Egg and meat production in poultry

[Hinotori]

An alternative on the pit storage for root veggies is to bury a plastic trash can at an angle in the ground so you can slide the veggies in. Then cover the lid with dirt or straw. This helps in wetter area if you can keep the water out.

Grandpa did pits for root veggies. Tossed a tarp over and covered with dirt and straw. Then they built the house and figured out that under the house kept the temp around 38-40 in winter which was perfect.

Mom stores potatoes in the wooden shed with 3 inch styrofoam under and extra cardboard on the sides. An old quilt covers the top of the stacked boxes. Unless the temps go single digit, they won't freeze. This doesn't work in the metal kit shed they have.

We grew up eating a lot of asparagus as it was grown there as a major crop. I don't care much for just canned. Pickled I love.


Oh it's the idiots who follow the stupid thing that are passed around online that will suffer. "But it said apples prevent sprouting! Why is everything rotting or sprouted!" I've been trying to tell people that particular one is wrong as it does the exact opposite but no. It's on Facebook it must be true.

Just like the "let's make hand sanitizer and add essential oil." Except that the oil won't disperse in any of those ingredients and someone is going to get burned by some of the oils. Or end up with a permanent induced allergy to them as that is a possibility when using undiluted essential oils. Why you're always warned to dilute the things. Only a few that are safe to use in any form undiluted.

 

[Beekissed]

Various pics of broodies and chicks....I have three WR broodies right now with both white and barred chicks on the ground. Two more hens sitting on eggs together, one BA and the other a barred WR/BA mix hen.

Here's a black snake I killed that was hunting the chicks....was about 2 ft away from the broody pen. The snake was 5.5 ft. long. Discovered it when I was looking around the shed walls for something and this big ol' thing was draped over a log over the door we had walked in and out of all morning long. Grabbed the tail and pulled it down out of there, separated it from its head with a machete.

Used a farm mutt mix rooster this year, a cross between a WR male and a Sapphire Gem hen, the grey hen in the picture.

One more batch to hatch, plus two ducks sitting a double nest in the coop....all these chicks and culling a few older hens will give us some of our meat supply this coming winter. I'm hoping a lot of these are cockerels.

 

[Beekissed]

I do something similar here, NH. I use BAs to be the primary egg layers, while using the WRs~though also excellent layers~for brooding of chicks and adding meat to the mix. So, while the WRs are taking time off to be mothers, the BAs can still lay onward.

I also use them for mixes, as the mixes lay very well but have meatier carcasses than the BAs. The males of that mix grow faster than the WRs and finish out with the same meat quality, so they make for great meat production alongside the WR males.

A 4 mo. old WR/BA mix cockerel, eating mostly foraged feed, so no penning and finishing here....he'll fill out even more by butchering time at 5-6 mo.

BA/WR mix pullet at 4 mo...she'll put on quite a bit more bulk by the time she matures, making for a pretty heavy hen at the end.

This past season I threw a wild card into the mix, just for funzies...I bred/hatched out a few eggs from an old EE hen my sister gave me, who has laid like a machine for her for many years and has held her own here, in laying and also within the social structure. Those EE mixes have a smaller body than the WR/BA mixes, but still larger than the EEs. As of right now, they are maturing at the right time too.

The little old EE hen, in her 6th year and still having lengthy laying cycles for her age....

And one of her daughters....both parents have a barred gene, so all the offspring have barred feathering and her pea comb. They come out about the size of the BA hens.

The BAs make a great work partner for my WRs in my flocks, so they will continue to be my second breed choice. I doubt I'll ever get into EEs at all, though this little old hen has impressed me enough to allow her to pass along some genetics for my mixed flock. Her egg color trait also insures I'll not be putting their eggs into any hatches if I don't wish to do so.

