Making Lemonade [Selective Culling Project - very long term]

[MTKitty]

Bad day to be a dominant white cockerel with some pattern showing. Butchering!

I feel like it may have been sick and wrong that I LOL’d at this.

 

[JacinLarkwell]

Making me want to make a mini landrace here too. Though I kinda do anyways with my mixed flock since they have 3 males to chose from.

 

[U_Stormcrow]

I feel like it may have been sick and wrong that I LOL’d at this.

They are all going to a good place. The meat will feed my wife and I. Bones will become stock - we are making either pho or ramen in the next day or so. The ajitsuke tamago are marinating now, and the chashu pork is done. Organ meat will become pate (for my wife - I don't care for it). Entrails and feathers - less the gall bladder - have gone into the composter to attract black soldier flies, and the flock can nibble if they want.

and after the bones are used for stock, I burn them with other waste, and till it into the soil, together with goat pellets and and composted deep litter.

We don't waste much.

Its the law of the farm. I intend to become ash myself, once I leave the table of Life (its the only game in hand). "I am the land, the land is me" and all that.

 

[NatJ]

i VERY MUCH appreciate the correction, thank you.

Considering how many genes can make "white" in chickens, it can be difficult to keep them all straight!

 

[U_Stormcrow]

Making me want to make a mini landrace here too. Though I kinda do anyways with my mixed flock since they have 3 males to chose from.

You really should. Its not a huge step from barnyard mutts to providing additional (and complimentary) environmental pressures on your flock to help shape it for your area, and the rewards are significant. Not only in personal satisfaction, but in flock performance. Admittedly, there are more heritage breeds "crafted" for Michigan-like climates than Florida-like climates, but every modern breed began as someone deciding to make a better bird for their region - and they started with select birds from the local landraces.

Heck, I've made visible progress in just a year. In five years, I hope to have something stable enough, and with sufficient performance, to slap a label on it and start showing locally.

 

[Sally PB]

I did a fancy butcher on it.

I think that is known as the "chicken yoga" pose.

 

[JacinLarkwell]

You really should. Its not a huge step from barnyard mutts to providing additional (and complimentary) environmental pressures on your flock to help shape it for your area, and the rewards are significant. Not only in personal satisfaction, but in flock performance. Admittedly, there are more heritage breeds "crafted" for Michigan-like climates than Florida-like climates, but every modern breed began as someone deciding to make a better bird for their region - and they started with select birds from the local landraces.

Heck, I've made visible progress in just a year. In five years, I hope to have something stable enough, and with sufficient performance, to slap a label on it and start showing locally.

I'll probably incubate more eggs next year and see what they make. I've only hatched 5 from this group artificially and ended up with a 4m1f ratio, so not much progress. Granted I'm not super planned for what I want, just birds bigger than bantams that free range okay.

 

[Fallenone05]

How's the most recent hatch looking?

 

[U_Stormcrow]

How's the most recent hatch looking?

Mostly (5) black birds with hints of red who will survive culling to lay eggs if they have the right plumbing, but don't clearly advance the project.

All of my hopes from this recent hatch are on a single bird.

Two others are the soft yellow that will become white, with the barest hint of pattern now showing at tail and wings. Again, misses likely to survive culling if they are pullets.

19 eggs so far today from the flock, though a number of my oldest hens still have pale feet and constant "bad feather" days (slow slow molt), plus 5 eggs from the ducks. Nine days left on the current incubation, then may take a month off to set another batch of pekin duck eggs. As the rest of this year's hatch ages up, I'm targeting a flat of eggs each day on average. Then I can start culling a bit more aggressively with the hatches, to start eliminating whites.

 

[U_Stormcrow]

Posted this elsewhere, it belongs here too:

I've fed 400# in 34 days. That's 11.76# per day. an additional amount is fed to the birds in the brooder box, not yet transfered to the grow out pen - but compared to the main flock, that amount is negligible. In theory, I should be feeding about 16# per day (a little more for the adult ducks, a little less for the 12-18 hatchlings in "grow out" at any given time, maybe it evens out?). So my pasture (at the height of the season) is allowing me to feed at a rate about 73% of predicted.