Most wondrous man is really getting into this whole chicken thing and he's planning on building me a new big house with separate sections for different breeds. So I'm planning to continue offering chicks for sale and I'll continue to produce eggs for sale. The new house will contain some EE chicks and RIR chicks as those are what I get the most requests for. Now, if YOU could raise two other breeds for breeding and sale what would you pick? I'm thinking about going in a rare or exotic direction for one and doing some silkies or something with an eye for having some really pretty birds and making a little more money per bird. What do you think?
My hubby is doing something similar. He's already built me 4 coops in the past year, now is planning a fifth coop, just for brooding the chickens that I would be selling. I plan to mainly breed and sell the ones I am raising now - which I've been re-working the flock to find what I REALLY love, and what others might want to buy locally. The local market is really where to find out what you should raise - different areas call for different breeds wanted. Eventually one of my coops will be just for a pure flock of Delawares. The others are mostly mutts, but brown egg layers, which is what folks around here like. Where I am, most people aren't picky as to pure bred or whatnot - they want a nice looking chicken, but they want brown eggs, and lots of them. If it is a dual purpose bird, so much the better. They will do with fewer eggs if they can have meat, also. There are some chickens I would not raise - for any money Everyone may like those silkies - but I think they are ugly - just not my thing. Let the others raise silkies and sell them, I'll stick to something that doesn't make me cringe when I see it running around the yard. meri
If you are interested, do some Google searches for the "Ark of Taste." They have a list of rare and endangered poultry breeds that aren't raised by many people any more, and are at risk of going extinct. If you could get into raising one of the Ark of Taste breeds, you would be doing something to conserve a rare breed and would likely get many customers looking for those particular birds (probably quite a few BYC members, actually!). The Marans are another breed that are up-and-coming in popularity (especially the copper ones, I believe).
My opinion is probably minority, so you may want to disregard it, but here it is. It kind of goes along with the Easter egger idea. What I realy wanted most, was a basket full of pretty colored eggs. It sounds easy to achieve and is shockingly hard to get. Especially if you can have only a few hens. To get a mix of truly pretty eggs from a happy homogenous group of just a few hens, without years of experimentation or meciless culling is the unrealized dream of many posters here. People order easter eggers, picturing a basket with a lovely pink egg, blue egg, cream egg, mint green egg, brown egg. You know, like on everybodys avatars and blogs. But instead you get six hens and 4 will lay muddy shades of green and two a blah shade of brown. Very dissapointing, but by then they are pets. IF you could carefully select birds of a size and disposition to truly get along, maybe carefully select and breed only the best easter eggers, with the prettiest eggs. Remembering not to cross, blue with brown egg layers (green is common, and good blue very hard to find). Seperate pens for pink , blue , brown and green, (if you could even achieve it) So you could sell someone a mix of easter egger chicks, with a high probability of getting a mix of (for a change - realy NICE colored eggs). I think you'd have something there. As a plus your own eggs that you sell would be in VERY high demand.
The people who bought eggs from us were truly in love with our many colored eggs. My egg layers are the McMurray rainbow layer mix and they truly do lay every color under the sun. We got white, tan, rose, brown, blue and green eggs. Then I lost my EE girlies but I'll replace them soon enough and have my pretty eggs for sale again. The idea of breeding just EEs for egg color is intriguing especially if I could do it with several different colored EE chickens because the people around here seem to want colorful chickens as well as colorful eggs.
I have a few araucana now and even with them good egg color is not as easy as it sounds. The thing is, I cannot have 15 or 20 hens and then select the half dozen nicest eggs to enjoy in a basket. I have 4 (FOUR) hens. It would have been even worse to try and get them if they were childrens pets.
