Quote:Thank you Bee....I'll give the milled feed a try and see if the flock (all raised on the commercial crumbles) will go for it.That's all I ever feed....if nothing else is available I'll make myself buy the pre-bagged commercial feeds but I hate feeding it to my chickens. Get a bag of fresh milled, farmer mixed feed and the leading brand of commercially marketed feed and open them side by side, look at the color, smell them, examine the grain pieces.....what you are seeing is the difference between a small, local mill and a huge, commercial mill, with the feed from the huge mill being stored for week/months in large storehouses, trucked around the nation in trucks and sitting in the storeroom of your local TSC until it finds itself in your coop. The commercial feed is grayish-tan, has little smell that has anything to do with grain and doesn't really resemble anything that has come from a whole grain in the past. It sort of looks like Grape Nuts Cereal.......mystery meal in a bag.
OR you can go directly to the local mill, get the same percentages of nutrients but it will be fresh out of the mill, tied at the neck that day by good ol' minimum wage farm kids and hefted right into your truck. You open it up and it's golden, it smells like it was just harvested and most of the time it was and it was from a local harvest...it smells good enough for US to eat and the chickens show a distinct preference for the fresh milled grains. The older the grain, the sooner it loses nutrients...and all the more after it's been ground.
Which would you rather feed?
Simmer down Walt! I'm sure whomever said it meant mankind.
One half bro to half sister has been used with success for years. You are increasing the common parent's genes. Full brother to full sister is just a rescrambling of the existing genes, and can bring up all sorts of recessives you'd rather have left in the closet.
Boy can I identify with that! Since my son left home and my husband died, and I must do all things necessary to keep this place running (BTW - I wouldn't trade a minute of it!) I have re-purposed my husband's golf cart. A bale of hay/straw is easily transported to "the back 40" and that 50# bag of feed is first poured into 2 plastic totes so I only have to lift 25# at time. I'm not near 74, but being a bone cancer survivor, my bones are weak and brittle, so I have to find ways around certain problems. I really should give up the horses and milk goats, but, since they "produce oxygen," I'm afraid there won't be enough air! LOL
I'm line breeding as well, but as it is I have 2 extra birds, a brother and sister, that do not fit into my project. If I were to breed these 2, I should get some nice looking frizzles with the traits I am looking for. However, weaker birds is definitely not something I want to have. If I can not use the cockerel for this purpose without consequence then I see no reason in keeping him, though I really like the looks of him and his personality. Same goes for the pullet. Do you think that it would be fine to breed this brother and sister to each other? One is smooth feathered and one is a frizzle so it's not like they've got the exact same genes. I've got a frizzle pen and 2 sizzle pens. My goal is to get the sizzles to meet the silkie standard and to get the frizzles to have the desired frizzle traits and to breed true. When I accomplish this, I will start selling hatching eggs if anyone wants them. The silkie and sizzle hens are my broodies and great mommas.
