Mixed heritage and birds with dubious parentage thread. (mutts)

[Dandelioness]

I'm technologically challenged. I am the type that prefers a scythe or old-style push mower to the ones my husband and son use (rider & walk behind) just so I don't have to mess with strings, fuel, chokes (or whatever those little rubbery buttons are) and the noise. I like to hear what I'm doing, and of course the song of the guineas. The exception would be my husband's set of Dewalt power tools. He showed me how to use them so I could help with framing our house last winter, and now I feel like the scrap wood pile is my oyster. Those things are pretty spiffy.

So, I'm going to try using broodies to hatch out some chicks this year. I've never tried an incubator before, but a couple years ago a friend had offered to lend me hers. So I spent some time researching the different incubator methods and types. After waking up a couple times asleep on the desk or a book, I decided that either I have no attention span or this incubation thing is just not for me. I am really very impressed with people who use those things.

I'm putting an EE roo (beautiful black breasted red coloring, standoffish but unaggressive nature towards people, good skills with the ladies and predators) over three EE hens and three Cuckoo Marans for about a month. When I get a broody going, I'll collect eggs from that pen and give them to her. The offspring should be half EE and half olive egger.

Then I'll borrow a BCM roo from a much darker egg than my Marans' to put over the same EE hens and Cuckoo Marans for another month, and let the next broody do her thing. From the reading I've done, it looks like this will produce a black sex-link type with a chocolate egg, and another olive egger batch. We shall see.

Hoping I can have those chicks fully feathered before winter. If it goes well, I have the gene pool for Cinnamon Queens here in the backyard. I am already in love with my hatchery CQs. That would be next year's hatch, though. I kind of roll my generations (raise 2-3 types of chicks every other year) and sell off my 3-year old hens for cheap to people who just like to look at hens in the yard. I try to raise two colors of eggs each year, too, so that I can easily tell who's laying. And who doesn't love a colored egg basket.

Anyway, wish me luck. This spring/summer will be my very first hatch ever!! There's a silkie and a BO showing some signs of broodiness now, but I'm gently breaking them up so they don't start hatching golf balls too soon. I'm already eyeing that scrap pile and spare wire mesh with the idea of a nice portable broody run. Or six. I think he must have shown me how to use those tools on purpose.

 

[Dandelioness]

Those turkey's look great, Ralphie.

A friend of mine raised some of the slates and naragansetts (I think that's what they are called) this past summer for the first time. She'd walk out back and call, "Wheeere's my pretty tuuurkeys?" and they would come running up. They were very pretty, and so sweet. She's going to try again this year, everyone made it to the table, and maybe keep a tom & couple hens to hatch out some more in the future.

 

[duluthralphie]

Good Luck!

I think you would do fine with the incubator as long as you do the dry method. It was no work, I candled the eggs a couple times, removed the exploded rotten ones I missed candling and had little pheasant in a month.

I might even try and but a second incubator this spring, but do not tell the DW.....

I think it is a lot like everything else in nature, the less you monkey with it the better the results.

 

[Rhetts]

No signs of laying soon. No squatting, still small pink combs except one I noticed today is starting to get a teensy bit wider than the others. I am hopeful that I won't have to wait TOO long.

I figured if the skin was off the birds, it would mean the meat would be dry when I cooked them. Not that I can cook moist chicken anyway but I thought it would be worse, like jerky. So skinning them doesn't seem so bad after all. Thanks!!

 

[duluthralphie]

What I have found is the best way for me to make chicken, my wife works and I am retired so I cook, is brown the skinless chicken in whatever spices I want.

Then place the chicken in a covered baking dish in the oven at 370 and finish it. I call it my baked fried chicken. It stays real moist then.

 

[Rhetts]

yes good luck Dandelioness- I am very interested in hearing how things go!!

 

[Rhetts]

What I have found is the best way for me to make chicken, my wife works and I am retired so I cook, is brown the skinless chicken in whatever spices I want.

Then place the chicken in a covered baking dish in the oven at 370 and finish it. I call it my baked fried chicken. It stays real moist then.

Sounds simple enough that I can't botch that up! I am queen of burnt on the outside raw in the middle kind of cuisine. Still working on perfecting my skills!

 

[lazy gardener]

I figured if the skin was off the birds, it would mean the meat would be dry when I cooked them. Not that I can cook moist chicken anyway but I thought it would be worse, like jerky. So skinning them doesn't seem so bad after all. Thanks!!

Crock pot does a good job.

 

[nj2wv]

I skin mine because I do the processing myself so it is easier to skin than pluck. I put the bird in a crock pot. Very tender even with an old hen.

These are some mixed mutts I hatched out in September. Don't know the parentage.

 

[duluthralphie]

I skin mine because I do the processing myself so it is easier to skin than pluck. I put the bird in a crock pot. Very tender even with an old hen.

These are some mixed mutts I hatched out in September. Don't know the parentage.

If you do not even know the parentage they definitely qualify as mutts!

I find it faster to skin than pluck too, and I have a plucker. I find it amazing the stores charge more for skinless chicken when it easier and faster to skin them.


I know this is going back a few posts, but my "red/blue" turkeys are like your friends, Dandelioness. When we step outside they come running. Ethel, the mother, will stand and talk to us for 15 minutes or more. She looks at us and just "quacks". If she stops talking she turns her head and waits for us to say something. We usually say something like " Interesting, I did not know that." and Ethel starts a new story or further explains, whatever she is doing.

When we go for a walk with the dogs, it is the 2 dogs the Tom turkey and us. All three of them about 2 steps in front of us. I wish my purebreds were as luvable as my mutts.


I am getting the urge to hatch some chicks, I have to remind myself winter has a long ways to go yet.