Dominique Thread!

[centrarchid]

Some culled early that fail to thrive. When it comes to type mine have to be a good 8 months old but with color attributes you can still make decisions while they are suitable broilers.

 

[Alaskan]

You can cull all along.

You can cull every single week, those that are not growing the way you like.

I am wondering if I want to start doing an early cull of those chicks that I can not clearly sex.

The more chicks that you start out with, the more things that you can cull for as they grow.

However, centrarchid is totally correct about needing to wait until about 8 months or later before you can know how good a body type, and comb.

The females should also have a late cull. Ideally (fantasy for me, since I am not set up to do trap nesting) if you could track your females through their first couple of years, you could then cull in regards to average egg production, size or eggs, etc.

 

[JediJinx]

Sedaeng, You may keep your roo or use a superior roo. Any hatchery will not give you a better rooster, therefore if you want to improve the looks of your flock closer to show quality, using a show quality rooster from a DCA breeder will get you there faster, because you can mate the resulting daughters and grand-daughters back to the good roo. Some inbreeding is ok, especially following an outcross, you don't want to do this year after year forever. Line breeding is considered better than brother-sister. Line breeding is putting the son-daughter with the mother-father.

On outcrossing - outcrossing many times produce a larger bird than the parents. therefore, do not use a bird which is above weight for the standard. Cocks should be no more than 7 lbs, cockerels 6 lbs, hens 5 lbs, pullets 4 lbs.. Weigh your birds! Dominiques are not supposed to be as big as a Plymouth Barred Rock or Rhode Island Red. Compared to a Buckeye, a Dominique looks almost runty.

You can cull early for wry tails, crooked combs, crooked toes. Do not cull for plumage, eye color, or size until about 6-7 months. Most of the males may be ready for eval by 6 months, not before. You will see an 8 month old blossom out beautifully when you were sure he would be dinner.

Breeding Dominiques to standard is time consuming, costly and requires space to divide your growing boys away from the layer flock. They can be raised together as long as they have no girls to compete for. Keep young pullets with the main flock as long as you have peaceful hens, not mean girls.

I usually bring my youngsters outside at 5 weeks if it is warm, in a fenced area alongside my flock. At around 8 weeks I begin to assimilate them into the flock in the evenings, allowing them out into the main yard with them as they are getting ready to go to bed, each night giving them more time. Then I begin carrying them into the main coop at nightfall and putting them on their own low roost. By 16 weeks I remove the boys away from the adults. They start to annoy the hens at this point. If there are broodies with chicks, I may do this earlier. Last year I was able to cull down to two cockerels from 25, and 3 pullets from 18. You do not need a whole coopful of hens to produce the next years' batch. But I am a minimalist. I keep ONLY breeders and maybe one or two extras of each sex, never more. I don't like running out of space when I want to bring in the next year's batch. The only individuals that get to stay are those who are closer to the goal than the previous gen. I have a few "pets" who are there to lay eggs for the table, but everyone else knows they have a job to do. The cocks take their role very seriously

This is the fastest way to improve. IMO

 

[sedaeng]

if you cull before they produce plumage, what are you doing with the young birds? selling them or are they dogs treats, compost?

Trap nesting, I was wondering how I was going to connect my hens to their eggs. I actually have a hen that consistently produces double yoke eggs. Ill have to research the trap nesting technique.

It really sounds like to do this correctly I need to better position myself logistically to 'manage' my flock. lots more research

 

[centrarchid]

Culling need not mean immediate termination. Rather it can simply mean removal of consideration for use as brood stock. You can still grow them out and even use females for egg production, they just do not get into breeding pens. I have many cull hens that live longer than the average backyard bird. Some of my cull games will likely to for a decade because they have value other than simply for use as breeders.

 

[sedaeng]

gotcha! I suppose I could sell them on craigslist or similar as well. I do not want to get overwhelmed with chickens

I ordered a trap door for a nest. Im going to try it out for a fit test with what I have built already, see if I can make it work for me. If so I will order more for the remaining nest boxes.

 

[Sylvester017]

I am thinking about breeding my Doms. I have one rooster, very nice tempered, alert and takes care of his hens. But I am concerned that since they all came together from the same hatchery, that he might be related to the hens. Should I go ahead and pick up another Dom rooster from a different hatchery?

If you don't know the relationship of your hatchery birds you could breed him to hens from a different source and then safely breed him back to his daughters. Just a thought. I had a brother and sister and had to separate them because I didn't want chicks at all and certainly not inbred offspring. He's a cutie - tail looks a bit scruffy but I'm assuming the result of a molt? - chickens don't always look their best 100% of the time.

 

[JediJinx]

if you cull before they produce plumage, what are you doing with the young birds? selling them or are they dogs treats, compost?

Trap nesting, I was wondering how I was going to connect my hens to their eggs. I actually have a hen that consistently produces double yoke eggs. Ill have to research the trap nesting technique.

It really sounds like to do this correctly I need to better position myself logistically to 'manage' my flock. lots more research

Culling is an ongoing process really, as little chicks you might have one or two that are runts or sickly = cull. As they grow larger you may notice a crooked toe or wry tail = cull, these end up in the burn pile. Most of mine were not eliminated until around 16-20 weeks, at which time I can usually tell which ones have more promise than the rest of the lot. By then I have a few marked with bands indicating they will stay. I do sell some if there is interest, and butcher some, depends on how many I have. I have a small coop and yard for them and don't like having large numbers, it is more ideal to have the space to allow them all to grow to 7 months. In my county, we are restricted to the number of outbuildings/sq footage we are allowed to have, feet of fencing, etc.

As far as hens, trap nesting is the only sure way to collect and mark which hen produces which egg. What I am doing this year is only breeding/collecting from two hens who are separated now in a breeding coop. I plan to stagger batches until I have hatched about 25 from this trio. I would not hatch from a double yolk hen. This is an indication of an egg production problem and a double yolk egg very very rarely hatches successfully.

 

[Zone3Dakota]

Well, i went ahead and ordered 25 large fowl straight run. It will be an experiment, as we've not had chickens at all, or at least since i was a kid. If it were not for a change in finances, we would have driven across two states, basically, to get some breeder stock. Plus, since this is going to be a 'first', i really didn't want something unfortunate to happen to 'someone else's' birds.

I don't know of any knowledgeable 'chicken judges' in the area, so will probably depend on posted photos to help with culling. Might be that i'll need to purchase a good show bird to build my future flock around, so if anybody has one to spare next year, please keep me in mind.

Many thanks to Calvin Walsh for answers to my emails.

Chicks are due here, about the end of the month. We have lots to do, setting up brooder, moving and repairing our seventy-five dollar 8' x 10' shed.

 

[Alaskan]

Sounds loke fun.