kept in a bachelor pen. Only those birds that can fly well and are wiley or good foragers will be allowed to free range.

 

[centrarchid]

Quote:
Two very different answers. Biodiversity is both a function of time scale and how often you import new alleles into flock. With totally closed flock without occasional imports and time is indefinite, then hundreds of actual breeding birds needed which is not practical. If your flock is part of a local landrace where exchanges of breeders is relatively frequent between chicken keepers, like in truelly olden days when many of the less refined breeds where developed and used over the millenia, then minimum size for food and fiber kicks in. That is a function of your protein and / or energy needs met by consumption of poultry products. Then you need to figure how many birds and eggs do you consume annually? Then you need to consider how many breeder hens and roosters are needed to supply said products plus replace themselves before they are retired or lost (predators, disease, trade). You will be limited by productivity of your landscape and availabilty of feeds and feedstuffs needed to supplement the landscapes ability to meet the flocks nutritional needs. Their is also the issue of seasonality of production and its vulnerabilty to natural disasters (i.e. drought). Lots feed into this and is reason chickens on farmsteads generally supply only a small portion of old time farmers nutrition. Chicken on scale we enjoy today is a very recent event.

a good breeder really doesnt need that many brood pens. a brood cocks and 1/2 dz or less brood hens and you could breed for decades.....secret is selectivity. cull hard. and start with good brood fowl.

I come at this from an angle of long-term genetic conservation, not simply slowing of genetic loss through line breeding. Even in best line breeding scenario you will have to bring in new blood otherwise with each generation of birds you breed back to a net loss of alleles will occur resulting in inbreeding. You can maintain genetic variation using a smaller number of breeders using linebreeding but multiple lines will need to be maintained and that starts putting number of breeders back up into realm of what is difficult to sustain by a single household. It is the use of line breeding, relatively large flocks and frequent exchange of birds coupled with aggressive selection that cockers employ(ed) enabling persitance of so much genetic variation as a whole. Sadly this is not so well employed with production breeds which is destroying the genetic differsity needed for long-term persistance of such breeds. Some lines of games are not so good to cross while others are great. With production breeds and flocks bred for show, crossing is often avoided because many more folks think such crosses cause one to deviate from the Standard of Perfection.

 

[al6517]

Quote:
that does make sense...........heres another one to think about. pure cornish. this was one i was considering one time. they are meaty birds. not the best at reproducing, slow growing, but good at foraging. and can reproduce. or use a cornish brood cock over another meaty type, that can lay. and make your own hybrids. then you can use the hybrid type offspring, and breed back to either side of the cross and still produce meaty types that lay to some degree.

never tried it, but it was somethin i was considering. course like most things, it sounds like it would work on paper. true life my dictate differently.

There have been some of us who have worked on such a project for a few years, some with allot more success than others, mainly because of their poor choices for the matings to the pure Cornish and lack of good quality pure Cornish. Most folks chose hatchery Birds for their projects thinking they had real birds only to discover after a year of using hatchery birds that they were sadly mistaken. The project has dwindled considerably mainly because as you mentioned it sounded good on paper but many fell off the grid because of the immense and detailed work invovled in such a project. They had the heart but not the leg's nor the intelect for such a difficult project. It took me 5 years to develop my own sustainable non hybrid meat bird line, fully documented, so I am well versed in all the complexities it took to get there, and I can tell you I can see why the BYCer's gave up so easy. Anyway it can and has been done it ain't no big secret.

AL