old*cowboy :
Well we went to Dodge City to the M&M southwest livestock chicken, goat, sheep and pig auction yesterday. It started promptly at 5pm as advertized. Largest chicken auction I ever been to. You take birds in a crate, crate goes with the birds. If they was 1 bird or 20 in crate, it all went together, was no choice, take a bunch of time to come pick out one chicken, then sell again etc. Even with that said, and auctioneers going rapid fire it took 3 hours to sale the fowl. I saw big roosters go higher than any place before. I sold 4 for 10 apiece, but some cages of them fetched 13. I sold hens for 12 and top hens went for 18 if I remeber correctly. Everything went high and they had a lot. Bet there was 300 young guineas total and probable averaged 7 apiece. The only thing that didnt seem to go high was water fowl. Friend I went with took some ducks and they brought 2 apiece I think. He said he wasnt buying anything on the way up
Seen how little the geese were bringing and .. well just look at the top picture. I went to buy a young dairy bred doe goat. Had hundreds of meat goats, market is down. A few wore out milkers , then they run in Miss Kitty (had to name her that because of Dodge City...Duh) Any way she is yearling nubian that was a 4H show got. Gentle and leads like a well trained puppy. Very well mad. You can see her looking out her little goat crate on the way home and wondering what she ever did to deserve being stuck in a pickup full of geese. I will get a better picture of her later. I know several of you will see the pickup picture and automaticly think of Teach. He did come up and we swapped a couple birds and got a good visit in. He fixed me up with 3 nice asil bantam pullets. Well I should go, got little sleep last night. Need to do a few things and maybe a nap is in my future today. Two thumbs up for the Dodge Auction.
http://i51.tinypic.com/1588uj7.jpg
http://i53.tinypic.com/2dhuptv.jpg
Looks like Beverly Hillbillies lol!! But I shouldn't laugh because I've looked like that driving down the road more than a time or 2
$18 is considered high for a top hen?? I suppose the downside (for me) of getting them from an auction is not knowing what the birds have been exposed to and what they could potentially pass on to my babies. That fear is keeping me in line as far as which chickens I get.
Hey Firefly-I'm really liking this red Cochin bantam hen I got from you some time back. She's sooo tiny! She's not ornery with chickens her age, just babies. And that's probably the norm with chickens. Her name's Reba
Well we went to Dodge City to the M&M southwest livestock chicken, goat, sheep and pig auction yesterday. It started promptly at 5pm as advertized. Largest chicken auction I ever been to. You take birds in a crate, crate goes with the birds. If they was 1 bird or 20 in crate, it all went together, was no choice, take a bunch of time to come pick out one chicken, then sell again etc. Even with that said, and auctioneers going rapid fire it took 3 hours to sale the fowl. I saw big roosters go higher than any place before. I sold 4 for 10 apiece, but some cages of them fetched 13. I sold hens for 12 and top hens went for 18 if I remeber correctly. Everything went high and they had a lot. Bet there was 300 young guineas total and probable averaged 7 apiece. The only thing that didnt seem to go high was water fowl. Friend I went with took some ducks and they brought 2 apiece I think. He said he wasnt buying anything on the way up

http://i51.tinypic.com/1588uj7.jpg
http://i53.tinypic.com/2dhuptv.jpg
Looks like Beverly Hillbillies lol!! But I shouldn't laugh because I've looked like that driving down the road more than a time or 2

$18 is considered high for a top hen?? I suppose the downside (for me) of getting them from an auction is not knowing what the birds have been exposed to and what they could potentially pass on to my babies. That fear is keeping me in line as far as which chickens I get.
Hey Firefly-I'm really liking this red Cochin bantam hen I got from you some time back. She's sooo tiny! She's not ornery with chickens her age, just babies. And that's probably the norm with chickens. Her name's Reba
