We don't want to kill chickens

[stellas mommy]

I love craigslist. You should defiantly try it!

 

[kfacres]

Quote:
this is no different than the animal shelters being overcrowded.. Don't make it if you can't find a home for it.. either selling it, or eating it... chickens are livestock, livestock is food source...

If the chickens are you pet, then you shouldn't steal the eggs to eat either...

 

[EM Squared Farms]

Hi Everyone ! And thanks for all of your replies. I had a feeling we were going to get all sorts of opinions/advice. Well, most of his chickens are bantams (aren't they a little small for food ?), except for the Marans (they are huge!). We did originally give away 5 Rhode Island Red Roosters to a Spanish Family who did kill them for food (they were mean to his poor Cornish x Rock hens) and gave away one Red Ginger Old English Game Bantam rooster (who killed his new Golden Sebright hen and rooster) . We are waiting on our new chicken coop to be completed, maybe to buy some more time for them and give them more room. Our first coop is 6' tall and (I think) 20' x 25' (divided into 6 pens). The new coop (almost done) is going to be 8' tall and (I think) 25' x 25' (divided into 4 pens). (I'll have to double check the dimensions with my husband - I'm not a #s kind of person). We are going to try very hard to sell all his chickens. We have had some success with Craig's List and I think I signed up for 7 or 8 more on-line classified sites. We've been to one swap and sale (and he has some luck selling one cockerel with a pullet and some other pullets).

4H is starting up again soon. My husband has plans of trying to talk to leader to organize between the other clubs our own local swap and sale. The local master gardeners do a plant sale every 3 months or so and it's right at the 4H office building/grounds. We'll see how that works out.

We are looking into those livestock auctions. I would like to hear more hands on experience about them first. I did talk to a guy at church that lives in a town that has those auctions and he recommended the auctions in a neighboring town better.

For now, it's a somewhat manageable situation. We did separate the young Americana pullets into another breed's pen since one hen was starting to miss a few feathers. So, only all the Americana cockerels are together. (Good thing they all grew up together so they don't fight.)

I have a friend from up North (in NY) and they are not allowed to have roosters, so she sell all of them for food as organic chickens and keeps all the hens from the straight run for selling eggs. She buys White Leghorn chicks every year. She's thinking of hatching out her own chickies next year. We had so much fun raising all the cute little chickies. My son loves all his chickens so much.

We did hear from a breeder we got one breed from about all the culls that happen in the beginning of the breeding selection process. This was a little hard to hear (about digging a big pit and having a large post...).

I think the next step in the chicken sales plan would be to require my son to spend his allowance money (and b-day gift money, and egg sales money) to start paying for chicken feed.

We have spent a lot of money constructing these huge chicken pens for him and his younger brother, but we figured it was necessary since both of them will be in 4H and want to have chickens for many years to come until they are grown up and out of the house.

It's a slow process, but we are pretty dedicated to selling them. We've really only tried 2 avenue of sales and have a ton more on the planned list of future sales. A breeder's show is coming up in a couple of months. A real chicken show is coming up also in Nov. and many more after the new year. Our county fair is in Feb. And hopefully my husband can move quickly and organize a local swap and sale with 4H very soon (I think it starts up in Sept.).

You never know what the future brings ! I'll keep you posted on what seems to work for us.

We always have those options of local livestock auctions, or that bobcat trapper, and that Spanish family that took our other RIRs. Or that other guy who takes roosters....

We'll see how it goes. You can follow our progress of selling our chickens on our website. I like to keep track of #s there on the Purebred Show Chickens page. That's where I "count everything."

Thanks again everyone for your opinions and advice. It is always appreciated ! I'm still hoping someday to never have to kill any of his chickens for food. (that's motivation to sell, for sure !)

 

[Fred's Hens]

Lisa,

You took the pointed replies with a good spirit. Good for you.

The advice given was quite honest and forthright, in my view. The chicken as pet simply presses the limits the number of such creatures the earth can sustain. The "I want a chicken solely as a pet" market has a natural saturation point. Given the economy and so forth, we may already have reached that saturation point. I won't even get into the hatcheries destroying millions of hatched roos every day.

