I have a few plain old birchen bantam cochins from a hatchery and they're great pets but not the quality you get when you go to a breeder. Size/markings and such are off but sweet birds. But if you PLAN on showing or breeding quality - then you buy quality.
Mine are silver birchen, a pattern/color I love. But then I like all birchens, gold or silver. In other breeds they're brown reds, or in marans black coppers (gold birchen), the color names change from breed to breed in some colors.
But, for instance, I started in Delawares this last year, and got birds from three sources. Hatchery, a breeder on her third and fourth generations, and a few males from a serious heritage breeder. By far the best birds came from the breeders who had been working toward a conscious goal, rather than a hatchery turning out eggs/chicks. The hatchery birds were smaller, more off in type and coloring and never caught up to either the hobby breeder's birds or the Heritage breeder's birds in size or quality or type.
So part depends on you, your goals and the amount of effort/time/money you have to spend. Hatchery birds start off cheaper but you'll feed MORE generations of birds to get to the standard, and cull most of them to get there over years. Or start with show or serious hobby eggs or chicks, or started birds - which do cost more, but require far fewer generations (and far less feed/space/time cost) to establish great type. Make sense?
And of course the best shortcut is starting with young adult show birds. Pretty costly, sometimes hard to find, but it is a shortcut to the quality you may want.
It's all up to you, how much room you have, how much you have for feed and heat (brooders), how much patience you have, how you take to serious culling - because if you can't cull, you're screwed, and how much you WANT the adventures of breeding and rearing fairly large numbers of potential breeders only to cull 80 or 90%.
Culling can consist of selling off stock that doesn't meet type, breeding usually means having to humanely euthanize some chicks every few hatches, or killing them for food. Spare roos are hard to sell off. Most people have room for one rooster and several hens, you do the math. Most roosters bred, no one wants. At least with delawares I can sell to the meat people if I don't feel like butchering a few spares. Cochins mature late and so have little meat value about the time you go to sort toward type and the Standard.
There's a lot more to think about than handsome chickens, and cute chicks. How much space do you really have, realistically how many birds can you house, feed, water, provide heat for - if chicks. How many years do you want this to take? Is this the work of a lifetime? Will you show? Showing includes show fees, boxes or cages, gas to get there, potentially hotels. Think it all through.
There's more to the "hobby" than coop and pen if you're serious about it.
Mine are silver birchen, a pattern/color I love. But then I like all birchens, gold or silver. In other breeds they're brown reds, or in marans black coppers (gold birchen), the color names change from breed to breed in some colors.
But, for instance, I started in Delawares this last year, and got birds from three sources. Hatchery, a breeder on her third and fourth generations, and a few males from a serious heritage breeder. By far the best birds came from the breeders who had been working toward a conscious goal, rather than a hatchery turning out eggs/chicks. The hatchery birds were smaller, more off in type and coloring and never caught up to either the hobby breeder's birds or the Heritage breeder's birds in size or quality or type.
So part depends on you, your goals and the amount of effort/time/money you have to spend. Hatchery birds start off cheaper but you'll feed MORE generations of birds to get to the standard, and cull most of them to get there over years. Or start with show or serious hobby eggs or chicks, or started birds - which do cost more, but require far fewer generations (and far less feed/space/time cost) to establish great type. Make sense?
And of course the best shortcut is starting with young adult show birds. Pretty costly, sometimes hard to find, but it is a shortcut to the quality you may want.
It's all up to you, how much room you have, how much you have for feed and heat (brooders), how much patience you have, how you take to serious culling - because if you can't cull, you're screwed, and how much you WANT the adventures of breeding and rearing fairly large numbers of potential breeders only to cull 80 or 90%.
Culling can consist of selling off stock that doesn't meet type, breeding usually means having to humanely euthanize some chicks every few hatches, or killing them for food. Spare roos are hard to sell off. Most people have room for one rooster and several hens, you do the math. Most roosters bred, no one wants. At least with delawares I can sell to the meat people if I don't feel like butchering a few spares. Cochins mature late and so have little meat value about the time you go to sort toward type and the Standard.
There's a lot more to think about than handsome chickens, and cute chicks. How much space do you really have, realistically how many birds can you house, feed, water, provide heat for - if chicks. How many years do you want this to take? Is this the work of a lifetime? Will you show? Showing includes show fees, boxes or cages, gas to get there, potentially hotels. Think it all through.
There's more to the "hobby" than coop and pen if you're serious about it.
