BREEDING FOR PRODUCTION...EGGS AND OR MEAT.

[Mini Meat]

I hear ya'll on the temperament thing. Though I have a couple very friendly chicks that I can help think are going to be pests later in life.

One of the Astrolorpes is a very funny little creature. My granddaughter named her Freena. Why Freena? IDK but it stuck.
When I open the brooder door she jumps right up on the ledge and when I shove her back down she does a little "shuck and jive" and jumps right back up. I just know she is going to be a pain in the butt when she is grown. But for now it amuses me..

 

[Mini Meat]

Quote:

Now that I have DC and DC cross hatching eggs in the incubator from @lpatelski I hope to perform this cross as well as crossing them with my NNs.

One of my neighbors came over last night to buy some eggs from me and was astonished by the looks of my birds...and not just the NNs. He grew up on a farm, but still couldn't believe how manageable all of my birds are, and how big many of them are. I picked up several roosters to show him my favorite attributes of each of them and he was astonished by how friendly the boys were, and how easily they co-habitated without fighting. Then I told him about my future breeding plans for better meat production and he began discussing paying me to raise some birds for him. Then we showed him the aquaponics and the ready-to-harvest Tilapia we've grown. He wants those too!

My husband just stood there listening, grinning from ear to ear. Later he joked that we're going to sell our business and just stay home and being chicken and Tilapia farmers. Sounds like a pretty good life to me.

I just love hearing stories like this. The more people that we can get to see the value of these kinds of projects the better.

If we turn them into customers or folks who take up their own projects either way we make the world a little bit better. Even if we just get them to think for a minute it's progress.
I think it is important.

 

[lpatelski]

How many of chicken lovers grew up:

1) on a farm
2) In the city
3) 4-H or FFA
4) Retread from parents/grand parents raising poultry

I was raised in the city of Costa Mesa California. I got into farming by choice in high school. My first FFA project was 30 meat type Cornish cross chickens. I raised and slaughtered them; selling the meat to my parent's friends in the 70's. My mother made me pay back every penny I owed. I am so grateful for that most valuable of all lessons. It has taken me 40 years to get back to my roots. Again by choice. I am loving every minute.

Tell me your story...

 

[Beekissed]

My grandparents had a farm...Angus cattle, chickens, pigs, gardens, etc. All the wholesome, practical things about raising one's own food was started there, continued in my own parents and then on to me. I'm the youngest of 9 kids, 5 of which were still in school when we moved to 110 acres of land when I was 10 and started homesteading off grid a mile back from the hard road and that far from any neighbors...that place was an overgrown tangle of multiflora rose, old junk cars, millions of old tires and woodland. We worked hard to clear it all with just hand tools, though we did have a chainsaw and a Troy Bilt tiller, built a two room log cabin to live in~put that thing up in 3 wks time...that cabin still stands sturdy 40 yrs later and I can see it from my front porch, which is also part of another cabin my folks built on this land...this time my young sons helped with the build. My Dad built a total of 4 cabins, two of which we still use and live in and 2 that stand on the original homestead tract that was sold over 20 yrs back.

I won't go into the details of all that homesteading and work, it would take a book to tell it all. We raised chickens~mostly RIR and WLH~pigs, had a milk cow and calf once, even had a horse once, ducks, turkeys, etc. Mostly our meat came from the woods and the rest of our food came from vast gardens. My mother and I were the keepers of the chickens, did all the butchering and flock tending as my sisters claimed they were too squeamish to take part in the killing...they still had to help pluck though.

I've kept dual purpose mixed flocks of various breeds down through the years at various places I've lived and also right here on Mom and Dad's land and am right back here on an 18 acre tract of that land again today, raising DP birds still. I live here as a companion to my 81 yr ol Ma, who everyone calls the Ol' Bat, and she's a gift and a marvel at her age to still be working harder than most men on this homestead...she can work circles around me and most people I know. She's getting a little forgetful but then, so am I, so we always joke that her half of a mind and my half of a mind gives us a whole brain to work with, which is more than most folks have got going for them.

It wasn't until 2006 when I gave my life to Jesus Christ that my methods in raising chickens changed...everything changed, of course, but that changed too, which is something I hadn't expected. I saw the chickens with new eyes...all the sudden they weren't just birds one keeps to get eggs and meat but living, breathing examples of God's handiwork with a unique design and life that was worthy of studying. I started viewing them with an eye towards keeping their lives as natural as I possibly could in order to allow that unique design to continue doing what it does best...keep the chicken healthy and productive. I started seeing chickens as something God had entrusted me with and so being a good steward of that trust has moved to the forefront of everything I do with them.

