Pastoral Poultry, Traditional Farming For A Modern Era

[bj taylor]

I have so enjoyed this thread. i'm just a small deal trying to change my way of life. I have four hatchery birds (barred rock, bo, black aust, slw) a black aust rooster and some feed store babies. I would like to morph this into heritage with good bloodlines. I want to feed my family & maybe get a little business going on the side. my four girls lay reliably virtually every day regardless of weather or season (so far), but they are not interested in brooding their eggs (the buff orp comes the closest).

living in Texas, cold is not as much of an issue as heat. my birds mostly free range 1 1/2 acre. 3 1/2 acres will soon open up. my fencing is very good and my two german shepherds keep predators to zilch. a hawk did pin one of my girls, but the rooster jumped in & saved her. he is a good protector & a gorgeous specimen - I just wish he was easier on the girls.

I have a lot of pasture. old and never properly cared for. I would like to start small & renovate it. is "pigeon feed" a generic name for a collection of seeds mentioned?

I look forward to following this thread.

 

[wsmith]

I think "WofM" is really the way it happens most. One person tells another and sooner or later some critical mass is reached and people in your community just "know." That said, I do think that the Farmer's Markets are a really great way to get started, and they have a lot of helpful information. We're still exploring the idea. Right now most of our business is with "chicken people," so we are not yet doing a lot with produce. Our hands are pretty full at the moment, but I'm hoping that we can get started on the FM soon, and get my teenage daughter something to do on the weekends that actually brings in money

Besides tracking production, weights, etc, we also keep financial records using "Chick'n Track'n" easy to use, cheap to buy. Not a great program, but it works. When we did our taxes, we found that if we took out all of the capital expenditures for 2012, things like coop and fence building, equipment, etc, we were in the black. not by much, but in the black. (of course, we included the capital expense on our taxes, which brought in close to $800 in additional tax refund money. So we're happay about that.

Most of our business has been with friends and co-workers buying eggs, and people just getting started in chickens that we already knew. A "neighbor" (5 miles away) is selling eggs at the farmers market in Colorado Springs for $5 per dozen for eating eggs, and is always sold out. She wants to buy all my extras for $3 so she can make $2 profit per dozen.........

 

[alisar]

A google search of Chick'n Track'n yielded some interesting links, but not what I was expecting. Do you have a link for it?

 

[wsmith]

http://www.chickentrackin.com/

 

[alisar]

Thank you.

 

[SJ]

OMG!!! I have found my people!

Hi everyone and thanks Brice for starting this thread. Allow me to introduce my flock and self. I am a small flock keeper dedicated to producing my food in a self sustaining manner. I hate labels but if there is one for "As God Intended" I think im certified. I have a flock that grows to about 100 birds(chickens/ducks) each spring and is culled to about 20 each fall. I have an acre and half lot that is situated between farm fields, not mine. It is country living at its best. I have a coop and laying boxes and a run but I leave my birds loose all year around. The flock has two Great Danes as trusty guardians so predators are no longer an issue. My lush lawn thick with its mixed grass, clover, chickory and dandelions is the preferred pasture of my chooks.
The farmers fields supplies seasonal feasts of worms from spring thaw to midsummer. By midsummer we are usually plagued/blessed with mosquitos because our proximity to marshland so my chicks get all the protein they can handle in the form of bugs. The summer bugs are what initally made me say "I don't care what anyone here says about me getting chickens. The bugs are biblical around here. Those skeets are going to have to not get eaten by a chicken before they can eat me." By late summer about the end of August the marsh gets pretty dry. The worms dig deep and the skeeters retreat to the depth of the marsh. It is at that point the grasshoppers and crickets begin to really emerge. Keep feasting! My garden needs saving! It is usally around this time that the older hens are so fat they stop laying and begin to moult and the cockerels are starting feelling frisky and brave so it is the first cull(around 16 weeks of age). All but the best of the boys are slaughtered as well as any other bird with birth defects. Friends and neighbors buy some birds but I keep most for my family. After the first cull comes the real fattening. With most of the boys out of the way the pullets get a buffet to themselves until harvest time. When the farmer cuts the fields it exposes the remaining insects as well as leaving large amounts of spilled grains(oats, corn, soybeans, or wheat). Around this time fallen fruit(pears, apples, plums) and garden excess are also added to the forage selections. It also begins the second culling (20-25 weeks). Any pullet who is narrow, shallow, pinched tailed, twisted tailed, undersized, or of poor fleshing is slaughtered. This is also the time for the onset of laying so new layers/breeders to pick from. If there are any previous years poor layers that don't have the "But I went broody and gave you chicks." excuse they go too. The older hen (4yrs) is assessed on 40+ point scale:
1-10 last years egg production(10=200+eggs),
1-10 broodiness lifetime, broods per year/age (10=100+%),
1-10 weight (10=8+lbs),
1-10 personality (10= 1-quiet, 1-calm, 1-friendly, 1-forages well, 1-cooperative flocker, 1-watchful, 1-mothering skills, 3 pts for ornamental/personal affection)
Bonus point for each living offspring.
Any hen under 25 points is culled too.
My goal is to keep a breeder/layer flock of 20 hens so culling is essential to the flocks continued utility. So I create a 20 hen roster and start filling it in with the best girls of the flock. Any that don't make it are culled. I know it is cold hearted but so is nature in the principal of carrying capacity.
Utility is my first priority with my flock.

