Greetings! Using Standard-bred heritage poultry as a basis for traditional food production is a passion of ours. With heritage fowl, there is an entire cycle of food production that fills the calendar with seasonality and surprise, which differs in outstanding fashion from the current hum-drum of same-old same-old that has replaced our traditional food supply since the rise of the chicken nugget.
It would be a pleasure to start a dialogue, in conjuction with the other fine threads in this section dedicated to heritage poultry, about the ins and outs of using Standard-bred poultry on the homestead.
This can be a place to share experience, ask questions, and work out solutions with regards to egg production, meat production, feather harvest, etc., all in relating back to the breeding efforts of an ever evolving homestead flock of heritage fowl and even waterfowl
This is Joseph first post when he started this tread.
I am not a homesteader so I will go back to my tread.
Have a nice day.
Well Bob I hope you hang around, you always have great advice and insights! I am homesteading, tho right now mostly I just have the chickens & ducks, partly because EVERYTHING in the world likes to eat chicken and good fencing is expensive, not leaving much leeway right now for other enterprises. That said there is always something to eat at my place and of course I eat a LOT of chicken. I have a mixed bag of Black Copper Marans, easter eggers, hatchery quality buff orpingtons, some Welsummers, some Wellie/leghorn crosses and recently some young Buff Rocks.
While I would love to sell organic meat, in my area that isn't going to work out. I must have that meat processed in an inspected slaughter house, which is nearly 70 miles one way, so just not happening. I market my meat to myself.
I begin processing young birds when they are 3-4 months old, with the BCM I started with the boys with too much color on their chest, because that isn't going to change. With the EE pretty much all boys go to freezer camp at the moment so I start with the biggest ones. Occasionally I'll have a roaster, mostly the couple extra boys I kept back while I waited for them to mature before making a final decision. I may have Mean Rooster Soup any time of the year.
When I am doing a lot of young fryers in a short period of time I might package them as pieces instead of whole birds. In that case I collect the bony carcasses and hold them in bags in the freezer until the weather cools enough for canning. Then I'll make several gallons of stock from them and can them in pints and quarts. I may experiment with canning some meat this fall.
Because I seem to have a steady stream of culls and extra roosters coming along all year I will probably never raise any specific meat birds. Also I haven't really bought any meat except a little bacon and sausage in a year.
I sell eggs at my local farmer's market, $4 / dz for regular size and $2 for little pullet eggs. My huge Muscovy duck eggs are $4 for a half doz and the slightly smaller Welsh Harlequin eggs are $3 for a half doz. Most Sat. I sell out in under an hour. Two weeks ago I sold a total of 15.5 dz eggs in 15 minutes. I have people standing in line when they ring the bell to open the market. I buy certified organic feed with fish meal, no corn, soy or canola in the layer feed. I am slowly working towards having good size runs that I can plant with all sorts of greens and grains and rotate the birds through the pens to help cut feed costs. This is expensive feed but it's one reason some of my loyal customers buy my eggs instead of from the other vendors. Also my customers love all the different colors and the fact that I can tell on many of the eggs which bird laid it.
My market closes Oct 5 and while I will be making arrangements with steady customers to sell eggs over the winter I don't think I will be over run with eggs. There are a number of older hens going to the stew pot this year and I will greatly thin out the younger ones. I want to breed quality BCM, Buff Orpingtons, Buff Rocks, that is another avenue of income, selling good breeding stock so I cull with that in mind as well as productivity. I will be hatching chicks for my next generation and so it all starts over again. Since my farmer's market is June-Oct will mostly hatch from Nov-Feb so everyone will be laying in time for the opening of the market, tho I may hatch a few in April & May to sell as chicks.
