30 or so years. Mostly Silkies as the core laying flock, with some random Barred Rocks, Sex Links, and Americaunas.
I've raised Cornish Crosses and Bronze Turkeys for the freezer too.
There were also Pekin, Muscovy, Rouen, Cayuga ducks for amusement and eggs.
Can't say I've got any wisdom to share that I think is profound or noteworthy, but here are a few things I've picked up over the years:
1. I ALWAYS raise my (non meat) chicks on medicated chick starter. Every time I tried non medicated I lost more chicks than I considered acceptable.
2. Duck eggs don't hatch under chickens. Apparently they need higher humidity from the mother coming in wet from swimming.
3. Peacock eggs hatch just fine under Silkies, although they look funny when they are as big as their mom and still trying to get under her!
4. I always let my Silkies hatch several batches of their own eggs. The extra hens were easy enough to sell. The roosters were traded to the poultry butcher for butchering of my meat birds 2:1. This way it cost me nothing to have my meat birds butchered and got rid of all the extra roos. The Asian community LOVES Silkie chickens, especially for special dishes when celebrating a new baby.
5. Turkeys get big FAST. Pay attention to the dates and make plans to butcher around 14-20 weeks depending on how large you want them. Toms get bigger faster than hens. If they do get too big for your oven, find a local butcher who smokes and have them smoked, then cut into halves. If you have the ability to smoke your own, so much the better. I put the hens in the freezer for roasting and all the toms were smoked, cut in half, then gifted to family and friends at Christmas. What's not to love about smoked turkey?
6. When I lived out in the country with a relatively isolated farm, I never vaccinated, nor did anyone else I knew. I had never heard of Mareks. Now that I have a small flock in a suburb of San Francisco I do vaccinate because I've lost birds to Mareks and know others who have too. Too many people here, too many germs.
7. If you want to breed and raise your own chicks, but your breed is flighty and nervous, consider having a nice calm breed to act as surrogate setting hen and mother.
8. Just because a breed is described as broody, not all hens are created equal within that breed. One of my favorite Silkie hens (the most tame/most calm), is also a lousy mother. She ignores her chicks when I go out to the yard, so now I just don't let her set eggs anymore.
9. I've learned how to vaccinate Silkie chicks. Scary, but I've been successfully doing it now for a few years. I found an avian Vet and asked her to vaccinate my chicks. She was wonderful for teaching me how as she did the first half, and then making me do the rest and coaching me through the process. She gave me lots of valuable information on handling of the vaccine, etc.
10. I've never become comfortable with downing a sick or injured animal. I take them to the on call vet and pay for euthanasia if they aren't going to recover.
11. I've never found raising my own birds for eggs or meat to be cost effective in small numbers, but the satisfaction with the end product is the reward for me. I think that as long as one has to rely on feed store bags then the cost is going to be high. For those of us living in suburban and urban environments without acreage, foraging and pasturing just isn't an option. My girls have a good size yard, with a small garden they can scratch up, and they've got access to the compost pile, but I can't release them into the rest of the yard or they would destroy my garden.
