Post Pics Of Orps/ Orpingtons HERE

[lildinkem]

A Buff Mottled???? DUN MOTTLED???

 

[Farmerboy16]

A Buff Mottled???? DUN MOTTLED???

That pullet reminds me of a hen that I use to have, she was cross with a Black Australorp and a Buff Orpington. In your case it may have been between Black Orpington and a Buff Orpington. I could be wrong. She looks pretty.

 

[lildinkem]

This girl comes from a line of Blacks who has my BUSTOFF blood in them. For every 4 or 5 Blacks I get I get an off the wall looking bird like this. I have had Silver Penciled, Dun Birchen, Mottled, and now this. Who knows what else may pop up.

 

[comerspoultry]

I guess my birds are spoiled. In the winter they live in conditioning pens in a heated room and in the summer they get to live and run around outside

 

[Goose and Fig]

This girl comes from a line of Blacks who has my BUSTOFF blood in them. For every 4 or 5 Blacks I get I get an off the wall looking bird like this. I have had Silver Penciled, Dun Birchen, Mottled, and now this. Who knows what else may pop up.

That's not mottled, I think it would be spangled. Pretty- you should check out ChooksChicks' orps- I think she had some similar ones in her projects.

 

[rancher hicks]

Hi from Ga.

Hi Vaughn,
At one time I like the Lemon Cuckoo but couldn't afford them so now I'm into Lavs and Blues.
Welcome to the Orp thread.

Rancher

 

[OSUman]

My Splash birds have it to a degree too. I noticed it in a few of my juvie pullets today.

Now thats a bird you want to breed with you should be able to see it on blacks( from blues) too but its a little harder.

 

[pampered_poultry]

Hi everyone - been away a good bit because of the new format - but just wanted to chime in here with the cost of the birds......

As one of the posting stated... "Farms do not pop up anywhere....". That is correct - my farm has been in the family for 4 generations and like all of my parents, grandparents and great grandparents we have raised chickens as a source of eggs and meat. In addition we have just over 125 acres of row crop land where we grow peanuts, cotton and corn. Over time with the prices of oil (fertilizer cost), seed and labor it has now become almost impossible to raise a family on a 'small' farm like this....200 total acres is not a small track of land to some - but to raise a family it is. Hence the reason the small farms in America are disappearing and large conglomerate farms are taking over. Therefore I must admit when I graduated high school - I went off to college and decided to lease out the row crop land - but I still retained the pasture land for the animals. We use to raise beef cattle - but I switched over to sheep and goats - mainly due to the increase in Hispanic population and the ability to grow off these animals to market faster.

Getting back to the chickens - I take much pride in knowing that I have fresh eggs and meat right off the farm. I married a city girl - so the first time she made breakfast and I came back from the coop with a warm egg in my hand....she was not sure what to say. I remember when she cracked her first egg....""EWWWW it is still warm.". HAHA it could have only been laid a couple minutes ago.

I have never been a 'show' chicken person - only know how to raise a healthy chicken that will produce quality meat and bunches of eggs. I still do some things the 'old' way my parents / grandparents use to tell me..... for instance setting eggs to hatch during the correct signs of the moon or before incubation setting eggs under the hen out of the North wind. These practices have allowed me to produce some nice 'yard' chickens.

Move forward a few years and I ran across BYC and other 'chicken' websites and noted - "Wow - there is a market for quality chickens". Why not start with some good buffs / RIR and start raising them for sale? In addition as a avid outdoors man and hunter I discovered also that there was a need to produce some quality Merriams Wild Turkeys for some of my friends out west. I then went to work building separate pens for turkeys and chickens. We are close to the Florida line - so the wild turkey pens were built on a friends land down there.

Then like other people who have gathered an interest in chickens - I found it hard to just have 1 breed .... or a standard breed for that much. So like a lot of rare breed chicken people - I bought a few chickens from my friends at Greenfire. These were some nice birds - but I wanted to go to their source in the UK... find someone in the UK that I could partner with....someone that had a quality line of birds. After a little over a year of making phone calls and making some good contacts I ran across what I like to call UK's best kept secret....Sandra Hildreth. I was fortunate enough to have found someone that would be willing to go through the DEFRA process and send me birds and eggs. MORE IMPORTANTLY I gained a friendship with the most charismatic and genuine person in the UK. Sandra is a wonderful lady and regardless of whether I bring in any more birds or eggs - I am delighted to have her as a friend and the ability to call her on the phone when I need.

