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

[galanie]

My feed doesn't even have a UPC code on it. Fancy Purina and their UPC codes hehe. Ours is fairly local and has to be rung up manually.

 

[Celie]

Chiming in late on the GMO corn thing. I got some organic non-gmo corn for myself. It is dry "dent corn." Mine won't eat the corn in regular scratch either. Threw a few grains of the nonGMO at them... gobbled it right up. Cracked some and gave them more.. they turned their noses up at it. LOL. I guess it just looked like the "bad stuff" so they didn't bother.
Incidentally, I was at the store yesterday and the wild bird food was cheaper than the scratch I got at the feed store last week. Yep, got them a bag.

Since my corn is not GMO, according to Mountain Mama's info, I didn't think the cracked corn in the feed store scratch grains would be, but the birds don't go for it like the oats and whole corn, so I looked this morning and it is GMO and most of the bag this time is cracked corn, too! I think I need to plant corn come February. I will be the house in the middle of the corn field when you come down the road !!!

 

[Justahannah]

Quote:
Woodstove pellets (just make sure they're the 100% natural kind without accelerants!) work the same as feline pine and are around $5 for a 50 lb bag here. Even cheaper, so I liked using them too but my husband doesn't like the way the sawdust tracks and smells so the crumbles are the cheapest thing we'll compromise on. That, and since the crumbles can be scooped, we use a lot less of them overall so cost-wise it probably breaks down about the same.

 

[normanack]

My feed doesn't even have a UPC code on it. Fancy Purina and their UPC codes hehe. Ours is fairly local and has to be rung up manually.

I'm not sure these numbers apply to UPC codes, anyone know? PLU codes are the numbers on the stickers on fruits and vegetables.

 

[normanack]

Woodstove pellets (just make sure they're the 100% natural kind without accelerants!) work the same as feline pine and are around $5 for a 50 lb bag here. Even cheaper, so I liked using them too but my husband doesn't like the way the sawdust tracks and smells so the crumbles are the cheapest thing we'll compromise on.

I'll have to get me some of those! Thanks!

 

[thedragonlady]

I saw that would love to see a pic of Naugas most be an ancient breed of something.

I once put an ad for breeding pairs of Naughas in the Ga. Market Bulletin as I had a friend with a broken leg who needed amusement while being in traction. It was her phone # in the ad of course. She got 75 calls as soon as the ad appeared from people wanting breeding pairs.

Being a sharp cookie, she took off with Naugha descriptions...plaid, striped smooth, or rough, etc.In the end she got 200 phone calls in a 7 day period. She simply had to tell all rthe wanna be owners that she was sold out.

 

[Celie]

Hey Celie I saw your post on the duck thread, 150 ducks? wow thats alot of ducks.

Yeah, and lots of meat in the freezer when I get them fattened. I don't want to pen them in the barn with water, they're too messy, for that. I have 10x10 chain link dog kennels, where I fatten extra roosters and turkeys and this summer any hen that doesn't give my at least 300 eggs a year. But I can't pen them anywhere without water. So I guess DH will have to rebuild their pen by the pond and I will start with a few at a time fattening, until I get their numbers down. They have over populated themselves too much this year. Any tricks for plucking all that down? Any duck advice would be much appreciated. I will be keeping a dozen or so of each breed for mosquito control, thou.I have Pekin and Rouen.

 

[Kansas Prairie]

I've seen this fodder system ad on other threads. I'm all for fodder, I hope the thread doesn't turn in to ad spams...

That's not what folks around here call " fodder" .

 

[Pozees]

Questions for those who have decided to breed a specific breed to APA standard while trying to maintain adequate productivity:

How many birds did you start with? How many lines if more than a pair?

Do you always winter over only a certain number, or do you decide how many to winter over based on the overall quality of the year's chicks?

Do you prefer broody-hatched even if you have to use another hen to brood? Do you keep 2nd tier quality hens long enough to know whether they will brood their own eggs (and possibly others)? Is brooding a goal for most breeds or only certain ones? Or do you prefer to use an incubator to keep the top tier hens laying and always eliminate the rest from the program?

How many years would a very good rooster and hen be useful in your breeding program?

Did you sit down and crunch numbers before deciding to start, to set financial goals in terms of the birds covering the expense of the program at or by a specific point in the future? Or is it like breeding pets where the money is considered spent and largely unrecoverable? Since this is livestock, I realize those bred strictly for production would have financial goals, but wondered about those striving for the SOP.

Appreciate any and all wisdom you have to share.

Judi

 

[Celie]

What I got is for human consumption to make fresh masa (the "dough" stuff in tamales) with. It's expensive but cheaper than organic masa. Dent corn is just dried corn that's meant to grind up for cornmeal or feed livestock with. To make masa to you have to start with the whole grains, can't use cornmeal. I got a small amount to see how it would turn out. It worked well so next time I might get the feed store to get a bag of organic whole corn instead. It'll be expensive but still tons cheaper that way for people food.

Tn the South, we call dent corn, field corn, opposed to sweet corn for fresh eating. Field corn is dried and then ground into corn meal for corn bread or finer for fish-fry or seafood frying. Finer yet into corn flour for masa, for tortias or tamales. It is a lot more starch and a lot less sugar than sweet corn. It is also used as animal feed and now people want to run their vehicles on it, go figure, and they wonder why they have to buy a new vehicle every few years.