BarredBuff
El Presidente de Pollo
Sorry about that!Neko-chan said:Gotcha! It sounded a little weird to me.
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- Thread starter Neko-chan
- Start date
lorihadams
Always doing laundry
Meat goats can be milked if need be....you may not get as much milk or a high butterfat content but you could feasibly milk a meat goat and freeze some of the milk for later.
We are looking at getting some meat goats eventually because a friend of ours works with lots of ethnicities at his computer job and when they heard him talking about our meat chickens and goats they started asking if they could buy goat meat from us. We have nigis right now but are seriously looking into getting some meat goats in the spring to slaughter later on. We are just trying to figure out the particulars.
As for the chickens, I love my light brahmas....they tend to go broody so I get free incubation. I don't have any experience with some of the other breeds you talked about but they look good to me.
We have a 3-4 ft fence around our run where ours free range all day and get locked down at night in the coop so we do clip wings on all our birds. WE lost 5 this summer to our neighbor's dog because we had some that jumped ship while we were out. We had to clip everybody's wings because once the others saw the troublemakers do it they learned how and before we lost anymore I just clipped everyone's wings to be on the safe side.
We feed ours Layena and BOSS (black oil sunflower seeds) and scraps from the kitchen almost daily (my daughter hates crusts on her sandwiches and we always have some scrapings from dinner). Ours have a pretty big run with some wooded area to scratch around in so I feed them sparingly. I feed a little more in the fall and winter but cut back quite a bit in the spring and summer. If you have any meat scraps they love that and we did a decomposition experiment with the kids with some dead meat chicks and fed all the maggots to the chickens in the end. They really loved me that day
They also get scraps from the garden. I know some people mix their own feed from basic ingredients but we don't have anywhere around her that sells anything in bulk like oats or corn. Some people sprout grains for them too.
We are looking at getting some meat goats eventually because a friend of ours works with lots of ethnicities at his computer job and when they heard him talking about our meat chickens and goats they started asking if they could buy goat meat from us. We have nigis right now but are seriously looking into getting some meat goats in the spring to slaughter later on. We are just trying to figure out the particulars.
As for the chickens, I love my light brahmas....they tend to go broody so I get free incubation. I don't have any experience with some of the other breeds you talked about but they look good to me.
We have a 3-4 ft fence around our run where ours free range all day and get locked down at night in the coop so we do clip wings on all our birds. WE lost 5 this summer to our neighbor's dog because we had some that jumped ship while we were out. We had to clip everybody's wings because once the others saw the troublemakers do it they learned how and before we lost anymore I just clipped everyone's wings to be on the safe side.
We feed ours Layena and BOSS (black oil sunflower seeds) and scraps from the kitchen almost daily (my daughter hates crusts on her sandwiches and we always have some scrapings from dinner). Ours have a pretty big run with some wooded area to scratch around in so I feed them sparingly. I feed a little more in the fall and winter but cut back quite a bit in the spring and summer. If you have any meat scraps they love that and we did a decomposition experiment with the kids with some dead meat chicks and fed all the maggots to the chickens in the end. They really loved me that day
They also get scraps from the garden. I know some people mix their own feed from basic ingredients but we don't have anywhere around her that sells anything in bulk like oats or corn. Some people sprout grains for them too.
Marianne
Super Self-Sufficient
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I know nothing about goats.
But I remember reading on BYC, that some people don't offer bagged feed for their hens during the warmer months when they are getting plenty of chow from free ranging. If we had a more suitable set up, I'd do paddocks for the hens. That would give them a measure of safey while letting them free range in different areas. In the meantime, I let them free range almost every day and rarely have to buy anything. I went to just scratch grains instead of layer feed as we have had a plague of bugs for several years and I figured they'd get all the protein they needed on their own.
I'm pretty impressed with the Barred Rock that neighbors gave us. She's a dual purpose bird, really fat and meaty! She's also laying as much as the new hens, even though she's at least three years old.
We don't butcher our hens. I figure they still are worth keeping around just for bug control. We have lost a few to predators and one just died. I get a new batch of chicks once in a while.
But I remember reading on BYC, that some people don't offer bagged feed for their hens during the warmer months when they are getting plenty of chow from free ranging. If we had a more suitable set up, I'd do paddocks for the hens. That would give them a measure of safey while letting them free range in different areas. In the meantime, I let them free range almost every day and rarely have to buy anything. I went to just scratch grains instead of layer feed as we have had a plague of bugs for several years and I figured they'd get all the protein they needed on their own.
I'm pretty impressed with the Barred Rock that neighbors gave us. She's a dual purpose bird, really fat and meaty! She's also laying as much as the new hens, even though she's at least three years old.
We don't butcher our hens. I figure they still are worth keeping around just for bug control. We have lost a few to predators and one just died. I get a new batch of chicks once in a while.
BarredBuff
El Presidente de Pollo
I have had Barred Rocks before and enjoyed em, they were good birds. I'd like to get more eventually.....
From your list of chickens I have/had Welsumer, New Hampshires, and a speckled (not light) Sussex. All 3 have been great birds. I had 2 New Hampshires, and they both were my best layers at the time, giving the most and the largest eggs from my little flock. At present I have (among others) 1 Welsumer and 1 Sussex. Of the 5 pullets I got last March the Sussex was the first to lay, at about 18/19 weeks, but she stopped in September, and hasn't started up again. Don't know what is going on with her, as she isn't obviously molting. She's a nice bird though, very sweet, follows me around. The Welsumer started later, but has been very good with her laying, doing the best of all of them now in the dark days of autumn. And her dark brown eggs are just stunning! I like my mixed flock, but I think I might get a few more Welsumers just because the birds are lovely, and so are their eggs. I have also have had 4 different Amerecaunas/EEs, though not lavender, and think the world of them. They have all been good layers, and very sweet natured. I also have a Barnevelder hen, which lays dark brown eggs, though not so dark as the Welsumer, and has proved to be a good mother.