So I began the import process - which I will give a short summary here....... bring in birds and you will have about $ 800 USD per birds in quarantine fees plus about $ 800 USD in DEFRA fees, plus $ 150 in permits, plus about $ 500 USD to get a shipment of birds here. In short you will have about $ 4,000 to get a trio here. Then once you get them here you pray none of them die and that you feed and house them for over a year before you get a single egg.

On importing eggs....lets say you import 45 eggs - which I think is a good minimum.....you will have $ 800 USD in DEFRA, $ 350 USD plane ticket, $ 350 in cost of eggs and to get them to airport, $ 150 USDA, $ 145 APHIS, plus $ 350 in custom broker fees, plus $ 45 in airport cargo receipt fees... then you have the cost to drive to the airport 3 hours away to pick up the eggs. This equates to about $ 50 per egg. We all know that the hatch rate will be low from just the eggs having to travel - so let's assume a 50% hatch rate - which would be great!! That puts you at $ 100 per chick - or $ 2,200 in 22 chicks. Then you have to hope all live and you feed and shelter them for a year.

This breaks it down for the people who see the eggs on UK sites selling for 3 British pounds.... and then think we importers are overcharging. I have had many people ask about bringing in birds or eggs with me on halves... and then when I tell them the cost.... the conversation changes. Therefore before people talk about the high price of eggs / chicks - please import some yourself. I would be glad to provide a free consulting service and help you bring in birds/eggs that you want.

Back to my operation.... I decided since I was going to have nice birds... I need a nice facility.... one that will accommodate my busy work schedule and would not be so work intensive. Who wants to carry buckets of water every day to feed 100 + birds? Therefore I built the Chicken Taj Mahal. Do you need a facility of that type to raise quality birds... NO.... it more about what you feed them and the genetics. I built the facility because I know for generations to come that chickens will be an important part of my family's lifestyle - as they have been for 100 + years.

On my business model - I built a website that I thought would allow my customers the ability to purchase sought after rare breeds. When I ship eggs or chicks - 99.99% of the time I ship extras. It is more important that my customer get the expected hatch from the eggs or the expected live birds from their order. You have breeders that 'jump' into the business and buy Greenfire or other high end birds and have no farming background or no experience at all in raising chickens. They just look at the $ 100 per chick price and 'think' they can get in to make a quick buck. Unfortunately they do make a quick buck - but they make it by sending out the exact amount of eggs / chicks (expand their numbers sold), send out infertile eggs, or send out sick chicks. Before you spend your hard earned money on buying eggs or chicks....PLEASE do your homework and check out the breeder. It is very easy to talk with someone on the phone and find out very quickly if they are one of these 'quick buck' breeders or someone who honestly cares about selling you quality birds. If you are new to chickens - look at their websites, check their feedback, and ask around about the breeder. You will find that quality breeders take care of their birds and their customers and are not strictly in the business to make money. Their prices some times might be higher - but if they send quality and send extras.... you make out in the end.

Does my business model make money? Honestly it about a break even - figure the cost of $ 300 / week in feed, facility expense, facility operating expense, website expense, website operating expense, farm help, and various medicines. In my opinion this business is more about relationships and meeting some great chicken people. I have other sources of income that supplement my chicken hobby so that I focus on quality over quantity. If I can bring in a really nice birds from the UK and there is someone - especially children - that enjoy them and it leads them to additional agriculture adventures....that is great. Let's not be dependent on foreign countries to feed us!!!!

Sorry to ramble on a little here.... but I felt it was necessary to tell a little background.

Regards,
Richard

 

[pampered_poultry]

That's some Purrdyyy barring !!

Hi Vaughn,
At one time I like the Lemon Cuckoo but couldn't afford them so now I'm into Lavs and Blues.
Welcome to the Orp thread.

Rancher

 

[lildinkem]

First few I hatched out so far. 3 Buffs, 2 are from Harold and the little guy is from BUSTOFF. The BUS baby I think is from one of my Blacks but it also could be from my DUN pullets. Nice big baby.