Starter chickens for new homestead! Hatchery vs Breeder

[sdm111]

If you're getting chickens just to have chickens hatchery is a better way, more for less. If you intend to selectively breed toward the standard and males and females will be separated, banded etc. Buy from a breeder they have been selectively bred and usually are a good to great example of the breed.

 

[U_Stormcrow]

So, I have a Culling project and am, arguably, a Homesteader. My birds came from TSC, which mean (locally) Hoover Hatchery. I made some poor choices - part of why I have a culling project - but I also started about the beginning of the pandemic so what was available was quite limited as well.

The good news is that, with some effort, you can eventually get birds well suited to your conditions with even average quality hatchery birds. and Hoover is famed for not better than average.

A breeder's quality is less standardized - some breeders are MUCH better. Some are worse. There's a breeder in TX (Austin area) who has been at it for years, yet there are enough credible claims of diseased birds coming from the flock (again, for years) that I think them more likely than not, true. Even her website is now written in a way to deflect blame. Price is no guarantee of quality.

My advice to you, because you need production, not show quality, is to go with a hatchery shipped to your local post office for pickup. Make sure you have room for more birds than you plan to have in your final flock, and order a few extras.

There's an adage, "Quantity has a Quality all its own". That's what you want as a buffer against the vaguaries of fate - illness, injury, predation, even just poor performance. Keep the one you want to eat, eat the ones you don't.

Oh, and for any area you are leaving fallow/not actively engaged in modern monocultural farming production, may I suggest you might benefit from an "acre of weeds"? Its entertainment for your pirds, potential dietary enrichment (but more likely, will simply bend your cost curve some), and depending upon your planting choices (I have numerous plants which are either nitrogen fixers or clay breakers) will help amend your soil before future plantings....

Welcome to the lifestyle!

 

[Riverbend Farms]

Only get from a breeder if you are showing birds. We have got 6 out of our 9 (Soon to be 10!) hens from a feed store and they are great! We have one bantam hen from a breeder (3 are in a show hen flock) She was thirty dollars. Her sisters died so alltogether they were $90 worth it because my show hen got second in her division. Feedstores/hatcheries are great if you just want a laying flock with some interesting birds. I would reccomend Easter Eggers