The Old Folks Home

[1kluckychik]

And your urine

 

[ronott1]

@superchemicalgirl

There was a dentist comic in the paper.

 

[Alaskan]

Ok... Questions... Ladt year I sold straight run super fancy chucks at $10 each, and mutts and kess desirable at $5 each....

I am trying to decide:

1. If EEs that will lay blue eggs (Ameraucana over Leghorns) count as $10 chicks or 6, or 8....?

2. Do I wanna sell sexed Dominique chicks... Straight run I would sell for $5, so is sexed $10? Sounds steep for a Dominique...dunno.

3. If I sell sexed Dominiques... Do I have the stomach to off the male chicks? Dunno I am happy with butchering chickens, I have no issues with that. And I do not want to raise a jillion Dominique cockerels, and really, what is the difference between offing them when they are chicks verses grown. But it does FEEL different to me. I guess I will run it by the kids, and see what they think.

 

[Latestarter]

Seriously?

He needs a website forum where he can speak his mind.

He actually has one: http://www.#############.###/##### Named appropriately as you can imagine

Edited: By request to avoid double secret probation. My apologies and no criminals were intentionally harmed in the writing of this post.

 

[bruceha2000]

#3 is being an excellent big brother, and is making sure that the youngest looks at the camera... He kept turning around to look at everyone.

Ha!

I kinda figured that, the smoosh had the "you can't look around now" shape.

Why would you cut Write off the Women?

Because I am of the understanding that Alaskan is male! Unless he is in drag, that would remove all women in the picture from consideration. The quest is to figure out which he is, and apparently some have inside info on this, including what his wife looks like. Either that or they are making a guess, I've not seen Alaskan post "xxx has it right" based on a PM or something.

I don't, as a rule, write off women. One would be pretty stupid to write off half the population. Except at my house, we males are a serious minority. 1 wife, 2 daughters. If we start adding in animals, 2 female cats, one male, 16 female chickens. I am outnumbered!

I suspect that was more true before the bird flu outbreak in the midwest last summer. Signs at the stores here were apologizing for the shortage of eggs in the case so I bet they were making it from hen to store in very few days. But I think they have had time to raise up the replacement battery hens so it will likely be true again.

Wouldn't it be interesting if the factory farms printed the lay date on each egg after they washed it to an inch of its life? I personally am not real fancy, I use a pencil on the unwashed eggs so the few people that get my excess eggs know EGGACTLY what day the egg was laid, how much it weighs in grams and sometimes which hen laid it. That way they can decide which to use for hard boiled (the older ones for easier peeling) and which to pop into a frying pan. Some of my eggs are less than 5 seconds old if I happen to be out there when the hen lays

but never more than a few hours; guaranteed to be less in sub freezing weather. I'm sure all other chicken keepers are the same.

The mother of DD1's best friend thinks she wants to buy eggs from me ... and she wants USDA Large eggs. Sorry honey, I have real chickens, they lay whatever size they lay and they lay when they want to. She is down the list of recipients after us, my MIL and the 2 friends I've been selling eggs to since my now 3.5 Y/O girls started laying. Given the older girls are on winter break, the 7 June pullets are doing all the work and they are laying between the low end of Medium, up into midsize Large. She will have to wait until mid to late February when the older girls (historically) restart their production lines. Then the cartons will have everything from Medium to Jumbo and sometimes beyond (though I usually don't sell eggs so large the carton can't close over them).

 

[superchemicalgirl]

@superchemicalgirl

There was a dentist comic in the paper.

That second panel sums it up better than I could have.

I am a dental disappointment.

I'm going to go take this dirty mouth elsewhere.

 

[ronott1]

Because I am of the understanding that Alaskan is male! Unless he is in drag, that would remove all women in the picture from consideration. The quest is to figure out which he is, and apparently some have inside info on this, including what his wife looks like. Either that or they are making a guess, I've not seen Alaskan post "xxx has it right" based on a PM or something.

