Michigan Thread - all are welcome!

[chickflick]

RaZ, that really sucks that you can't find anyone willing to work. Sucks you lost your phone.
Furnace fixed. Seems the tech that came out in the spring screwed up and attached all the tubes wrong. Don't ask me what tubes. But they all went to the wrong thingy. So no charge!! 2 hours of everyone's time cuz dummy didn't know what he was doing. Yes, he's no longer with the company.
Warmer today!
Oh, got to get going and take my therapy dog to the senior center.. take care

 

[RaZ]

Phone has been found. Face down in a flower bed beside the porch. It must have fallen out of my pocket when I rescued the devil dog off of the window ledge. Not damaged even though it spent the night in the rain.
Got a crew lined up for the trusses and decking next week. It is supposed to rain here until Monday. After that it gets nice. The owner of the company didn't even laugh at my carpentry skills.

 

[chickflick]

that's great, Randy. On both accounts

 

[rachelsflock]

No fox today. Time to shore up the fence that he dug through and let them back into the big run again. I lost a lot of birds yesterday, one pet, and a lot of cockerel dinners, but nothing to do but try again. Put in an order with McMurray because I'm down to 7 hens-3 california whites that lay daily rain or shine, and 4 hens that lay maybe once a week if I'm lucky. The 3 surviving cuckoo cockerels are going to a new home this weekend. I might hold onto the two very young solid red orpington cockerels as a backup plan in case the roosters I ordered have a dinner temperament, but I might not. I'm not sure the lady coming to get the cuckoo boys knows that if you breed red cuckoo, to cuckoo, to cuckoo the red color lightens and lightens, so I might be letting those go too. Just as well. The fox seemed to prefer the orpingtons.
I think we're going to take more of an egg focus with the chickens instead of a meat focus. If the mcmurray birds don't work for temperament or pmaybe erformance reasons, I may just get a bunch of california whites from Hoover's this summer and bite the bullet be up to my ears in eggs. They are sweet, quiet hens that don't fight or pick on others and lay like crazy. They're also alert to potential killers. All white eggs though. And sometimes the shells get thin and they tend to need to be wormed more than the other birds.

 

[rachelsflock]

On a more positive note, I found a buck to breed my nigerian does with. Yay goats!

 

[1muttsfan]

When I first started with chickens I went with dual purpose breeds, thinking I would have meat and eggs too. What I found was meat wise the DP's were only fair compared to meat birds, and they eat a LOT of food for the eggs they lay (with the exception of Delawares which are laying machines, but still eat heartily). I also had no interest in eating the birds I had come to know well.
Switching to layers has saved me a lot in feed costs, and gives me a better income in egg sales. And I don't have to consider eating the birds I've raised from the egg.

 

[1muttsfan]

We need goat

On a more positive note, I found a buck to breed my nigerian does with. Yay goats!

pictures!

 

[rachelsflock]

Goat pictures? I can do that.

 

[Newby81]

When I first started with chickens I went with dual purpose breeds, thinking I would have meat and eggs too. What I found was meat wise the DP's were only fair compared to meat birds, and they eat a LOT of food for the eggs they lay (with the exception of Delawares which are laying machines, but still eat heartily). I also had no interest in eating the birds I had come to know well.
Switching to layers has saved me a lot in feed costs, and gives me a better income in egg sales. And I don't have to consider eating the birds I've raised from the egg.

What do you recommend as the best egg laying varieties? I am looking to add a couple more to the flock this spring. I generally only buy from TSC and Family Farm and Home. I already have two mixes, one kind of looks like a Buff Orpington the other one is the the white one on my avatar. I also have an Isa Brown, red mix and two Black Sex Links. I free range them, so food isn't a huge problem until winter, just no sense in wasting money.

 

[1muttsfan]

If you just want lots and lots of eggs, the sex links (both red and black) are the best overall layers.
However, birds that lay that way tend to stop laying at an earlier age, as they use up their ovaries quickly. I also found that the eggs got so big after the first year, with thinner and thinner shells, that they would no longer fit in an egg carton.
My preference is for heritage layer breeds. Since I also love the look of a mixed-color dozen eggs, I am willing to make some compromises on laying ability for color - so currently I have a Welsummer and 2 Delawares to add some color variety.
My current main breed is Arkansas Blues, smallish blue-black-splash birds bred to produce large numbers of lovely big blue eggs. They are very feed efficient, and while not touchy-feely friendly like my Delawares, they are not freaky wild (although they do fly well). There are not that many of us that have them. https://www.backyardchickens.com/threads/arkansas-blue-egg-layers.874920/
I also have one Speckled Sussex hen that lays almost no eggs, but is really a pet more than anything else.

ETA if you are interested at all in hatching it can be very rewarding - and you can get a much larger variety of birds by buying shipped eggs. (Not that I mean to lure you into the hatching frenzy but I love hatching my own chicks)

You might also consider ordering directly from a hatchery. I have in the past ordered birds from Sand Hill Preservation, they have a huge variety of heritage breeds and while it can take a while to get chicks from them they have good birds. There are other mail-order hatcheries as well, although the quality of the birds can be questionable from some of them, so research well.