 

[Mini Horses]

I have some Marans that are good layers, nice size for a dual, non-aggressive but hold their own. Some of their eggs and some BO eggs were used for hatching and I am really pleased with the pullets thus far. Just starting to lay at 6 mos. Another group who is 1 month behind should start up soon. These are a smaller bird but VERY good foragers and EXCELLENT setters. They are from some blue egg layers I raised from day-olds who crossed with a MaransXAmeraucana roo. Should be fun. I expect them to lay in another 3-4 weeks. Hope to get 7 young roos off the feed line and into my food line next week. LOL They don't lay eggs & sure don't need their help in the breeding line-up. Hate the job but normally love the results. We'll see. Everyone free ranges + gets fed. These boys feel pretty well filled out.

 

[tortoise]

We started with RIR as a dual-purpose, but we don't like the carcass. They're stringy and awful and their legs are so freakishly long we ended up buying a bigger crockpot. We had trouble packing them for the freezer too.

We have f1 and f2 Buff Rock and Dark Cornish crosses. So far they're quite disappointing. My strategy is to hatch chicks, grow them out, and keep the best. I'm not worrying much about eggs. We have more than we can manage and no way to know who the good layers are. Except three white leghorns that lay white eggs, but I won't incubate any of those and cross them in.

I'm looking at comb type for winter hardiness and temperament. My birds are flighty AF, but if we just can't catch a hen, I want her culled. We're getting a dozen eggs a day and will likely cull some hens. Unfortunately, DH picked hens to give away without my input. Which likely means he grabbed the easiest to catch - which are the ones I'd want to keep.

We will probably be looking to add some new birds this spring or next year to boost genetic diversity and see what we can get the birds to produce.

 

[frustratedearthmother]

I do admire the folks who have the passion and knowledge to improve the breeds. Bee's flock is gorgeous and if it weren't for the fact that I'm not a fan of white birds, I'd probably have some.

I find that I'm getting some beautiful big, meaty birds from my Faverolle roos. Who'da thunk it?

 

[treerooted]

I'm in the same boat, any selective breeding I do will just be in the natural course of keeping my flock. But I would like to incorporate a couple breeding/brooding rooms if I build a new coop. I figure I've got lots of years ahead of me. Who knows what improvements I may have in twenty+ years?
I think if I could, I would want two lines of decent layers that cross for a better meat bird. But I don't know yet.
At least with the dual purpose I can't go wrong, like NH said, every bird becomes a part of our sustainable food chain

 

[milkmansdaughter]

I'm just getting to this thread. My flock is a very mixed flock, with practically no planning whatsoever. (funny how when you start, you THINK you did a LOT of planning, only to look back later and see how little you have done!)

Since this is the beginning of a new year, I thought I'd do a recap of our first year with chickens. Let me start by saying, chickens were not my idea, and I didn't ever think I'd see them as much more than a means to an end. I had no particular interest in them at all, and could not tell you even one breed in the beginning. I was still living 900 miles away waiting for our son to finish the school year, so the beginning of the chicken project was completely on my husband until June.

So, we got our first birds on April 3rd. They were 8-12 weeks old when we got them (so born in January 2017). Among that first batch were three Buff Orpingtons, a Partridge Rock, and 4EE's. We later added 2 Barred Rocks, 1 RIR, 1 lavender Orpington (we think), 1 BA, 2 EE roosters, and 2 older (4+ years) hens from a friend of unknown breed. That's our current 17. (We had originally gotten 21 birds, and kept 12, later culled 4 of the 12 we kept. The others went to friends, who later gave us several others.)

When we first started, we kept all of our birds in 2 small coops (4 to a coop). They all got layer pellets, dry, plus whatever they could get from the grass in the pen.

By July we were averaging 6 eggs a day from our original 8 birds. We added 7 more birds to the flock on July 20th, but most were still young, and two were young roosters. Three were old ladies, all over 4 years and at the end of their producing years. Only 1 of the 7 added to the eggs production in the fall. We moved the coops and the birds to a fenced area that was 35x50 feet, with netting over the entire area. We divided the pens to keep the new younger birds and the young roosters separate. The three oldest birds were also in their own area apart from the rest in an 16x16 foot fenced area. Egg production stayed about the same until the end of August.

