Choosing Chicks

Picking a breed or breeds to include in your flock can be a difficult endeavor, depending on what your requirements are. Some people find it very easy. I do not. I envy those chickens raisers that can go to the feed store and pick up their chicks without agonizing over which breed(s) to add to their flocks.

This post should help you understand how to order chicks and the general characteristics of various breeds and categories of chickens. It is by no means all inclusive.

First off, chicken breeds are not like dog breeds, you can not tell them apart solely by color. Each breed tends to share its color varieties with many other breeds. Not all breeds have more than one color, but most of them do. Some even have a whole bunch! Many breeds have a popular color, which may be the only variation available in your area.

There are four general categories of chicken breeds. The first three are standard size (what you are used to seeing).

1. Egg layers

• The breeds in this category are mainly hybrids (the hen and roo come from different breeds) that can be color sexed at hatch
• Tend to have small bodies and little meat at the end of their production days
• High feed to egg conversion ratio
• Tend to be more flighty than dual purpose breeds
• Excellent egg producers (300+ their first 12 month in production)

2. Meat birds

• Grow faster than the other two types
• High feed to meat conversion ratio
• In general, not the prettiest birds
• There are a limited number of these breeds with one dominating the market
• The birds will reach a marketable weight between 4 and 20 weeks of age

3. Dual purpose birds

• The majority of breeds fall into this category
• Most heirloom and rare breeds will fall into this category.
• These birds will be good egg layers (150-200 eggs per yr, occasionally up to 250), the males will have good meat production (but will take 6-12 months to reach a marketable weight) and the hens will have a decent amount of meat at the end of production

4. Bantams

• Smaller versions of the standard size chickens
• