Crossing my Red Ranger Hens.

[Compost King]

Often when I am using craigslist I include hatch date with every hen listed, and include details of her brooder experience and what she was fed etc, helps people to believe they are getting a legit bird. I never try to profit or make up for what I put into them because that's not why I raised them, I just try to get what I can and take a loss. Even taking a loss I save money because I am no longer feeding that chicken and I have a surplus of eggs as it is and need to cut back on beaks to feed. I do make money off of some of the higher quality birds I have like Ayam Cemani and Serama (not yet, still building up breeding Stock). Meat birds or large Dual Purpose birds eat way too much to be worth dabbling in if profit is the goal. I just find meat bird production so much more fun than SOP breeding. Egg Production breeding is turning out to be much harder than I thought, every generation seems to be worse egg layers than the parents. Eggs also get smaller. I have had some luck with my Productions reds selectively bred for a dark brown egg but that was dumb luck. My Production Reds are laying darker eggs than my Cuckoo Maran. When I sold my Cuckoo Marans I kept the one that laid the darkest egg and also went broody.

 

[aliciaplus3]

Often when I am using craigslist I include hatch date with every hen listed, and include details of her brooder experience and what she was fed etc, helps people to believe they are getting a legit bird. I never try to profit or make up for what I put into them because that's not why I raised them, I just try to get what I can and take a loss. Even taking a loss I save money because I am no longer feeding that chicken and I have a surplus of eggs as it is and need to cut back on beaks to feed. I do make money off of some of the higher quality birds I have like Ayam Cemani and Serama (not yet, still building up breeding Stock). Meat birds or large Dual Purpose birds eat way too much to be worth dabbling in if profit is the goal. I just find meat bird production so much more fun than SOP breeding. Egg Production breeding is turning out to be much harder than I thought, every generation seems to be worse egg layers than the parents. Eggs also get smaller. I have had some luck with my Productions reds selectively bred for a dark brown egg but that was dumb luck. My Production Reds are laying darker eggs than my Cuckoo Maran. When I sold my Cuckoo Marans I kept the one that laid the darkest egg and also went broody.

I have no illusions of making money on layers. Here all folks see is a chicken and they know they dont want expensive one or "old" ones, I am not mad about it just the way it is. I raise my birds cuz I love em, and hatching them, and watching them grow and change. I also enjoy sharing my passion with folks around me and getting others started keeping fowl. I might be an enabler?
I still don't want to see a person become soured on chicken keeping because of a dishonest person.
I love seeing what different crosses produce. I have had decent luck crossing wellsummer with cuckoo marans and maintaining the darker eggs.... the red sexlinks I got from privet hatchery via my local feed store actually laid as dark if not a darker egg than my cuckoo marans!
I am currently leaning twords 4 different "lines" my Delaware line leaning to the meat side, my Big necked neck line also leaning to the meat side, my green blue egg layers, with a dash of leghorn to get better egg numbers, and my Dark layers, wellsummer, marans, barnelever, Penedescenca, and red sexlink crosses. Oh I guess 5 because my DD is working twords black Nn to SOP.... whew I may have bit off more than I can chew!

 

[Morrigan]

The other thing about selling chickens, is that I don't want strangers coming on and off my property to look at the chickens. I'm not overly-crazed about bio-security, but the Newcastle's outbreak in Southern California is worrisome, and I don't want to potentially expose my flock to something. I would need to figure out a way to go off-site to sell. What do others do about this?

 

[igorsMistress]

The other thing about selling chickens, is that I don't want strangers coming on and off my property to look at the chickens. I'm not overly-crazed about bio-security, but the Newcastle's outbreak in Southern California is worrisome, and I don't want to potentially expose my flock to something. I would need to figure out a way to go off-site to sell. What do others do about this?

This is one of the reasons I prefer to hatch instead of buy. I don't live in SoCal but it's next door and migrant birds can carry it anyway.

I don't do swaps or go to shows and I'm not sure how I would sell pullets either. I don't let people into my yard very often and I have shoes I wear only in my backyard, mostly because of poop but it's a good practice I think.

 

[Compost King]

whew I may have bit off more than I can chew!

That perfectly says where I am at. about half the projects I have going have to end in failure because I figure out it takes multiple breeding pens for each project. I dream bigger than I have the means for. We even have some of the same projects! The problem with projects is that the culls have such little value as far as pricing but people who get them love them especially when bought at Point of Lay for such a low price. Right now I have about 30 to 50 three-quarter Dorkings running around and maybe 5 to 10 are worth breeding. And half of them will fail the 5 Toe test breeding. So I expect more meet than I can handle. The guy I give dark meat too has a young adult nephew in the Neighborhood who said he would love to learn how to process chickens and I will be showing him how to and giving him culls to process. He just got a new job last week at a chicken processing plant so he has a new interest in this.