That new vision I had been given has continued all these years hence and I have learned so very much about the life of a chicken, where I fit into that life and how I can assist them in fulfilling their purpose here on Earth while allowing them to express themselves as the unique creation of God they are. I'm still learning every day and it's pretty exciting to realize there is no end to that learning, really....God teaches me more about them all the time and I love to learn, so it's a good, good life.

Right now I've got a flock of WRs, not very large, but it's productive and I enjoy this breed immensely. I can't think of one negative aspect of the breed and that's rare when it comes to chickens. I like to keep a few BAs, as they are my second fave breed and they are the best laying breed I've ever had, even above the RIR and leghorns. Noisy, full of personality and not as meaty as the WRs, but still worthy of my time and the feed.

Got a few chicken dogs that do their best to keep the chickens safe out on free range and God gave me a new insight to them as well, so learning all I can about natural dog behavior too, along with gardening, developing an orchard and teaching my grandchildren all about homesteading.

That's about it, though the story doesn't end there....every day is a new paragraph, every bird has its own story in the book...some write a good story and some are merely minor characters in the scene but I like being able to give them a good life of freedom here where they can live the story God gave them to live. I love being a part of that story.

 

[CanadianBuckeye]

My grandparents had chickens but I did not grow up on a farm. I only visited my grandparents a few times when I was a child but it made a profound impression on me,

Influenza update in Ontario- confirmed as low path H5N2. the ducks have been depopulated, no other incidences for now.

 

[ronott1]

How many of chicken lovers grew up:

1) on a farm
2) In the city
3) 4-H or FFA
4) Retread from parents/grand parents raising poultry

I was raised in the city of Costa Mesa California. I got into farming by choice in high school. My first FFA project was 30 meat type Cornish cross chickens. I raised and slaughtered them; selling the meat to my parent's friends in the 70's. My mother made me pay back every penny I owed. I am so grateful for that most valuable of all lessons. It has taken me 40 years to get back to my roots. Again by choice. I am loving every minute.

Tell me your story...

A lot of them are here:

https://www.backyardchickens.com/t/905602/introducing-vip-member-interviews

Mine is:

https://www.backyardchickens.com/t/939208/byc-member-interview-ronott1

 

[Beer can]

When I was young we lived on a farm surrounded by state forest. My father took care of holstein heifers for rent on the house. Today when we pass a farm my kids say 'eeew, stinky' I love the smell, brings back memories.
Dad always had chickens and rabbits when we grew up, doesn't anymore. Lotsa farms here, mostly dairy, some of about every other critter, beef, pig, goat, sheep, horse, alpacas, etc, even a buffalo/bison farm in the town I work. Next town a guy cleared off a whole mountain and raises Texas longhorns and African watusi cattle.
DW was in FFA, grew up with beef, couple jersey's they milked, pigs, turkey's, ducks, chickens, huge gardens.
We're stuck where we are for now, but have plans on buying a small farm or larger chunk of land. Right now a big garden and chickens is about all we can handle.

 

[DesertChic]

I grew up in the suburbs of Toledo, OH where it was at least an hour's drive to the nearest farm. My father was a disabled vet who loved to fish in the summertime and taught me how to catch, scale, skin and filet fish at a fairly young age. My mother came from a small Pennsylvania coal mining town and although she grew up on a small family farm, other than keeping a small garden in our backyard she essentially eschewed most of "natural" living in favor of more processed foods. She had an amazingly green thumb and I still have fond memories of the pint and quart jars of canned tomatoes stacked in our basement, but she never shared her gardening skills with me.

My own interest in farming came as a result of more than a decade of researching nutrition and food industry trends in this country. I've always suffered from health problems, and the more I learned about our food industry the more alarmed I became about the negative health effects of dietary habits, availability of "clean" food, and confusing health "trends" in this country. I wanted better for myself and my family. Since I was working about 80 hrs per week and driving more than 2 hours per day to and from work at the time, the transition had to be a slow one. It started with a switch to organic foods, and as time permitted I began to experiment with gardening techniques for the hostile desert. Slowly my black thumb began to turn brown and now is a sappy green color. I still have more gardening failures than successes, but I'm getting there.

