Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Chickens are a Win Win

Like a pet that gives you eggs.

I don't know, I can't imagine our family complete without our dogs.

But, yes, chickens do rock and are a good investment.

Here is a clip from a cooking show. The first half deals with a VA farmer who does quite well for himself, with the chicken an integral part of his success.

http://www.hulu.com/watch/199788/avec-eric-farm-to-table?c=Health-and-Wellness#s-p1-so-i0

The picture below is a patch on my place that I plan to turn into a garden. Forget the rototiller,
a chicken tractor, portable pen and some mule poop should work nicely. A little rain would help.

Joal Salatin is awesome. I have quite a few of his books. He was also featured in the documentary Food Inc, which I highly recommend you folks watch.

He has some good videos on YouTube, ... like these:

Gotta ask ...

What are "TTs" ??

Oops. Sorry.

Tetra Tints.

They're apparently (allegedly) a newish variety from one of the commercial breeders, who's advertising them as good on feed efficiency. I think I read they were primarily marketed at the Latin American commercial egg producers. Tractor Supply had a bunch of them this spring, and so Mrs. Tree came home with 6 one day. From looking around on the chicken-people websites, pretty much everybody who has them got them that same way....

Reading between the lines, it sounds like the breeder tried to have a full supply pipeline for the commercial customers, so they ended up with enough excess that they gave TSC a good deal.

Look like they're gonna stay smallish-bodied birds. Some folks who have them say the have the temperaments of velociraptors, and will kill each other and other birds. Mine are the most high-strung of all my birds, but the big Rocks and Wyandottes keep them in line behavior-wise.

It is good to know common sense farmers like Joe exist and that he is sharing his knowledge.

fixed that....minor correction....they quit laying and into the fry pan they go

Okay, thanks. I'll pass on those, then.

We have a mixture of 11-week-old Black Australorps, Buff Orpingtons and Speckled Sussex. Fourteen, in all. They follow us around like puppies, but 8 are cockerels, and 7 of those will likely meet the axe in October. We'll keep the 6 hens and probably a BA roo, through this coming winter. Never raised any chickens of our own before this year, though my parents had a small flock of banties around the home place, when I was a kid.

Joel is the F.A. Hayek of farming.

I never could warm up to chickens. Never cared for them.

Lady who works the snow cone stand down the street sells eggs for $1/dozen so I just get them when I go get a snow cone

Those Joal Salatin clips are very interesting...I'm guessing its the same in the US, but over here, industrial/intensive large scale farming has been pushed as the way forward to maximize yields and provide food security.

But when you look at some of the figures Joe mentions in the clips it is obvious he can get good yields and mazimise the use of the land with out the draw backs of large scale industrial farming..

Its also very interesting that themethods work especially wll in the Third World..

Another concept suited for producing vegetables in smaller gardens is the so called Square foot gardening...