Thank you. I love the stuff I've learned and I'm glad we stuck it through. I've seen lots of breeders come and go over the years.
I'm new in learning about heritage breeds as well. I had no idea there were blue egg laying chickens until last year....lol!
And every time I come on here I learn something new about turkeys and ducks and chickens and goats and dogs and bunnies. It's just fantastic!
(And who knew regular thermometers were so inaccurate? Like, wow!!! Something else I learned)
I like your thinking about learning about the heritage breeds and doing right by them.
Sometimes that green paper stuff gets in the way of good decision making and in the end it's the breed that suffers.
I completely agree they have so much more to offer(although in most strains it's diminished some BC people didn't breed for it) foraging, breeding ability and tons of other things and disease resistance; everything! Okay Cornish crosses are the most economical meat bird but they're not truly made for this world. We are planning to eat our first home raised bird in the next couple days and I am super excited!!!
We even processed it ourselves. Now we're not complete novices in the animal world DH2B is a crop farmer his family grows hundreds of acres of canning crops every year everyone say thank you to the farmer that feeds you
lol his family raised some steers each year and they had show cows that they calved each year for show steers. They used to also show chickens and turkeys but there again they weren't heritage breed/strain chickens and turkeys. Since beginning our chicken journey we have discovered many breeds and while we tend to walk the line between fancy and useful we do have a mixed flock with some pet birds. We also have our breeders. Right now these include English Orpingtons, and will include CL for the egg color, saleability and autosexing, silkies as broodies and saleability, our project bird breeders, slw(also used for our project), and we plan to add HRIR, hopefully some silver pencilled rocks and maybe try out a few others. I'm sure we'll add more and tweak the existing birds our breeders will be separated for hatching eggs but otherwise the plan is to run them as one flock. I'm sure over time we'll find the chicken breeds that work best for us and probably add and remove breeds but we will always be working towards what the breeds can and should become. Eventually we will have a completely self sustaining flock, that are winter hardy, summer hardy, good layer of large eggs, great foragers and broodies, as well as good table birds and intelligent enough to be predator resistant, as well as being disease and parasite resistant. I'm sure there's more I'm forgetting as well. Lol. We also want to try Buckeyes.
What breeds of each are you working with?
I know DH2B wants to try Dexter cattle at some point.
We're still in the research stage for a lot of it. How long did you research before choosing your breeds?
Fingers and toes are crossed and prayers are being said because this is my keeper clutch!
Got done all the roosters in the coop. And that's it. Never even got to the hens...lol. Maybe I need less roosters...
I also did their legs with red cote...see how that works. If nothing else they look very fancy. I notice some roosters seem more prone to leg mites than others. Has anyone else noticed this? In the more exciting news... My final egg hatched last yesterday sometime in the afternoon. When I checked last night, this little one was already out and dry. 
I'm still tickled that I'm getting different colors from my pearl pair. I hope this one is a female. 
I put him in with the last chick that hatched. The chick has a foot issue and is a little slower while I'm correcting it. And the keet is, well, it's a keet and it's just crazy...lol. 
