....Where do i buy heritage chicks?
Is it true that if you buy chicks from tractor supply ect they are more aggressive?
Small children with chickens when and how do I introduce them?
How much chicken handling is ok? (my kids are animal people lol)
Roosters....are all aggressive?
Do you handle your rooster a lot of not at all?
How long until eggs for the buff orpingtons?
Things I should be aware of when bringing new chicks home? Pasty butt ect?
Thanks in advance guys its so helpful to get answers from people who have and love their chickens!
I think that a so called heritage chicken is the worst chicken for a new-be to buy. If a heritage breed has a history of good health and production, great feed conversion, and acceptable behavior then that heritage breed would be a standard production breed not a barn yard has been. IMHO the higher prices and increased demand that heritage chicks are intended or were invented to fetch, results in intensive inbreeding without a specific goal in mind other than maybe feather color. This results in nervous chickens that are more apt to attack their caretakers or other problems.
I do not think that chicks from
Tractor Supply are any more aggressive than the chicks you hatch and raise yourself. They are chickens for Peat's sake and chickens are.... well chickens are just chicken.
From the very beginning be sure to introduce the chickens to the children. Very young chickens and very young children are often incompatible not from the chickens nature or actions but because of the children's actions and nature.
I almost never handle a chicken except to preform some care taking action. However I do enjoy being mobbed by pullets and cockerels at feeding time and having them sit on my knee, perch on my shoulder etc. This is as friendly as I want a chicken to be and it happens on the chickens own terms so they are cool with it.
I guess there are naturally aggressive roosters but I firmly believe that 99.99% of all man fighting roosters are the result of dumb actions by their human caretakers. These actions are things like snatching up a hen to pet her and having her squall and flap her wings in panic instead. Remember a rooster's brain is about the size of a dried pea and he (or your hens for that matter) may think that some hairy monster in tennis shoes are carrying him off to meet Father Abraham up there in the sky. This is one reason IMHO that children get flogged, they go running around the chicken run screaming like wild animals (sorry mothers) and the rooster reacts like the children are wild animals by jumping into the fray. Remember he is only doing what comes natural like free ranging.
If your rooster will allow you to easily handle him do so. But NEVER run or chase any chicken down or snatch them up like a wind blown $100 bill in the mall parking lot. If you want to eat chicken buy some meat birds, they taste better, they are easier to cook, and it requires significantly less time and money to raise them. There is no excuse for creating a man fighter out of a tough stringy old leghorn or RIR just so you will have an excuse to put one of your chickens in the pot. The rooster that you have conditioned to fight you will be tough, and stringy unless you cook him for a really long time at a ridiculously low temperature, and did I mention that you had to cook him low and slow for a really very very long time?
Here is a Coq au vin or rooster in wine recipe for you busy ladies and gentlemen that will result in tender man fighting roosters. This recipe only takes a little over 13 hours from start to finish not counting the week or so needed to catch, kill, dress, and rest a tough old rooster.
http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/alton-brown/coq-au-vin-recipe/index.html
Most pullets become layers at 17 to 24 weeks. Expect 20 weeks. Your's and your pullets mileage will vary depending on the weather, the breed, the time of year, and how well they are kept.
No chick should have "Pasty Butt" If a white crusty deposit of fecal matter was normal on baby chickens' behinds then mother nature would have provided mother hens with tongues like cows have to lick their peeps butts clean. Pasty butt in reality is often a serious incurable condition known as Pullorum Salmonella and Typhoid Pullorum that will condemn future generations of your chicks to an early grave. Pullorum could even result in your whole flock being seized and destroyed. I can only compare the clinical history of Pullorum to HIV because in both adult chickens and humans both Pullorum and HIV are incurable diseases, both are passed by the reproductive track, and in both cases the infected chick you snatch from the jaws of death today will pass Pullorum on to its flock mates in the future.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC98884/
