Just to be clear, said it was traditional wisdom, which means old poultry handbooks, which are not so easy to find and cite in online versions (and are not normally followed anyway it seems) and that my experience was consistent. Generalizations based on one individual's experience - myself included - are usually not worth much imo.
I just started reading A Guide to Success With Poultry from 1903. It’s in question and answer format. A little dry so far…but informative. A lot of modern breeds were standardized after this book was written (from what I’ve been reading elsewhere in general poultry guides) but I think it is intended for breeders. I don’t plan on breeding anything in any controlled way I am just curious to see if there were big differences in practice with respect to feeding and disease management.
I found that sort of resource very useful when I was starting out and knew diddly squat about chickens. Feeding and disease management were completely different from modern industrial practice, I found, and I got a lot of insight into both from handbooks that were written before modern practices came in - not least in showing that all sorts of alternatives are possible and sometimes better (imo). I think my favourite is still Lewis Wright The illustrated book of poultry 1873, with J H Robinson Poultrycraft 1904 second. Who wrote the Guide to success you're reading?
If you used old traditional wisdom, its possible it still applies for the very old heritage breeds (laying maybe 60-120 eggs a year, if I remembered right).
Something I like about very old articles or research papers is that they still explain basic stuff. Some information is now considered wide spread fact that it isn't explained anymore why it happens or how it works. Had a real hard time with an assignment about rat behaviour because of stuff like that, modern stuff is very niche. Which is good when you want to know certain niche stuff but not when you need broader knowledge.
Do you know how many eggs each of your chickens lays per year?
they change constantly. There is no reason to take the date a particular handbook happened to be written as a baseline.
It takes much less time, even to 'fix' recessive breed characteristics. The speed with which traits can be lost can be as little as 1 generation - witness all the backyard hybrids and mutts within a generation or 2 from 'pure' stock, like my flock.
Absolutely. And ditto info on websites. Reading as widely as possible and evaluating each source is the only sensible way to go imo. Revisiting sources is a good idea too, because sometimes a certain amount of knowledge or thinking is needed to recognize quality or to understand what, actually, that source is saying. To cite an easy analogy, that's how people find treasures at car boot sales, for example; they recognize quality that went unnoticed by others, including the current owner and seller.
I started to keep track a couple of times. But after max 6 week I started to forget to add the daily numbers. Im really not an administrative type of person.
Frank Heck. It is a little difficult to navigate the different names for chicken ailments but I can probably look that up easy enough. Some interesting things I’ve noted so far: “Oyster shell is not so valuable and generally supposed…is not necessary when proper food is given.” I have been providing oyster shell free choice for years.
