First, I want to thank everyone that contributes here, for all the good answers and the good questions, and the staff that hosts the site. Well done, nice job.
It began with an internet search: What is the best tasting egg? With that, I fell head first down the rabbit hole which eventually brought me here.
You know, if a little information is good then hundreds of times that must be really good!
That's how I found out about Black Copper Marans. I've kept chickens before but not like these. So, maybe get two or three hens, reasonable... But, if I got a rooster then there could be young layers and meat birds. And if I'm going to breed some more special chickens then why not get some better quality birds? I always found genetics interesting so I know starting with a small number of anything and just inbreeding them isn't a good plan if you want a healthy population. Although I understand inbreeding is not as bad with chickens. But buying even half a dozen of these birds isn't an inexpensive preposition. So, how about hatching eggs?
You see where I'm headed here? Classic case of chicken math type thinking. I ordered some parts, bought a few things and built an incubator. Took too long and I wasn't happy with the temperature stability so I ordered one online. Then the hatching eggs, I looked through every online offering of BCMs I could find, or what the search engine could find. I ordered a dozen from Rising Phoenix Farms because their birds looked better to me.
So, I started with16 BCM eggs in a Maticoopx incubator and not one of them hatched, scrambled in delivery. The next 20 eggs had a 70% hatch rate. I found a local source for eggs from Greenfire BCM's and hatched 14 of them.
Next, the building of a coop.
And that's the short version
https://www.backyardchickens.com/th...lose-to-being-finished.1649431/#post-28303349
It began with an internet search: What is the best tasting egg? With that, I fell head first down the rabbit hole which eventually brought me here.
You know, if a little information is good then hundreds of times that must be really good!
That's how I found out about Black Copper Marans. I've kept chickens before but not like these. So, maybe get two or three hens, reasonable... But, if I got a rooster then there could be young layers and meat birds. And if I'm going to breed some more special chickens then why not get some better quality birds? I always found genetics interesting so I know starting with a small number of anything and just inbreeding them isn't a good plan if you want a healthy population. Although I understand inbreeding is not as bad with chickens. But buying even half a dozen of these birds isn't an inexpensive preposition. So, how about hatching eggs?
You see where I'm headed here? Classic case of chicken math type thinking. I ordered some parts, bought a few things and built an incubator. Took too long and I wasn't happy with the temperature stability so I ordered one online. Then the hatching eggs, I looked through every online offering of BCMs I could find, or what the search engine could find. I ordered a dozen from Rising Phoenix Farms because their birds looked better to me.
So, I started with16 BCM eggs in a Maticoopx incubator and not one of them hatched, scrambled in delivery. The next 20 eggs had a 70% hatch rate. I found a local source for eggs from Greenfire BCM's and hatched 14 of them.
Next, the building of a coop.
And that's the short version
https://www.backyardchickens.com/th...lose-to-being-finished.1649431/#post-28303349
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