Layers -this year I am trying Buff Orpingtons

Meat birds- first batch Cornish cross
Second batch freedom rangers

Cinnamon Queens

Don’t have any, wish I did.

Red Sex Link.

Barred rock Rhode Island Red buff orphington aerakoona white leghorn

2 years ago

I had 3 rhodes, a california white, 2 australorps, 1 auracuna, 2 barred rocks and 1 buff orpington

The orp hen was the biggest of all, and never laid a single egg for the 18 months I had them. Although she sat all the time.

Swore I’d never get orps again


The california white was a smaller ‘runt’ size complared to the others but she dropped an egg every day and never missed a beat

Same as Jim. I have a Red & Black Sex Link mixed flock. Very good layers.

Australorps

Im going back with straight comets next time

Chickens of different sizes in my mini chicken gulag we constantly picking and scabbing each other. Like some Lord of the Flies type deal

Well the Orpington have the summer to put out or they get put up with the freedom rangers.... lol

I've been through several different breeds in the last 13 years, but now have mostly Barred Rocks. I have three mutts, too, that are white (one white rooster and two white hens). They are said to have some Buff, some Leghorn, and some Brahma in them.

I wanted to deep fry that orpington in my turkey cooker but ended up just giving the whole batch away.

Wifey bought 15 barred rock chicks several yrs ago 13 Roos in that bunch.Sounded like a jungle until slaughter time

1 Rhode island red rooster,
14 black australorps (egg laying machines don't slow down in the winter),
6 buff orpington (another egg laying machines that doesn't show down in the winter)
17 guinea
5 bantams

No ticks, snakes, lizards, toads, slugs, grasshoppes, crickets, etc etc etc.... anywhere 100 yrd perimeter around the house.

Hardly have an issue with bugs in the garden.

Buff Orp
Barred Rock
Sapphire
Welsummer
Cuckoo morans
Barnevelder
Starlight
Americana
Rhode island red
Australorp

Barred rock
RIR
Ameraucana
Silkies

I hope youse guys birds are resistant to Avian Flu.

Costco Chickens $4.99 Ready Eat Best Deal in Town

If not for these, I would starve to death.

LOL. You have to buy the sexed chicks if you don't want a bunch of roos.

I had Lohman Brown Layers. Great egg producers but a modern small breed. Waiting until spring to get a dual purpose bird to replace those. Hoping to find Barred Rocks or Rhode Island Reds.

Nick

We have ISA Browns. They're the best egg layers we've had, also the most docile.

We've also had RIR, and Gold and Silver Wyandottes. The Wyandottes were pretty, but they didn't produce as well as the RIR and ISA's.

If I ever get off of my butt and complete my coop…..we’ll be trying Wyandotte’s! memtb

Of course this was all before I lost them in a boating accident.

2 Rhode Island Reds
2 Golden Sex Links
2 Ameraucanas

2 barred rocks and 2 Americanas. I try to keep my flock +/- 4 if I lose one now I will get two chicks the following spring. More than that and I have trouble using and giving away the eggs, less and I don’t have enough.

All these exotic breeds of chickens???

Y'all are testing my hendurance.

Rhode island red, barred rock, Sapphire gem, one gifted polish thing with a fro.

I have four Rhode Island Red hens.
Keep them fed and watered - get 3 or 4 eggs a day. I do turn on a light bulb when the temps are in the mid 20's or less to prevent freezing of the eggs.
My Grandparents had RIR's and had eggs year round so I figured they were a good way to go.

I dated a woman for years and we had Isa Browns. I thought that they were great layers and fairly easy birds to deal with. Also had a couple of barred rocks who were also good layers.

After years of thinking about getting some chickens, I think this year we're going to do it. The kids are working in the summer now, so family camping trips are few, meaning that we're home more to take care of them and deal with critters, if needed. Isa Browns will likely be the birds I choose.

We were losing a hen a week due to hawks.
We moved to the Australorps and haven't had a loss since then.
We read that the hawks mistake them for crows.

Don't know if it is true or not, but the results back it up.

I have Plymouth Rock hens. Large body, large eggs, lot of double yokes. They do well in the cold or the hot weather.

Had a bunch of different ones over the years, but now mostly leghorns.

You are correct, downside is they won't lay for as long as some other breeds. That said those breeds often dial it way back in the winter. For that reason is why we have a mix of breeds, but the RIR make up 1/3 of our flock. When we replace hens next we'll probably migrate to a 50/50 with barred rock.