Not preservation of a breed, yet anyhow. A renewable self sustaining source of eggs and meat is my definition of utility. I'm newer to this breeding fowl thing so I'm learning what works and what doesn't with the "cheaper" hatchery stock first. I have a hodgepodge flock and breed my own experimental crosses. I figure I can get an objective opinion on utility fowl if I am not so invested into one breed or overly concerned with breeding to standards. So call me a mad scientist if you want, I do. I got some monsters of the barn yard and I like it.

I prefer the DelawarexNHR so far but our bitter cold Wisconsin winters have led me to breed for a more cold hardy animal. I got Buckeyes, Chanteclers, Dominiques, Kraienkoppe and Cornish last spring for the smaller combs and wattles. I kept a great all around WLR Cornish to cross over everything I have. The Dominiques were mostly narrow and most had poor tails so only one remains. The Buckeyes males were big wide and gorgeous but lacked the in the fleshing of the breasts. I want some from a better line. The Chanteclers were everything I wanted in a meat bird so sweet and foraged amazingly well in a drought year that I really want to get more but inbreeding caused three to die from misshaped hearts so they were all culled except one because she went broody almost as soon as she began to lay. She been a great mom, twice successfully raising chicks this winter and is brooding a third clutch right now all in her first year. The Kraienkoppe males were very meaty but too small for my purposes and I only got one hen who is currently brooding eggs due the 24th. She is my best winter layer to to date. The cornish hens have been hit and miss. The WLR laid small eggs but laid 4 eggs a week every week all but the two weeks between Christmas and New Years this entire winter. I have one WLR that is brooding as well. The Dark Cornish all lay a better size egg but some didn't lay after at all from December to February. The Cornish hens make for a whole bird that looks amazing at the dinner table.

This spring will be the next step in the evolution of my flock. I am getting 50 more chicks from a hatchery.
25 Delawares
6 Buff Orpington
6 Australorp
6 Dark Cornish
7 Indian Rivers(DelawarexNHR)

I am looking to improve my growth rate and overall size by next year through some careful selections. Ill see what nature gives me but I like the idea of keeping either the best Delaware or Indian River roo for next year and crossing him over one of my WLR CornishxChantecler hens for a big meaty pea combed bird that should be mostly white and lay respectably when not broody.

Enough of dreaming. I got questions. Does anyone use or plant pasture food plots just for your birds? If so what product or seed mixtures would you recomend? Does any body run bunnies with their chickens? A buddy of mine is trying to get me to let him do it over here and i just don't know enough to give him an answer. Having asked that what do you all pasture together, seperate, or whatever? I got ducks and chickens thats all.
This thread is great. Keep it going.

 

[SJ]

WHOAH! I didn't relize my post was HUGE.LOL

 

[silkiemomma42]

I thought it was delightful! Love the 40pt rating system I may steal for myself welcome!!

 

[Partyfowl]

SJ..
In the past I have ran my milk goats (nubians) in with the chickens and turkeys but currently my mini horse ( he's 28!) and chickens only share pasture. Next spring I introduce a new dairy cow.
We have wheat and Timothy fields surrounding our homestead. Which the chickens are free to roam. My husband is a 4th generation father and we currently are farming close to 13,000 acres. So we're not lacking any space or fooder crop. We farm grains.. wheat. Oats. Garbonzo beans (costco sells our hummus) timothy hay, few peas and a couple grass fields. All of which comes in handy to have to feed the animals. But the majority of it gets exported to asia. It definitely makes running a (hopeful) self sufficient farm much easier and economical. The tough part is, its pretty much up to me to manage the homestead between the months of march thru nov 1. As my husband and staff are incredibly busy out in the fields. So any big projects I need help with need to happen before march. but hey, that's why we have kids right!? .
We are planning on reintroducing bunnies to our woods. When my father in law was young they where all around here and he hunted them with my husband. It's a goal to replenish them for the next generation.
I'm glad to hear that your on the SS track, which is a challenge in todays modern world. Do you make your own cheese? & breads?

 

[SJ]

13,000 acres...wow! I would love to do that. I do bake my own breads but no cheese yet it is just too easy to get world class quality cheese here. A few miles from my house is "Widmers Cheese Cellars",and theres "Saputo", "Sargento", and "Grande".I mean I seriously live in dairyland central of americas dairy land. You can't go two hundred yard with out tripping over a holstien. The whole of Dodge county stinks, either like cheese or a free stall barn depends on the wind. Heck my first job was milking cows and my parents met in a cheese factory. I dont know why packers fans wear cheese wedge hats but come to Dodge county WI you'll see why we are all called cheese heads. Cheese TOO easy. That said I have travelled and if I lived any where else I'd make my own cheese. Yeah we got great cheese.

Cheese

.lol

What breed of cow do want to get? I always liked the brown swisses or the milking devons.

I too am trying to reintroduce an animal that has been displaced. The prarie chicken I only have to save up 1,400 dollar for a pair of them. But my next project will be repairing the fruit orchard that was destroy when the state decided the highway needed to be widened in 2004.

Or you could get me a job working on your ranch and I could get out of Dodge literally.