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Haha....uh oh...you want me to actually admit to myself how crazy I am and list all my projects?
haha...just kidding. I don't mind. I also handle my parents stock, my dad is legally blind so I do all the work with him to decide what to keep, how to pair them up and etc. For my dad's stock there are wyandotte bantams in BBS and White, a couple of Seramas, and a trio of Old English. My mom always has a fresh supply of new pullets from my culls for her flock of layers.
For my stock in the bantam I have Columbian Wyandottes and White Cornish. I will keep the wyandottes, but am working also on creating some columbian bantam cornish. Its a fun experiment.
In Large fowl I have Coronation/Light Sussex, Marans in BBS, blue and black birchen, cuckoo, BCM, and I am slowly working my way toward silver blue duckwing...it will be a while...but I'm ok with the wait. I also am going to be starting an olive egger project with a few of the girls that don't pan out for my Marans breeding programs. I also have those mixed Wyandottes coming from Paul's poultry middle of next week. Those I will split with my mom for her flock of layers. I will be keeping the Silver Pencileds and depending upon what else is in the mix, maybe another color? Luckily there is plenty of pen space for my projects. Oh, and I have dorkings coming up to hatch in a couple of weeks. Most everything I have is a project at the moment, I like to work with difficult things to see what I can do to try and improve them.
I have a pretty good network developing of people that want my culls for their laying pens or for their kids for 4H and I have a fresh supply of chicken for the year as well...once I start heading towards fall, I do the hard task of selecting only a few of each that best represent the breeds I'm working with and only winter them over for the next breeding season.
Wow! Sounds like a lot of hard work, yet so much fun. We are just getting into the meat and potatoes of this now. I started last year, but then got rid of most of my chickens and now starting all over. I'm excited about it though.
Yeah...it is a lot of hard work, but I do enjoy it. The place isn't big enough for too much larger stock, so chickens are my choice. I do have three tiny pygmy goats...they just never have gotten very big. This is going into my second year of being back into poultry. I love how naturally all the things I learned and lived by when I was growing up came back. Its a challenge, but I really am working to do as much as I can in the way of sustainable living and am finding that while it takes a lot of time, it really is satisfying. I like myself better as a result of it...I lost some of that when I was living in a city. I hope to grow the majority of my own foods again this year and to make more progress around the place.
But.... Hey, I'm still here. Well partly running to the bator to see the VERY slow progress of hatching, but nonetheless still here.
