1. What is a Turken?
2. Folks do realize Leghorns come in other colors? I like the Browns as they're not as noticeable from the air as white chickens are. Still lay the white eggs some folks want. Too there are Black leghorns I think. Though not as common.
3. When I first started my garden I covered everything with tarps. Not a good idea, as they break down. I now use cardboard. My area had hard fill so I do raised beds. I didn't have chickens then so I covered the tarps with shavings. Not affordable now.
Anyhow covering the area with newspapers or cardboard can save time tilling and weeding. Only the area/rows to be planted need to be tilled this way. The newspapers and cardboard break down. I save my newspapers all year long.
Too much tilling causes the soil to dry out and kills the good organisms that plants need., Tilling is a horrible way to keep a garden weed free and IMHO rarely works well.
4. My new/old book on diseases of poultry mentions genetics and the difficulty in getting everything to standard. Even if you started out with two SOP birds their offspring would throw undesirable traits. I had two very nice looking SLW's hens but they were not the best layers and laid medium eggs. Maybe they were large. We get so used to Xtra large that a large seems small, I think.
For me it's a trade off.
And that doesn't even get into the hardiness of the line. I no longer freak if a bird gets sick or dies for some unknown reason. Well I feel bad and double check my husbandry practices, but keeping a closed flock helps me keep the weak birds weeded out.
Sorry if I said to much,
2. Folks do realize Leghorns come in other colors? I like the Browns as they're not as noticeable from the air as white chickens are. Still lay the white eggs some folks want. Too there are Black leghorns I think. Though not as common.
3. When I first started my garden I covered everything with tarps. Not a good idea, as they break down. I now use cardboard. My area had hard fill so I do raised beds. I didn't have chickens then so I covered the tarps with shavings. Not affordable now.
Anyhow covering the area with newspapers or cardboard can save time tilling and weeding. Only the area/rows to be planted need to be tilled this way. The newspapers and cardboard break down. I save my newspapers all year long.
Too much tilling causes the soil to dry out and kills the good organisms that plants need., Tilling is a horrible way to keep a garden weed free and IMHO rarely works well.
4. My new/old book on diseases of poultry mentions genetics and the difficulty in getting everything to standard. Even if you started out with two SOP birds their offspring would throw undesirable traits. I had two very nice looking SLW's hens but they were not the best layers and laid medium eggs. Maybe they were large. We get so used to Xtra large that a large seems small, I think.
And that doesn't even get into the hardiness of the line. I no longer freak if a bird gets sick or dies for some unknown reason. Well I feel bad and double check my husbandry practices, but keeping a closed flock helps me keep the weak birds weeded out.
Sorry if I said to much,
It now belongs to Ginger.
Somehow the goslings opened the run on the Eglu I'm keeping them in and they must have been outside very early in the morning because my resident barred owl grabbed Aurora and killed her 
It ate just her head, which is what owls do. It got one of my buff orp hens a few weeks ago too when she decided to sleep outside instead of in the run. Needless to say that Eglu is now locked up like Fort Knox. They'll be too big for an owl to even think about it in a few weeks but until then, no more escaping.