In September, we added 2 RIR and 2BA and 2 BR to the flock, but 1 of our RIR, and 1 BA got sick with a respiratory illness, and were culled, but it just about took out the whole flock. Most of the chickens went through a time of not eating well, and were quite thin. Egg production stayed around 6 a day until the 3rd week of Sept, when it fell sharply to 3 a day the third week, then to less than 2 a day the last week of Sept. We went from 21 birds down to our current 17.

I didn't keep good records in Oct, but do not have a record of any eggs from Oct 5th until Dec 9th. (I was out of the state from Oct 6th until the 21st.) By the time I got back, the chickens had feathers everywhere and were quite thin. We thought we would lose the whole flock, but didn't cull at the time because they were so thin (should have culled the whole lot of them, but since we wouldn't get any meat off of any of them, we decided to try FF first.) I started occasionally free ranging the chickens when I got back, and switched to full free ranging and started Fermented Feed on Oct 31st. We had no eggs in November, but LOTS of feathers everywhere. But the days were still warm and the chickens really added bulk and feathers in November, probably tripling (or more) their weight on FF and free ranging. They started ranging very close to the original pen when I first let them out, and always stayed in a bunch. Now they freely range over several acres, are cold tolerant (this is our coldest day so far at 17*), and go through about 1/2 the feed they did when they were thin. Today, even in the cold, they are all over the property, come running from all directions if I step outside, and are thick and fully feathered, and HEAVY.

We are now averaging about 7 eggs a day, after getting our first eggs again around Dec 9th, a day after a BIG snowstorm.)

I didn't save any eggs from before FF, but had to get a dozen from a store a few weeks age. So here is a picture of a store bought XL egg next to one of our own L eggs. The store bought egg is on the left, and has a much smaller, pale yolk.

(Edited to upload pictures from my phone.)

So, that's my recap of 2017. Things are looking up for 2018!

 

[Beekissed]

Well...if you own chickens, long about now your egg production is increasing. Seems like every year it hinges on just a couple of days...one day I'm getting 2-3 that I've been getting all winter long, then the next day everyone decides to add to the nest.

Slowly but surely, everyone who will lay in the spring cycle will start laying, shells that were a tad thin when they started will firm up, yolks will even out, shells will stop having those little weird imperfections they sometimes have at the beginning of a laying cycle and then eggs are in abundance....when that happens it's easy to forget who didn't lay in the winter months or which hen didn't even lay a bit after summer molt.

But, just because they lay in the spring, it doesn't make them a good layer all year round, so I watch cycles all year and note how quickly they get back to laying after raising young, after molt, during the winter, etc. By fall I've usually got a good idea on who will be taken out of the flock and eaten, thinning the numbers I'll be taking into the winter.

I'll generally keep them in the flock all spring and summer because food is in abundance out there, so I'm not really feeding slackers too much, plus the rooster will need good mating opportunities when his really fertile girls are mothering a brood.

Sometimes you'll have a hen that doesn't even lay steady in the spring, be they old or young, and those are an automatic cull....they really serve no purpose as they won't even be fertile enough to provide the rooster mating when the good hens are on the nest. Sometimes I'll go ahead and cull those birds in the spring, putting them in the freezer until it's time to do the fall cull and canning.

Why don't I leave them in the flock until fall? Hens who are not laying steadily even in cycles are more likely to develop laying issues when they do lay, they are more likely to carry or be carrying parasites, more likely to be loners and have/create problems within the flock, and I'd prefer to kill her and keep the meat rather than she have problems and have to be killed for them, then not getting to keep her meat.

I've got high hopes for this season's hatch, as I'm planning a heavy cull of my existing flock come fall. Last year this flock laid better than any flock I've ever owned before, but there are a few slackers in the bunch that will need to be removed if that will continue.

 

[sumi]

I won't buy store eggs either I barely eat my own hens' eggs! I left the last 3 I got in the fridge to remind me what they look like These girls had better start laying before I have to toss them (eggs)! lol