 

[Compost King]

The other thing about selling chickens, is that I don't want strangers coming on and off my property to look at the chickens. I'm not overly-crazed about bio-security, but the Newcastle's outbreak in Southern California is worrisome, and I don't want to potentially expose my flock to something. I would need to figure out a way to go off-site to sell. What do others do about this?

that's one of the reasons why I lost interest in doing some of the super value birds, people who pay a lot seem to want to see a lot before they invest money. When I sell birds dirt cheap they just pull into the driveway or park on the street and I deliver birds to them. I didn't like having people in the back yard because some people are just disrespectful, although most tend to be decent folks.

 

[Morrigan]

I just candled my eggs from Moyers. It's day 7. I see veins in 6 of them, 4 look to be clears (with totally messed up air sacs, so they got a rough ride with USPS) 1 blood ring, and 1 uncertain. The uncertain is the egg from my NN cockerel and Orpington hen, as I have seen the NN trying with her a few times. The shell is fairly dark with a lot of spots, so it's really hard to see anything. I think (I hope) I see a darker mass in it.

Leaving them all in for a couple more days to be certain before I pull the 4 clears and blood ring egg.

 

[Compost King]

Been busy nursing a Black Copper Maran back to good health, some dumped a ratty stray Rooster in my back yard. I suspect a Neighbor must have found it wandering around and thought it was mine. The embarrassing part is that what ever neighbor did that must think my chickens are nasty and stinky like that guy. Anyways I have been building a new coop and run for him because the rabbit cage I had him quarantined in wasn't tall enough for him to stand upright in. This has taken me away from the meat bird crossing pictures and weighings etc. My Red Ranger is on egg laying strike and I am preparing myself to accept the fact that she may never lay again. I have no idea if that is the case or not but I have to remember they weren't bred to be long living egg layers. Maybe she got too fat? maybe she is just on strike. But I want to keep breeding Birds like her to make my own back yard broilers. I have kept most of her daughters and the daughters of the Red Ranger who died. Kept 2 sons for breeding purposes. I still have all 3 CX Pullets on rationed feed. When I get around to it I will be weighing them and trying to figure out if rationing feed to them kept their weights down or not. They are 9 weeks old and seem small for CX at 9 weeks. they run up the compost pile and sorta fly a bit still. I removed the buddy birds because I felt it was unfair to them to have to live on rationed feed. These 3 girls forage a bit, not as much as when they had buddy birds but they still forage.
The one surviving large Cornish that I was going include in the breeding projects has a backwards leg, he is in the brooder with chicks 3 weeks younger than him and will likely have to live buy him or herself as I figure out how to breed him or her. If its a her I am sure I can just put my dorking over her and collect eggs then put her out of her misery or keep her as pet depending on if she seems to enjoy life using one leg and dragging the other. if its a male I might have to do a little AI magic.

 

[Molpet]

Been busy nursing a Black Copper Maran back to good health, some dumped a ratty stray Rooster in my back yard. I suspect a Neighbor must have found it wandering around and thought it was mine. The embarrassing part is that what ever neighbor did that must think my chickens are nasty and stinky like that guy. Anyways I have been building a new coop and run for him because the rabbit cage I had him quarantined in wasn't tall enough for him to stand upright in. This has taken me away from the meat bird crossing pictures and weighings etc. My Red Ranger is on egg laying strike and I am preparing myself to accept the fact that she may never lay again. I have no idea if that is the case or not but I have to remember they weren't bred to be long living egg layers. Maybe she got too fat? maybe she is just on strike. But I want to keep breeding Birds like her to make my own back yard broilers. I have kept most of her daughters and the daughters of the Red Ranger who died. Kept 2 sons for breeding purposes. I still have all 3 CX Pullets on rationed feed. When I get around to it I will be weighing them and trying to figure out if rationing feed to them kept their weights down or not. They are 9 weeks old and seem small for CX at 9 weeks. they run up the compost pile and sorta fly a bit still. I removed the buddy birds because I felt it was unfair to them to have to live on rationed feed. These 3 girls forage a bit, not as much as when they had buddy birds but they still forage.
The one surviving large Cornish that I was going include in the breeding projects has a backwards leg, he is in the brooder with chicks 3 weeks younger than him and will likely have to live buy him or herself as I figure out how to breed him or her. If its a her I am sure I can just put my dorking over her and collect eggs then put her out of her misery or keep her as pet depending on if she seems to enjoy life using one leg and dragging the other. if its a male I might have to do a little AI magic.

I would not breed a bird that has something that could be a genetic fault.

 

[Compost King]

I doubt the dislocated leg is a genetic fault. Its likely due to a complicated hatch. but I will be shopping for local dark cornish from now until that chick is an adult and if I can replace him/her I will.