My first flock 13 years ago was all Rhode Island Reds. I had fourteen of them. I learned that was too many hens, as over the winter they literally ate my entire front lawn. Had to reseed in the spring.

After that, I settled on six or seven hens total. Seems to work out perfectly. No overgrazing my lawn. More than enough eggs for me, and usually enough for me to give a dozen to a neighbor here and there, for good will.

I used to have a huge Australorp rooster who was super protective of his hens. I doubt any hawk would have stood a chance with him on guard.

I have read that too

My current rooster isn't quite as big, nor quite as protective, but enough that I don't lose any to hawks.



PS He was young when that shot was taken. His spurs are about three times longer than that, now.

I recently read some advice about supplementing chicken feed with cat food during winter. The explanation was that during winter there are no bugs, so the chickens diet is lacking protein. Adding 10% dry cat food to their mix was a relatively cheap and simple way to maintain that protein level and keep birds healthy, and egg production up.

I am down to two of the ISA Browns, and they have quit laying about 18 months after they started. The hybrid breeds are bad about this. I bought a pair of Barred Rocks pullets from a neighbor who raises chickens, and they've just started laying. I'll turn the Browns into coyote bait as soon as I can find some more Barred Rocks.

I won’t get another rooster. They tear up my hens, act all cocky while I’m working outside in the yard. Had to beat the shît out of them with a mop handle

Besides, we dont want that little cumshot thing in our eggs

Mostly Easter Eggers and Whiting True Blues with a couple oddballs mixed in. Most of the eggs we get are different shades of green and blue.

It isn't really worth it.

I enjoy the fight.

My wife has to carry a stick to and from her car.

Nothing brings me greater joy.

-Jake

Slight gear change here, but it seems like a good place to ask,...

Does anyone have a suggestion on mail ordering chicks? My wife's aunt has done it quite a bit, but I never see or talk to her anymore.

I suspect that shopping the local TSC will be frustrating this spring, what with all the folks wanting to become chicken farmers this year.

I had this bitch ass white leghorn kept getting after the kids.

I stopped off at the fruit stand, old fella down there selling bunny rabbits had a couple of fancy game cocks. One had some spurs about 1-1/4” long. Paid $25 for him

Brought him home turned him out and he made a laser bee line for that suckhole leghorn. Whipped his ass for 20 mins. So bad that whitey wouldn’t roost inside the henhouse anymore. Coons finally snatched him one night.

The little gamecock was tame around people. No worries

Never a problem.

Several years ago Sara Palin and her band of misfit kids ended up at a party in Anchorage on the hillside (affluent part of Anchorage) anyhow a fight broke out between her son and someone other party goer. Sara Palin yelling do you know who I am. Her son the war vet rips his shirt off starts strutting around like a ph ucking rooster, his sisters are on a car hood yelling at other party goers. I guess it was a sight to see. Could of used you and your mop handle that night.

Fellow who used to work for me on the farm asked if he could turn his chickens out on one of the farms. He said they were bantams. I told him he could..............only they turned out to be game chickens. In a short time, they had tripled in numbers. They were wild, and fended for themselves, and ate mostly in the garden we had growing on the place. I got tired of them pecking holes in the tomatoes, and declared war on them. I probably shot about 20 or so of them, until a friend found out and said he could sell the roosters as fighting chickens. I gave him the rest of them if he could catch them, and he sold those roosters for some good money. I guess I'd been better off not shooting them. But, I hate a dang rooster.

Never a problem on mail ordering chicks? Or, never a problem with TSC?

Rhode Island Red and Barred Rock. No roosters.

Check Craigslist for a local hatchery you can pick up .

we had a pair of Bourbon tom turkeys, mean as hell

You could whoop em every day and that small brain just would reset and go again.

I wanted to try out a katana sword on them fouckers, mother wouldn’t let me kill them

Even thought about giving them some furadan 🤣

Furadan was some good chit

We got our ISA Browns back when lots of businesses were hurting from the COVID lockdown. My wife was picking up some dog food at TSC, and they had a lot of chicks that they hadn't sold. The guy over the chick department offered my wife a couple dozen at discount. My wife hesitated, so he came some more. This went on until my wife finally bought them at a fraction of the original cost. We didn't need 2 dozen for our own use, but the extra eggs we sell more than pays for the feed.

They are very friendly compared to the other chickens we've had.

have been thinking about starting in back yard a flock a problem how to keep in our yard not jumping the fence?

