Sarajoy-- It is very nice to connect with others near you.. As long as the hen is warm and dry the chicks should be fine. Mine are in a brooder,, well my bathtub,, and under a light for now.
Well I have a turkey issue,, lets see if anyone can help.. I have 4 toms who are fighting terribly and knocking things over, crashing thru makeshift fences, spilling food and water and stepping on smallers chickens. Will this pass or should I reduce my number of toms. I have 2 hens so I assume they ar fighting for their affections.... HELP,, !!!
I am sure people would line up to buy any of your turkeys but you have to keep in mind they might be eaten. I hope it works out for you. I for one would love to find a butcher turkey since I sold my excess Toms as breeders. I couldn't eat mine either. Some people would really buy them for pets though.
I was typing and I just totally lost my post.
Danz, I'm not going to try to comment because I'm not comprehending as well as I would like. I am going to go back through and copy/paste and save so I can read it again. I don't know some of the basic things that you all talk about, like lacing, or self-blue, or splits. I do understand basics of recessive and dominant genes. So, considering that the leghorn is hyper or flighty, maybe that one wouldn't be a good choice for me considering all of the kids around here. Maybe the white rock and new hamp would be better, these are called red stars?
Thanks for all of the breeding information Danz, Hawkeye, HEChicken, Josie, I hope I didn't forget anyone. I did just go back and copy it all so I can research it better. The chickens aren't going to go away around here, and we have room to grow. I don't want the chickens to take us down a path, I want to choose the path and make it more of a conscious thing. I am going to spend some time checking out all of the breeds mentioned.
Danz, I would like a lavender orp roo, I already know I think they're beautiful and I would love to have even a little experience with them.
Thanks Josie for answering those questions. I know you can explain it all better than I. I understand, but sometimes to explain it I have problems.
Josie, are your Lavender orp roos LF or bantam? I wasn't sure since I know you have several bantams. Mine are LF. If you have some to donate that are ready by all means do so.
Mammahen, The white rocks and the New Hamps is a simple breeding project with a means to easily produce meat and egg birds. The red stars that result are color sexed and it makes it a satisfactory project. You need to use the white rock pullets and red Hampshire roos to get the right combination. The result is the opposite. The reddish chicks are the pullets and the white chicks are the cockerels. I think this is an excellent place to start a breeding project myself. You end up with egg layers that you can keep or sell as pure bred sex linked chicks. You end up with cockerels that you can cull, sell as meat birds, or raise yourself for meat.
You should get up to 3 years of breeding from the same birds easily and that is a lot of chicks you can produce over a period of time. It sure beats paying $3 or so a piece for chicks that someone else produced. I also believe with grain price increases the cost of chicks will raise this spring....as well as the feed too. So being able to raise or sell your own is profitable.
Yes hatchery birds are fine for this project. You aren't breeding for show.
You can try color breeding and more long term multi generation projects but you have to have a goal in mind and study the genetics. It can be quite costly.
For instance with the Aloha project you could buy 25 of several types of chicks. Not cheap. Breed those, cull the undesirables, then breed those to yet a few more kinds of chicks. It could take years to perfect to what you want and countless expense. I have to admire Karen for sticking with it and investing all the time and money she has. She has produced beautiful birds but it is an ongoing project.
The same applies with simple color breeding. If you want to produce a particular color it can take several generations and you always want to have several birds and genetics to choose from to get the desired outcome. It makes it a lot easier if the colors you are seeking are in the same breed or have similar characteristics to get back to the SOP in the resulting bird.
HeChicken, I just thought breeding Red Stars was an excellent place to start that wouldn't take a huge amount of investment. Also any resulting offspring beyond the original red stars wouldn't necessarily be color sexed but they should still be good layers. I have some red star X brahmas that I think will be excellent dual purpose birds. I don't market them as pure breds. I just plan to use them as brown egg layers.
The silver laced Wyandotte lays a brown egg of a decent size.
An article is going to run, don't know where yet, asking for information on a hit and run from last Sunday. in the Wamego area, light silver colored SUV is a vehicle of interest. Just was reading and couldn't remember where everyone on here was from. If they are in the area, heard anything, long shot, but thought I'd toss it out. Call the Potowanami Sherriff in Westmoreland
I heard that he was hit in Manhattan. Was that something incorrect on the news as well? Candace my heart goes out to you and Kelsey. I've been praying that the person that did this has conviction in his/her heart and will come forward. It angers me so that someone could have been so preoccupied with whatever else, that they could hit a human being and not even notice them. And worse yet that they could just go on and leave. I am so sorry for your loss. May you find peace knowing that his life touched so many people.
I went out to check on the chicks we moved to the brooder room, I guess we are going to break it in before it's finished. Like my pretty red wall? I'm getting made fun of lots over that.
Your brooders look great by the way!!
They are personable. If I go outside and yell "turk turk turk turkey" (that is my call for them lol) they come running as fast as they can. I bought them originally with the intent of breeding "dinner" next year. I know it will be hard but such is life and I will have to muscle thru it. I started the whole chicken operation to feed my family,I also knew I loved chickens from working with them on my gma's farm every weekend and summer growing up and I wanted to teach my kids this experience. It is important to me for them to learn how to raise their own food. My DH hunts and so do I (time permitting) so they know were it comes from because we process our own game. But to raise it from start to finish is something I want them to experience also. I also have alot of people that help me finiancially and with food and I will never be able to repay the money but I can give fresh eggs and fresh chicken to say thank you. I plan on passing along some eggs and meat to a local family or 2 that may need help as well. There are so many ways raising these animals can help. Some are pets, some serve as sentrys to incoming predators, some give life sustaining meat, some are so beautiful they win awards for their owners and others live soley to give eggs. They are amazing creatures and certainly makes it hard to serve them on a platter..
That is very noble of you. I love to hear when people who have little are still willing to give to others.
I have more chicks to take out of the hatcher this morning. Some more Marans and barred rocks. These birds are all 4th generation off- spring in color breeding programs to produce blue barred rocks and blue copper marans. It is still being perfected. Just an illustration of how long it can take to get what you want. Problems are loosing barring and having to reintroduce barred rocks to get the barring back, which results in some black barred chicks. And in the Marans, having black copper and splash chicks show up. The blue copper Marans problems could easily be eliminated but in order to maintain different blood lines there are lots of birds that are changed out to keep some diversity. Eventually they should all be blues.
