What large fowl breeds/colors do you want?

[ChickFarmer]

I'm in Washington state and moving to a farm at the end of the month. I can finally get chickens! This will be a working farm so everything has to earn it's keep and then some. I know trying to earn money farming is crazy, but won't be quitting my day job just yet. So I need to pick a chicken varriety to breed and sell. I don't have the space to raise 100's and cull down to 10 so it needs to be a breed that has quality stock available. I want the chickens to be productive layers not just pretty no matter how well they might sell. So far canadates are, BBS Ameraucana's, Blue laced silver Wyandotts, or perhaps a sex link blue/light green EE done with Ameraucana roo on EE hens. So tell me, what do you want, because I'm open to suggestions.

Thanks for helping with my "market reserch"

 

[The Chickinn]

Depending on how much space you have available, you could breed a RIR or New Hamp Red roo over some White Leghorn hens and produce some Golden Comets(Cinnamon Queens, Red-Sexlinks, whatever you want to call them).

 

[ChickFarmer]

All the feed stores aroun here have those, but they are great layers. I have such a raccoon problem at the farm that I want to stay away from those escape artist leghorns. The farm is in a no shooting area and the population has gotten out of control. They seem too smart for the havahart traps. Guess they have seen them all before. I once saw a leghorn with a cliped wing fly onto a 6' fence. She just flew in a half circle and landed on top.

I'll probably be getting Welsh Harlequin ducks too. So to prevent confusion I'd like a colored egg breed.

 

[jarcoo0153]

I just got my farm too and order chicks to raise and sell. I've got four acres, and right now only one chicken on it! I ordered Ameracaunas, Marans, and White Faced Black Spanish. I ordered the Spanish mainly to sell because they are a old endangered breed. I figured that if i sell a heritage breed I wouldn't be competing with others who raise more common breeds. I ordered The marans and the Ameraucanas, because many people around here are shocked to see eggs in these color. I am also planning to breed Olive eggers. Good luck with you with your farming adventure!


Edited: because I can't Spell, and this thing doesn't have spell check!

 

[RAREROO]

Quote:
You cannot get sexlinks from White Leghorns, They are dominant white and do not have the silver genes needed to make sexlinks, their chicks will be white with black dots. There may be a slim chance of finding a line that has the silver genes but in general, Leghorns do now produce sexlinks.

And ChickFarmer How do you plan to get sexlinks using and Americana roo on EE hens ? You have to have a Gold gene roo on and Silver gene hens to make Red type sexlinks. It would be hard to find Silver gene EE hens and even if you did, the patterns of the chicks would make them near impossible to sex as chicks. If you bred and Ameraucana rooster on Barred rock hens, that would make Black Sexlinked EEs, or if your had a Wheaten or other gold gene Am roo, and cross with Silver gene hens, that would also make green eggers, but they may look somewhat like random mutts and that may he hurt the sales.

Do you plan to sell birds locally and if so do you plan on selling chicks or growing them off before you sell them. Or do you plan to go for a breed that is in higher demand and ship eggs from them. Either way unless you have some new project that takes years to work on and get right and then have people willing to pay hundreds of dollars for a dozen eggs, their isnt going to be much profit in raising and selling chickens, just do it for fun. I have found though that if you have just a flock of good laying hens and enough family and neighbors to buy eating eggs, your hens can pretty much pay for their own feed just by selling eating eggs.

 

[ChickFarmer]

Well I'll try to answer your questions. To get a Silver EE hen you cross any Silver breed roo with a Gold Ameraucana. All the hens will recieve the Silver gene and one copy of the blue egg gene. To get a barred EE you cross any roo who is pure for barring with a dark solid color Ameraucana. As for selling eggs for 100's of dollars

I'm not trying to get rich quick farming. As for your advice to just make it a hobby, I hear that all the time about the entire farm. I do not want to have a hobby farm with chicken accesories. Chickens are part of my organic pest, and weed control plan. I also grow organic greens and tomatoes. As part of a diversified farm I wan't to aquire quality breeding stock and sell them to those who want something other than hatchery stock. On to how I would sell them, some hatching eggs would be sold, some chicks would be hatched out for local buyers, and culls from my breeder program would be sold locally when available.

I don't think hobby farms are bad, by the way, just not what I intend. I don't want tick off those hobby farmers, some of them have excellent breeder stock.

Edited to say: Clint, I just went to your BYC page I'm surprised to see you breed and sell chickens. Surprised only because you are advising me against it.

 

[RAREROO]

Quote:
First of all, No I was not at all advising you against raising and selling chickens, its just that you mentioned earning money off of chickens and I just wanted to tell you with my experience in raising chickens and what you will find to be the general consensous with most anyone you ask here, it is hard to make any profit with chickens, after all is said and done you may get your expences you put into them back, but that is about it. Thats what I ment by just do if for fun, not nessarily just a hobby flock, but just raise and breed them for fun becuase I just see a lot of other people who try to get into chickens to make money and I just wanted to make sure that you werent one of those people and would later may be disappointed.

I'm also glad to see that you are brushed up on your genetics before you get in to a project, yes I know how the genetics works and you are right with the way you explained them, its just that still everyday here with all the threads on sexlinks and and even the nice sticky, people still ask if some random breeds will produce sexlinks and I wanted to make sure that you knew how it works and that you werent just planning on crossing an Am roo with any random hatchery EE hens to try to get sexlinks, but if you are making your own EEs with a Silver roo on pure AM hens, then you are on the right track there, but still remember what I said about the patterns of Ameraucanas and EEs would make the birds really hard to sex as day olds. Sometimes to can have chocolate brown colored EE chicks that will grow up to be Silver colored.

But like I said I didnt mean any offence, not was I trying to advise you against raising and selling chickens, its just that you said you havent gotten chickens yet and I wanted to make sure you werent one of the misguided newbies that we see on here sometimes, nothing wrong with being a newbie mind you, we all were at one time, I was just trying to give some helpful info, but I see now that you have done your homework before hand and know what you are doing. And your plan does sound good, and also remember that the demand for each certain age ( eggs, chicks, hens, and roosters) are going to depend on the time of year and your competition in the market.

And I do the same thing with tomatoes, I grow them in a small fenced in area using nothing but chicken manure and leaves that I let compost of the winter as fertilizer, I try to either pull the weeds and feed them to the chickens or put the ducks in there for a little while depending on how far along the plants are, and when I have those darn tomatoe horn worms I try to pull them off and give them to the chickens instead of using pesticides.

 

[ChickFarmer]

Thanks for your second message. We had such a cold wet start to summer I could have really used those chickens and ducks this spring. Organic slug bait is too expensive and nothing organic controls cut worms.

 

[RAREROO]

Yep. luckily I didnt have much of an insect problem with the tomatoes this year and I have gotten about all I'm going to get or need from them so I will probably pic the last of the tomatoes soon and turn the geese in on them to eat whats left of the tomatoe plants and grass in there.