My feed store has chicks for @$8 each
Local hatchery has buffs $4.00 hens
Cornish cross $1.80 straight run

Murray McMurray hatchery. They’re in PA?
They are in Iowa.

https://www.mcmurrayhatchery.com/index.html


Ordered from them a lot. We order through a local feed store and have had good luck.

One year we were turkey central for 4H kids. We had around 22 poults delivered in a group buy.


Re: chickens, we no longer keep layers. Too much cost and trouble the second winter.

We quit getting the filthy, freak-of-nature, Cornish cross meat birds. A long as we can get Freedom Rangers, wont go back.

Dayum is that the new norm for chick pricing?

Our current flock is Easter Eggers (real characters for personality), Golden Comets and one Buff Orpington hen. We have had RIRs, Wyandots, White Leghorns, Araucunas, Plymouth Rocks and some guineas. We will continue with more of the EEs and the GCs come springtime. They are OK with cold temperatures and are decent layers.

The Buff Orpington rooster was a real pistol. He would challenge any man that came within 20 feet but seemed to like all women. He was a rapist rooster, so I'm not sorry that he has been replaced by a mild-mannered Chanticleer, who now does all the roostery chores without the damage to the hens.

Go online, look for Cackle Hatchery in Missouri and compare the breeds before ordering. If you order hens, they sex the chicks and they will send hens. Our orders have arrived safely and on time.

The Rural King here lets idiots and children (samey samey) handle and cuddle the different baby chicks.

So you might think youre buying pullets and get 1/2 roosters. I’m not an expert on sexing chicks so I got hosed one time before.

I appreciate the information, Mike. I was just looking at McMurray's site.

I think I remember learnng abou Freedom Rangers from a post by you a year or 2 ago. Sounds like you had good luck with them. I agree with you about the Cornish Cross birds. My wife's aunt raised them and they were really are disgusting looking creatures, and I wasn't impressed with the meat, either. Always seemed tough and dry. Maybe they were butchered too late?

Interesting article on mcmurray web site comparing cornishX and FR.

https://blog.mcmurrayhatchery.com/2018/09/07/4-h-broiler-project-compares-two-top-broiler-breeds/

Hard to say. The Cornish grow fast, but had higher mortality from heart issues and leg issues. They only got up to walk from the feed to the water. FR act like real chickens, ranging for grass, weeds, bugs, etc. Also, I think we’ve only had 1 or 2 die before I caused it. I think they gave better flavor too.

That's interesting, because my next door neighbors are cat people (a whole pride of them outside, and three inside), and they occasionally (subtly) complain to me that my flock will sometimes make a visit to their feral cat feeding area and eat the food.

If eggs are collected within 24 hours of laying, there's no difference in appearance, taste, or smell between fertilized and unfertilized eggs.

Don’t know what it is about cat food, but it’s the best way to get a pig to jump into a horse trailer to haul them to the fair. It’s like crack to them.

You just need to clip the flight feathers on a single wing. Don't do both wings. This way, they cannot get any thrust from flapping, and cannot get over the fence.

I don’t feed The Cornish 24/7 . 12 on 12 off . They will literally eat themselves to death. But 8 weeks and they are in the freezer.

The rangers I get early summer and they go out on pasture in chicken tractors. Makes better meat and save a lot on feed .

I've heard about feeding them cat food when they're molting to bring the new feathers on quicker.
I haven't tried it yet, but may next season.

Meal worms and various animal fats mixed in their feed seems to work well. Today's haul so far, will probably get 2 or 3 more before dark:



Been averaging 10 per day all winter. 13 birds, 8 of which aren't quite a year old.

Mealworms are great to use to train them too.

Don't do it!


We tried a big ass chicken in the turkey fryer.
Poor surface area to depth ratio.
It got nice and brown, was raw inside.
Lucky we temp checked, popped it in the oven to slowly finish. Was great.

There is a reason Fryer is a size for chickens.
It's the perfect mass/surface ratio for nice brown, cooked pieces.

Copper Marans, salmon faverolles, brown sex links, Americanas, olive eggers and a couple other assorted varieties. The brown sex links are great birds. They’re prolific layers, healthy and friendly. I’ll be getting several sexlinks and other assorted pullets soon to keep the flock fresh.

We have a RIR, Cuckoo Maran. Australorp, Gold laced Wyandotte and a Blue Copper Maran. Our rooster is a Gold Sexlink.

The hens are a few years old and aren’t laying like they used to. My wife is gonna pick up a few new chicks in a week or two. She hasn’t decided what she wants yet.

Chicken crack! They love em!

Mail order.

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