Show Off Your Games!

[Regular Guy]

Don't get me wrong, I want some, however, I just can't get rid of my other roosters. Especially since I use the silkie rooster to father chicks to sell.

Who wouldnt want one of these beasts in the yard?!

That's one nice bird there! Green Legged Roundhead?

 

[Regular Guy]

The only way in or out of the new sub-division is from an entirely differnt area. They would have to walk through the woods to get to my house to complain. The smallest lot in my neighborhood is three acres and nobody complains out here. I have in the past let games free range till it was time to catch them up. I have a large open air pen for my laying hens. We have a lot of preditors out here and I have always lost games but the laying hens wouldn't stand a chance free ranging I don't think. It's just easier to keep them penned.

My pens are under a very large pole barn that has a roof but no walls. The pens themselves are made from regular yard fencing (huricane fence) eight feet high with a wire fence roof (under the pole barn roof). They have straw on the dirt floor (about the only way I'd keep chickens) and nice large weatherproof laying box with multiple single boxes I built. The pen is like 11' x 20' (my wife says it's too small lol) no walls, only a borded area in a corner to block some wind. Been keeping chickens like that for 20 + years and they do great. We have 'mild' winters but tonight it's supposed to be a low of eight degrees and windy. Never had sick chickens. Never had mites. Nothing. Stays mostly dry, but a strong wind will blow the rain in the pens on the outside where the walls would be, if there were walls, but most of it is always dry and never muddy.

I agree it probably wouldn't hurt to provide some artificial light, but I'd rather keep them as 'natural' as possible and I never needed to give them additional light. I usually do pretty good keeping laying hens that lay year round. I've kept quite a few breeds but those 'Cherry Eggers' what hatcheries call Rhode Island Reds, I would usually get around 10 eggs a day out of 14 hens throught the middle of winter on the shortest days, in one of those pens with no lights, and no coop really, for a good two years. I personally couldn't imagine not having chickens down on the dirt. I used to give eggs to my elderly neighbors before they moved back closer to town. Other than giving a few away, my wife and I eat them, mostly me and I feed them to the dogs, good protein.

If I ever lost to a yuppie and couldn't keep chickens I'd move further out in the country LOL

That pen is actually 11' x 30', typed that wrong

 

[Regular Guy]

I also need to set the record straight on a comment I made about most of the American Black Gamefowl carrying oriental blood. Let me say the folks I knew that kept Gamefowl for many years and for their own reasons, would not own or feed blacks, orientals and some wouldn't even own anything with a pea comb! I'm talking about some old school men many of which have passed on now.

A lot has changed over the years including the games themselves, so It's a different world now and like I said, they had their reasons back then, not that those lines weren't as good, they just didn't suit their fancy so to speak so I never knew much about them, because the folks I knew personally with games didn't own them.

I've been doing some research and I never knew first of all that some of these old time strains 'made in America' still are not considered 'American' but considered orientals! Second, I know of at least one of the American Blacks that record no history of oriental blood and that's the Sid Taylor Blacks! From what I'm learning at least they got their 'darkness' from imported Irish gamefowl, namely Brown Reds. These games can be so much more difficult to keep than a 'pen full of chickens' but what beautiful, hardy creatures and what history! So much to learn, could take a lifetime or more.

 

[Regular Guy]

Looks like I'll only get a hen or two, for their reputation for being broody as well as good moms.

If you get real game hens, any stags that come off them will still be 'fighty'. They won't be 'game', but they'll still fight. You would still have to seperate them or put them on tie out cords or eat them or give them away. 'Game' does not mean MEANESS. People can be mean, animals cannot. Most games are not mean, at least to people. In fact 'game' animals tend to have a wonderful disposition with humans. However, I once had some mixed Hatch (game)//Silkies. They were God awful things. If you picked them up they would bite (not peck), they would clamp down on the meat of your arm like a gator and shake like a bulldog. Games would not do that lol. I loaded them all up and took them to an auction and when the handlers pulled each one out of the boxes to hold up they would lock down on their arms. Dardest thing I'd ever seen! I've seen a lot of game mixes that weren't 'mean'. Games aren't 'mean'. But if an animal could be mean, it was those Devil Silkie Hatches!!

 

[Rocky64]

I wasn't going to cross breed them, just use them to hatch eggs of other chickens and pheasants.

 

[Jungleexplorer]

If you get real game hens, any stags that come off them will still be 'fighty'. They won't be 'game', but they'll still fight. You would still have to seperate them or put them on tie out cords or eat them or give them away. 'Game' does not mean MEANESS. People can be mean, animals cannot. Most games are not mean, at least to people. In fact 'game' animals tend to have a wonderful disposition with humans. However, I once had some mixed Hatch (game)//Silkies. They were God awful things. If you picked them up they would bite (not peck), they would clamp down on the meat of your arm like a gator and shake like a bulldog. Games would not do that lol. I loaded them all up and took them to an auction and when the handlers pulled each one out of the boxes to hold up they would lock down on their arms. Dardest thing I'd ever seen! I've seen a lot of game mixes that weren't 'mean'. Games aren't 'mean'. But if an animal could be mean, it was those Devil Silkie Hatches!!

I have had game cocks that would clamp down like that on me to the point of drawing blood, but I have also seen the same thing in just abut every other bred of chicken I have raised too. Some of my game hens are the friendliest of any of my breeds. On the other hand, last year my award winning white created black polish rooster randomly spurred my wife in the leg puncturing a primary vein and a nerve center, leaving her leg temporarily paralyzed and gushing blood. She was at the farm alone and I was out of town and she nearly bled to death before she could drag herself to the house and call an ambulance. Put her in the hospital for a week a rare bacterial infection the hospital had only seen once in the last 30 years. She required IV antibiotics to combat it. Just goes to show that chickens, no matter the breed can be life threatening and must be treated like farm animals and not pets. These birds have deadly pathogens on their feet. I had a great uncle that got scratched in the face by RR hen and it turned into cancer and killed him.

 

[JShubin]

That's one nice bird there! Green Legged Roundhead?

I mix breeds like crazy. I dont like to keep breeds that someone else created, so for the past 8 years or so I have been breeding my own crosses. Selecting best of the best from what I breed and sometimes with traded hens/cocks.

He is mostly Green Leg Hatch, Leiper and Grey with some Spanish game blood.

 

[JShubin]

The cock just mentioned is part of my "Fabio" line. My avatar is Fabio, he was an exceptional cock that pasted away recently. I have been breeding his offspring in hopes of maintaining (or improving) those exceptional qualities.

Fabio

 

[JShubin]

That pen is actually 11' x 30', typed that wrong

I'd like to see some pictures of your setup...

I agree with the all natural method. I used to keep everything free range, until I want to keep more than one rooster. I use straw as well, makes for great ground cover and gives them something to scratch through. I think it helps absorb some of there poo as well.

 

[jonservidio]

Shubin, if you are wanting chickens for eggs, get leghorns. they have the best feed to egg conversion. anything else is sacrificing egg production for something else
if you look around, you can find point of lay pullets for about 5 bucks
they are extremely predator savvy
they would also work for your riverbed feral project you are considering, after 2 years, cut em loose, and get more for eggs. jungle could offer some input on feral projects,
I'm of the opinion that it can't happen, at least in my area, they need at least minimal help

I think you would fall in love with the brown leghorn, here's a photo I lifted from google images