- Sep 2, 2012
- 5
- 0
- 7
Hi Everyone
New to BYC and Fairly New to raising chickens and turkeys. We started raising poultry 3 years ago to provide another product for our customers at local farmers markets with our elk & buffalo. Of course as soon as we started selling the broilers everyone assumed we had laying birds and wanted eggs. We did - but only about 5 at the time! I got Bingo Bango & Bongo (3 black d'uccle cross), Isa & Henry (an Isa Brown & our stalking attack rooster), Peach our Auracana/EE? a refugee from the city and Star & Lucky (a duck & a Rhode Island Red school hatching project who were rescued by vegitarians then rehomed to us when they got too big for their city home.) We now have about 20 Rhode Island reds, 25 Isa Browns and an assortment of heritage breeds. Our phylosophy is to raise the chickens as naturally as possible. Our 50ish mature hens are running at large as Henry did a good job training the dogs not to go after them. Unfortunately Henry is not with us any more and I have to retrain a new dog with a less aggressive rooster (George Henry). Right now I am tying up the new dog an Anatolian Sheppard (guardian dog) to keep her from chasing chickens. I would appreciate any tips about that project. Our 35 new hens some Auracanas/EE and a bunch of other breeds are still cooped with a run until we get more fence up around some grass or all our meat birds go and we put up some netting to keep them from flying out - I don't like clipping their wings - just in case the dogs do go after them. Looking forward to reading stories and swapping advice
New to BYC and Fairly New to raising chickens and turkeys. We started raising poultry 3 years ago to provide another product for our customers at local farmers markets with our elk & buffalo. Of course as soon as we started selling the broilers everyone assumed we had laying birds and wanted eggs. We did - but only about 5 at the time! I got Bingo Bango & Bongo (3 black d'uccle cross), Isa & Henry (an Isa Brown & our stalking attack rooster), Peach our Auracana/EE? a refugee from the city and Star & Lucky (a duck & a Rhode Island Red school hatching project who were rescued by vegitarians then rehomed to us when they got too big for their city home.) We now have about 20 Rhode Island reds, 25 Isa Browns and an assortment of heritage breeds. Our phylosophy is to raise the chickens as naturally as possible. Our 50ish mature hens are running at large as Henry did a good job training the dogs not to go after them. Unfortunately Henry is not with us any more and I have to retrain a new dog with a less aggressive rooster (George Henry). Right now I am tying up the new dog an Anatolian Sheppard (guardian dog) to keep her from chasing chickens. I would appreciate any tips about that project. Our 35 new hens some Auracanas/EE and a bunch of other breeds are still cooped with a run until we get more fence up around some grass or all our meat birds go and we put up some netting to keep them from flying out - I don't like clipping their wings - just in case the dogs do go after them. Looking forward to reading stories and swapping advice
& 
from Alabama. Glad you joined us.
