Who is with me?

[riqui1]

My biggest questions, at this point, are what type to try - as I want both eggs and meat, but don't like brown eggs? And how to keep them - can they be raised right with my silkies or should they have a separate living area (tough sell with the hubby, probably)?

I have looked into the Cornish X and it seems like those are the best way to go if you want meat quickly, but not an option for eggs. In addition, I don't even know what color eggs they lay. The woman that I am buying my silkie eggs from has Araucana and Ameraucana, but I am not sure about the blue eggs. Are they more like white eggs or brown?

You know, I never thought I would end up raising chickens and now there is a lot of research too!

lol

 

[walkswithdog]

I dunno about taste of one color over another, that's usually an aesthetic choice and an impression not a thing of actual fact.

I don't know if JM Hatcheries colored broilers lay white or brown but they're a nice middle ground between trying to make a layer grow into a meat bird or a cornish cross into a layer. I keep eating mine before they get to laying (terrible greedy woman that I have become.)

For white egg layers I'd go over those offered on a site like Ideals (whom I recommend) and read up on those breeds. Then ask who is raising good ones here and selling hatching eggs.

Personally I do not like white eggs to look at. So I have blue, green and brown layers. Delaware eggs tend practically pink which is cool.

I hated cornish crosses, nasty smelly ugly....etc.

I love JMs colored broilers busy, foraging easy keepers that grow fast enough to suit me.

I'm setting up a permanent broiler flock pen so that I can raise my own broilers hopefully starting this winter. Including my Delaware culls among others.

 

[chickie_mama]

Just got a call from my hubby. My barred rock bantam, Alice, had started setting. We haven't been able to find her so just figured she had made a nest underneath the coop.

DH found her body..... she apparantely got "stuck" under there and died.

I knew I hadn't seen her in a couple of days...just assumed I was going out at the wrong time and just missed her.

DH said it is pouring down rain right now. So he can't investigate the egg situation. I told him, maybe we can save her eggs and throw them in the bator.

What else is going to freakin' happen?!?

 

[riqui1]

Oh, I am so sorry about that, chickie_mama!

 

[countrybum]

Riqui, really the only difference between brown and white eggs is the color. Taste comes from what they eat. IMO free range eggs taste better than store bought or coop raised, could be due to the fact they are not pecking at their own shoot.

If you want a bird to raise for meat and eggs, go with the Cornish, you just have to wait a little longer for them to grow, but not much.

Another thing you can try is get a dozen Cornish hens and a white Plymouth Rock Rooster (which you may have to order straight run to get your Roo) and cross breed them as they do to get the eating birds.

As soon as I get set up I am going to cross my Jersey Giant to a few hens and see if I get a good eating bird for my own freezer. If I ever get there, I will let everyone what I get out them.

Good luck.

WWD is the Delaware a good meat bird? How soon can they be processed to keep from being a tough meat?

 

[walkswithdog]

LOL about to let you know in a couple of weeks... he's getting the right size now... here chick chick chick...

Chickie momma I'm sorry you lost your girl like that.

The commercial cornish crosses aren't simple crosses of cornish and rocks but massively scientifically developed crosses over a period of 50 years. These are in no way no how, normal birds from normal parents, give up that idea. These are carefully bred genetic freaks. Their parents do not resemble normal birds or procreate normally.

Delaware, and marans and cornish are all "meat breeds" but slower than JM colored broilers. I get good size on JMs at 14 weeks, could do em younger, or older and there's no freaky time pressure because the bird is going to drop dead on you because it's a genetic freak.

I'll see how the Del I am scoping out goes, planned on weighing him live wt next week...

 

[riqui1]

I am in the process of finding out about the Araucana or the Ameraucana eggs that I can buy with my next batch of silkie eggs. I spoke with someone I know that has been raising chickens, just down the road from me, for a good 15 years and he thinks that I would do good with those. The one thing that he reminded me of, that I was completely forgetting, was that I had to make sure I got a breed that was going to take our winters here.

Now, see...I remember eating brown eggs when I was younger and I remember them NOT tasting the same. They were richer to me. Maybe that was the way that they were raised...I really can't say. Maybe now that I am a grown-up (

) it will be different. That is also hard to say though, since I have that thought in my head already. I figured I can go into it thinking that the blue eggs that these birds lay will be somewhere in the middle. lol

I have been looking at, and considering, getting a few of those cornish x, but I just don't know. I do know that they are genetically altered or whatever and that really doesn't bother me. I want meat in my freezer, as much of it as possible and I want it now. lol I just have to make sure that I can accomodate all of these different birds appropriately. For example, can my Araucana chicks (if that is what I go with) be raised right in the same brooder and kept in the same coop as my silkies? Will they beat each other up more than normal? I can only imagine that I wouldn't want to put the cornish x in there, if I bought some...or is that an option?

Choices...choices....

 

[countrybum]

Quote:

So sorry, hopefully her eggs are still good and you can incubate them the rest of the way.

Good luck.

 

[chickie_mama]

I could never raise meat birds. I get too attached to my babies. I don't believe I could ever have one butchered..... not even my mean-butt aggressive attack rooster, George.

I do hope hubby can locate her eggs.

Thanks for the hugs!

 

[walkswithdog]

You don't want to house cornish xs with anything else foul poopers. A pen outside with a tarp shelter is fine.

Araucana and silkies go well together.

But I free range sizzles and silkies with everything else so maybe I shouldn't be the one to ask. All established flock beat up on new flock until the pecking order is re-established. Generally it doesn't last long and you eat any bird for whom contentiousness is a way of life - that bird's name is always soup, regardless of size.

A child might react to brown eggs as being different certainly if they were farm raised and the kid was getting store bought.

But any bird you raise in your yard on the diet you feed is going to lay a same tasting egg, no matter what color it is. It's linked to their diet, not the color.

I range the huge and the tiny, the pushy and the pets side by side on nine acres. And I only interfere when someone is cranky all the time and breaks the peace constantly. I have three roos, still no real fighting.

The juvenille boys do the puff up and bounce thing but not very often, Rolf is currently in charge of that horde.
I wish I could keep Rolf, but he's a black rock and no room for black roos in the color progression. sigh...
I'll miss that bird.

Flocks tend to balance out, co-existance is part of being in the flock. They call it pecking order for a reason, at first some are going to get whomped on, it's not a democracy.