Pastoral Poultry, Traditional Farming For A Modern Era

[bayocum]

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.

bj, welcome to the thread, we're really glad to have you. Sounds like you have some good dogs, and a good rooster too. Hopefully the good people on this thread can help you achieve what you're looking for with your chickens. I think we're all heading in a similar direction.
Best,
Brice

 

[bayocum]

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.........

Wendell,
We were selling our eggs to our friends for $3 a dozen, but soon realized that with the capital costs of the chickens (Basque Hens at the time) and the cost of organic feed and organic pasture, we were just breaking even, not counting our time. It was then that I saw "pastured" eggs for sale at the Farmer's Market (FM) for $9, and they had exactly zero left to sell. So the market is there, but you have to educate people and develop it. Here's a link to our website where I tried to educate people on the difference between our eggs, and those that are "certified organic" at Target. I'm not against organic obviously, but I was trying to show people why they should look to their local FM before their local big box (ps, love Target too!)
If you're making money at $3 and she's doing the work, it sounds good to me.
Best,
Brice

 

[bayocum]

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,
Welcome to the thread...wow, you have a lot going over there, and some pretty interesting stuff too... we could argue a little about where the real dairy land is (we live in Central California...more cows than people)...ha ha, but I think you've got the history on your side. We have used Peaceful Valley's "Organic Omega-3 Poultry pasture" mix, which includes grasses, buckwheat, flax, clover, and some other things. As my brother pointed out, it's not cheap, but the birds seem to like it quite a bit, as well as the volunteer sunflowers we have. We don't currently run any livestock together, mostly because all we have are chickens... great to hear from you and can't wait to hear more about what you're doing. One other thing, my brother also suggested looking at your feed store for some pigeon feed...it may be the best, cheapest pasture mix you can find...if you can find any. Good luck!
-Brice

 

[bayocum]

Thank you.

Welcome to you to alisar! Sooner or later I probably wont be able to welcome everyone...but I'm going to keep trying!
-Brice

 

[wsmith]

Wendell,
We were selling our eggs to our friends for $3 a dozen, but soon realized that with the capital costs of the chickens (Basque Hens at the time) and the cost of organic feed and organic pasture, we were just breaking even, not counting our time. It was then that I saw "pastured" eggs for sale at the Farmer's Market (FM) for $9, and they had exactly zero left to sell. So the market is there, but you have to educate people and develop it. Here's a link to our website where I tried to educate people on the difference between our eggs, and those that are "certified organic" at Target. I'm not against organic obviously, but I was trying to show people why they should look to their local FM before their local big box (ps, love Target too!)
If you're making money at $3 and she's doing the work, it sounds good to me.
Best,
Brice

I can understand the market being there in CA. It's here in CO as well, but I don't think my friend could sell eggs if she asked $9.00 . Eventually we will have to up the price of the eggs, but for now we will keep it low. My flock isn't that big yet. I purposly want to keep my over-winter flock no bigger than about 30 hens, to keep it very manageable.
On my FB page for our little farm, each day I post chicken facts. We just finished with the group of facts explaining the current egg labelling meanings, etc. I can barely keep enough eggs for our own usage, as people want so many.

Utility is my first priority with my flock.

That is my first priority as well, and one of the reasons I went with Dominiques. The consumate American utility chicken. Even older that Buckeyes, barred Rocks and Reds. I got my Dominique foundation stock from a breeder in VA and some from Cackle Hatchery. I recently got some more hatching eggs from another breeder in Oregon. Between the three lines I should be able to meet my goals and still have fun. The thing I like about Heritage breeds, and of course Dominiques in particular, are their frugality. They are cheap to feed, and still lay nearly every day. Small-ish hens and bigger cockerels to eat.

 

[microburst]

What do you do if anything in winter when egg production is low? I hate interfering with nature, but then again it seems like I do all my baking in the darker months and I'm always too low or out of eggs!

 

[wsmith]

What do you do if anything in winter when egg production is low? I hate interfering with nature, but then again it seems like I do all my baking in the darker months and I'm always too low or out of eggs!

I don't do anything. Egg sales drop. That's about it. We always had extras, but not enough to sell as many.

 

[bayocum]

One option is to "plant while the sun is shining" and freeze your eggs when they are bountiful. I've heard some people say that the texture isn't all that great later, but I would think it would be fine for baking purposes. Here's some more info on freezing eggs from Jamie Oliver's website. Seems like a good way to both "respect nature" and get some good baking done in the winter months. Another option is to look for breeds that lay really well during the winter months. Our friend Heather over at Scratch Cradle has a cool blog entry about cold weather breeds.
-Brice

 

[FarmerJH]

There is some really phenomenal information so far in this thread, and definitely my favorite of all the threads I've seen so far. I have 2 bantam cochins, soon to be 4, and what I believe to be a blue orpington hen. I kept the bantam cochins because, though they're not really useful as a meat bird, they have been consistently laying 4-5 eggs each per week. The orpington however, has laid maybe 5 total in the last 6 months, but she has been protecting the banties from predation so she earns her keep that way, for now. All 3 are very friendly and did a great job decimating the slug population that threatened my garden last spring so I was also very happy about that. This year, I plan to add a good quality partridge bantam cochin roo (so if anyone knows of one, I would be interested), some more orpingtons for dual purpose and showing and possibly try some dorking or buckeyes since I've heard their meat is quite tasty. I'm also planning to move away from commercially bagged feeds and try growing a chicken and rabbit garden as well. I thought I would try the poultry package, crimson and red clover and alfalfa from the sustainable seed co because I will be picking up a breeding pair of american chinchilla rabbits in a month, as well. I'm excited to finally be building my dream life of sustainable farming heritage breeds of plants and animals, becoming more self-reliant and slowly educating the people I work with that packaged chicken breasts and eggs come from real, live, clucking animals and that they don't just magically appear in cartons.

 

[microburst]

One option is to "plant while the sun is shining" and freeze your eggs when they are bountiful. I've heard some people say that the texture isn't all that great later, but I would think it would be fine for baking purposes. Here's some more info on freezing eggs from Jamie Oliver's website.

Never thought about freezing eggs...I'll have to look into it though.