I don't, as a rule, write off women. One would be pretty stupid to write off half the population. Except at my house, we males are a serious minority. 1 wife, 2 daughters. If we start adding in animals, 2 female cats, one male, 16 female chickens. I am outnumbered!

My question was intended to be why you assumed Alaskan was male? Alaskan has worked hard to be gender neutral. If you submit posts from Alaskan to a site that will Guess Gender, one post will be male and the next will be female. The writing is Gender Neutral!

It is an interesting game being played here on BYC--or a defense mechanism?

I know the feeling about being outnumbered--I have three daughters and no sons. I bet my First Grandchild will be a girl too...We will not know until the baby is born since the Ultra sounds are not conclusive.

 

[superchemicalgirl]

Some people on this thread have been obvious about the gender (or lack thereof) of Alaskan. That ship has sailed.

 

[bruceha2000]

@superchemicalgirl

There was a dentist comic in the paper.

How appropriate

Ok... Questions... Ladt year I sold straight run super fancy chucks at $10 each, and mutts and kess desirable at $5 each....

I am trying to decide:

1. If EEs that will lay blue eggs (Ameraucana over Leghorns) count as $10 chicks or 6, or 8....?

2. Do I wanna sell sexed Dominique chicks... Straight run I would sell for $5, so is sexed $10? Sounds steep for a Dominique...dunno.

3. If I sell sexed Dominiques... Do I have the stomach to off the male chicks? Dunno

I am happy with butchering chickens, I have no issues with that. And I do not want to raise a jillion Dominique cockerels, and really, what is the difference between offing them when they are chicks verses grown. But it does FEEL different to me.

I guess I will run it by the kids, and see what they think.

I presume you are putting a premium on people getting a local chick rather than one that has to be shipped through the mail given your prices are quite a bit higher than the big commercial hatchery chicks. Not a bad deal though if someone wants only a small number of birds, the shipping can add several dollars per chick on small orders.

I guess #1 depends on the quality of the birds for their designated purpose and what the local market will bear. Over on the Ameraucana forum I think people (including well known breeders) are charging no more than $10 for straight run "purebred" chicks since there is no way to know if a chick will grow up to be a show winner or just a very nice looking chicken no matter how "perfect" the parents are. Kinda makes a $10 straight run EE seem expensive. And have you thought about also having an Ameraucana/Dominique cross? Blue eggs are nice but so are green ones

I think a "problem" with an Ameraucana/Leghorn cross is that neither is a particularly beefy breed so as table food, the cockerels won't provide as much food as dual purpose breeds. Thus I ASSUME you are selling the cross as a decent layer of blue eggs. If you are selling them as layers (and I presume you are with the Leghorn in there), will they be GREAT layers or only so so? I know you can't know that without some careful breeding history and results from several hatches once they start laying and have been for a couple of years. Obviously any given bird will not necessarily follow others from the same parents but if people are expecting 5-6 eggs a week and the birds end up laying only 3 a week ... disappointed customers.

For #2, how accurate are you at sexing Dominiques? I see they are autosexing but I imagine like anything else there are some where you have to ask "are those legs dark or light?" And $10 for male OR female? Your question 3 leads to the reason the big commercial hatcheries sell sexed cockerels for less than straight run and pullets for more. Let's face it, in the chicken world, you are WAY better off to be born female. What is your market? How many people want only females vs those who want both eggs and meat? I assume there isn't a huge market for roosters.

For #3, I would see if there is a market from yummy local FRESH chicken. I have a friend who would LOVE for me to raise a few "table chickens" but due to DD1's "emotional vegetarian" stance, it isn't going to happen. Assuming you have the space (meaning you don't have to create it thus incurring a cost) I would grow the cockerels out and sell them as food especially since you are fine with processing them. I don't know how much "range" you have but even if you feed them exclusively commercial feed they don't cost much to get to 5-6 months. Why off them as newborns when their lives can serve a purpose?

 

[bruceha2000]

Some people on this thread have been obvious about the gender (or lack thereof) of Alaskan. That ship has sailed.

Guess I'm too new to the home to know all that much about the residents/visitors. I will bow out of the "Where's Alaskan" game.