Given the enormous number of roosters hatched by backyard breeders, home egg incubators, hatchery sexing mistakes and buyers of straight run chicks, the market for roosters as pets is miniscule. That only leaves the food market. The young rooster will always be 50%, on average, of all home incubated eggs hatched. One is 40 or one in 50 will ever be used for breeding purposes. The rest are simply food and this is as it should be, with the world needing food and with chickens competing for grains that are more expensive on an ever increasing basis. It is the cycle of life and always will be. Similar to the pet overpopulation in dogs and cats, this issue is simply not going to go away.

Responsible husbandry places demands on all us here at BYC. I suspect as this boom continues to the saturation point, this discussion will occur many more times here on the forum.

I wish you all the very best.

 

[EM Squared Farms]

Yeah, I figured the ratio of hatched eggs would be 50% (so we're left with half roosters). My son is part of the show chickens community (I guess) so he's interested in rooster for breeding or for show. Most of our customers just wanted hens for eggs (not interested in showing at all).

You never know how it's going to turn out but to wait and see. Time will tell. I remember at the 4H fundraiser, he ran into a little boy who wanted to join 4H this year and wanted some chickens. You never know if he wants a rooster. They do have different colors and nice combs.

We've hatched chickies for 3 months and just started trying to sell them. Some of the later chickies are still too young to sell (since he can't tell if they have good show quality traits or not).

Ask me before next Spring and I'll let you know how the chicken sales adventure went.

Also, I did confirm the dimesions of the chicken coops with my husband. I wasn't too far off. The original chicken coop is 20'x24' and the new chicken coop is 24'x26'. I was pretty close. The original chicken coop is divided into 2 pens of 1/4 of the pen and 4 coops divided into 1/8 of the pen. The new chicken coop is just divided into quarters. 2 of these pens are going to be the For Sale pens (one for the roosters and one for the hens-communal).

Next year we only plan on breeding the black and splash silkies.

Thanks again everyone for taking the time to type your replies. Everyone is allowed to have their own opinions and I respect all of them, even if they are different from mine. We shouldn't force our opinions on people or judge them based on it, but try and glean what you can from them and learn something for yourself.

 

[EM Squared Farms]

Hey "FoxyProProxy", I sent you a private message just now. (Check your Inbox)

Thanks for sharing our not so common opinion about not killing chickens and thank you for supporting us and wanting to buy some of our bantam hens.

Hopefully he'll have time today to take some good pics for you to see on the website of the chickens for sale.

It's nice to have one friend on here.

 

[yinepu]

Quote:
All of our extra bantam and silkie roos go to freezer camp.. they are really good on the grill wrapped in bacon.. lol.. you may have a hard time trying to convince the average person that they are edible.. but we think they are delicious (I'm also raising quail to eat.. so to me size doesn't matter so much when it comes to a tasty meal).

 

[foxypoproxy]

Quote:
I replied to your message :]

 

[kfacres]

you know, EM 2.... the original purpose of 4H, and agriculture in general, is to learn where food comes from, how to develop it, and to promote it. Fairs and expos are geared for the public to come, see what's happening, where their food comes from, and general public awareness.

If you aren't able to promote where the food is coming from, maybe you need to quit being a wanna-be, and leave it up to the folks who do?

Have you confided this problem with you sons? I don't know how old they are, but I know that when I was 5 or 6, I loved butchering chickens, it was a blast.. and to this day still make comments like: "Boy Rosemary sure tastes great", while sitting at the dinner table.

maybe that's not the norm?

 

[foxypoproxy]

Quote:
I know alot of farmers and people who own chickens who would not like to kill them.
I don't think its very nice calling them "wanna-be's".
In no way am i defending that it was a good idea to hatch 111 chicks, but they had good intents.
Maybe they didn't realize how hard it would be to home so many of them as "pets".
Count this as a learning experience and obviously they won't do it again.
I wouldn't count this as a chicken mill because chicken mills are like hatchery's where they hatch a bunch of chickens and don't care what happens to them.
Mills don't care if they have to slaughter the chickens they no longer need.
These people DO care what happens to these chickens and would prefer not to kill them.
Everyone should be allowed to have their own opinions here.
I respect the fact that you have no problem with killing your poultry but i just ask that you respect the people who don't agree to do the same.
Some people, like myself, have always loved animals, rescued saved animals, worked at animal shelters, etc.
I could never harm them, but i would also never hatch a bunch of chickens i could never home.
Anyway, im just saying, i think they get it, no point to keep beating them up about it.
They probably will have to sell their roo's for people to eat.
But respect their opinion to not want to slaughter their own animals.
Thank you.