One day I mentioned to my husband, who actually grew up on a small family farm, that I'd like to have a few chickens for eggs (I knew absolutely NOTHING about poultry keeping or any kind of farming at that time). He surprised me by purchasing a 5' x 6' x 6' chicken coop, which sat in our yard unused for nearly 2 years while I learned as much as I could about chickens. I purchased a stack of books, many dating back to the early 1900s, read voraciously, constantly did research on the internet, and finally decided it was time to buy my first chicken. I'd set up the coop in a shady location, purchased all the required accessories and feed, figured out exactly what breed(s) I wanted to start with, and headed to the local feed store to purchase four chicks. I came home with twelve chicks of three different breeds: 3 Barred Rocks, 4 Australorps, and 3 Silkies. That was October 2014.

Now....I have two coops within individual secure runs; one over-sized coop that opens into the backyard; one "cage" that I turned into the bachelor pad for extra roosters; and a 12' x 20' cabin that I divided into four coops plus two enclosed runs. I still have 2 Barred Rock hens, the 4 Australorp hens, and the one Silkie hen from that initial flock, but currently have a total of 73 birds of various breeds, mostly NN Turken. All of my chickens live in the backyard, mostly free-ranging on 1/2 - 1 acre of fence in land. I opted to stick with organic feed and try to keep their lives as "natural" as possible. I don't use antibiotics, preferring natural hardiness over medical intervention, grow organic greens for them to supplement their feed, and taught myself how to butcher the birds for meat. It's been a steep and emotional learning curve, and I still struggle with the mental aspect of killing birds that I've hatched from egg, but I feel strongly enough about the quality of our food to have worked through my inhibitions.

I also now raise Tilapia as part of an enclosed aquaponics setup, and we currently have over 40 fish of various ages. After just six months we're ready to harvest the first of our fish for dinner. The aquaponics garden isn't doing nearly as well as the fish tank portion, but I'll get there. I also have an outdoor garden which I've had mixed success with. It's hard to grow anything green in this hostile desert, but I refuse to give up. At least I've proven to be pretty darn good at growing protein. In fact, my husband surprised me recently by suggesting we start keeping pigs. Since he works away from home at our business most of the time, I'll have to be the one to take care of the pigs, so now I need to learn about raising pigs.

Life's an adventure...and I'm loving every second of it.

 

[Mini Meat]

I grew up in a suburban home and come from a long line of what I would describe as upper middle class professionals. No farmers, no gardeners for generations.

And then came me, completely animal crazy, and born into a family that never had more than a pet dog from time to time. They had no Idea what to do with me.
In grade school my best friend and I would go door to door trying to earn money to buy a horse and every Sunday we would comb the classifieds looking for the cheapest horse and fantasize about buying it.

When I was 13 my parents finally got me into riding lessons and with in a year I had badgered them into a horse of my own. That horse got me into 4H and rabbits and sheep. But due to lack of interest in our area our 4H group shut down with in a year. I kept up with the horses though, but it was not until I was married and move up into the mountain on 15 acres that I got back into small animals. I did that for much the same reasons that @DesertChic stated. A general lack of confidence in and philosophical objection to the modern food industry. I used the books and the internet to educate myself. My husband only tolerates these thing and is of no help... Oh well.

I have tried hard to make sure that my daughter did not suffer from the same disconnects that I was born into. It was not easy because in our area (Silicon valley) It's all about the tech very little support or resources for those interested in raising food, though that is changing.
She started riding at 3 yrs. and still has a horse herself, her own flock of layers, her own garden, and an simple aquaponics set up. She is in cahoots with me on the meat birds and other future planned projects. We are working together to get as far away from commercial foods as possible. Both for health reasons and as a form of protest.

My 2 yr old grand daughter has had animals and quality food in her life since birth. She eat sleeps and breaths horses and has already ridden more horses than most people even see in a life time. We even get her into her car seat with out a fuss by saying "Okay little horsey... Load up." She eagerly helps with chores and is always filthy by night fall (as she should be). She has probably ingested enough dirt and poop to make an average parent faint.

I must admit that both my daughter and I are very proud that she will know what food really is and what the real cost and value of that food is.

At this point in my life I have 2 horses, 1 dog, 2 goats, + 100 chickens, 13 turkeys. Plans to add Muscovy ducks, American Guinea hogs, and dreams of a Mini Jersey cow.

 

[cyborg]

I grew up as a military rugrat, moving every year or two, and mostly living on military bases. No animals other than dogs and cats.
'Course, I was always bringing home frogs, lizards, snakes, and turtles, but couldn't keep any.