Cons of barnyard mixes?

[Perris]

you might want to look at introducing some old fashioned dual-purpose breeds into your mix at the start, or as your initial roo, as they are breeds which lay reasonable numbers of eggs and produce a reasonable carcass, so whatever gender you get, the chicks grow into something useful.

 

[Redhead Rae]

I would also cull aggressively for temperament and raise the birds in a flock environment after 8 weeks. The older birds teach the younger ones manners, but my first generation of cockerels that didn't have any older birds schooling them were 75% mean.

 

[Doc7]

Thanks all.

I will certainly take this into consideration if I get a roo and have to decide a path forward but will probably continue to order females.

This spring I am adding (ordered) a Dominique, Austra-White, and Golden Buff (gold sex link) to what will be a 1 year old EE, Barred Rock, Delaware, Buff Orp, Partridge Rock and New Hampshire Red. Now that I will have a coop addition and a run extension, both of which will have “chick sized doors” and fully removable panels for the separation and integration process from 2 weeks on, with in-coop mama heat pad setup, I feel like I will be able to make use of the new areas for wild hairs such as breeding a roo and hen or some such ideas.

 

[bobbi-j]

I love my mutts! I prefer to breed and raise my own chickens. The most important thing - in my opinion - is to have a plan for the extra cockerels. (There is no guarantee that it will be a 50/50 split between cockerels and pullets. I have had hatches where I have gotten only one or the other out of 8-10 chicks.) I actually hope for cockerels, as I put them in the freezer. I love eating my farm-raised chickens.

If you're looking to sell chickens to help offset feed costs, you'd be better off focusing on a specific breed. I would think mutts would be harder to get rid of.(Or at least harder to get a decent price for them.)

In the past few years I have let broodies do the work of hatching and raising chicks. They raise the chicks within the flock when the chicks are about a week old. There are a few advantages to doing it that way. I generally get a better hatch rate when using broodies. (Go figure...) I don't have to mess with an incubator, worrying about the correct temperature or humidity. It's always just right under a broody. Plus, she instinctively knows far more about hatching and raising babies than I do.

If I have the broody penned separately, I will keep them separated from the flock for about a week before putting them in with the flock. (I had one that insisted on hatching in the general population and she took her babies off the nest within 24 hours of hatching - she never lost any of her chicks.) One advantage of putting them in with the flock early is that Mama has her protective hormones going strong. She will defend those babies with all she's got. If you wait, those hormones diminish and the babies will be on their own trying to find their way around the flock. My hens wean their babies in 4-8 weeks, depending on the hen. If they're already integrated with the flock, they will have no troubles fitting in.

In my opinion, broody raised chicks are smarter and more hardy. They learn early how to find food and avoid predators because the hen teaches them. She's much better at teaching chickens how to be chickens than I am. Of course, if you don't get a broody, you'll have to use an incubator. If you end up going that way, I'd suggest you look up the MHP thread as an alternative to brooding chicks with a heat lamp. I tried it for the first time this year, and won't go back. https://www.backyardchickens.com/th...d-in-the-brooder-picture-heavy-update.956958/

 

[Redhead Rae]

Thanks all.

I will certainly take this into consideration if I get a roo and have to decide a path forward but will probably continue to order females.

This spring I am adding (ordered) a Dominique, Austra-White, and Golden Buff (gold sex link) to what will be a 1 year old EE, Barred Rock, Delaware, Buff Orp, Partridge Rock and New Hampshire Red. Now that I will have a coop addition and a run extension, both of which will have “chick sized doors” and fully removable panels for the separation and integration process from 2 weeks on, with in-coop mama heat pad setup, I feel like I will be able to make use of the new areas for wild hairs such as breeding a roo and hen or some such ideas.

I have found that Dominique mixes aren’t the best tempered birds. Dom/Buffs are the best tempered. My Dom/RIR rooster was EVIL. His full sister wasn’t much better. My Black Cochin/Dom(Dom cross) hens are perfectly fine but their brothers were pure evil. I don’t have any Doms left except the Black Cochin/(Dom/Buff) and Black Cochin/(Dom/RIR) girls.

 

[Elsveta641]

Hybrid vigor! So long as you don't hatch eggs from related parents, a mix breed flock is great. I eat extra roosters. Let them sit in the fridge for a day to become tender. Or, you can let them roam around the farm in a little street gang. They'll distract predators form the "good stuff" in the coop and fight some of them off. So yeah, they're cannon fodder basically. But you have to do something with the little buggers, extra cockrels are next to impossible to unload if they're mixes, sometimes even purebreds are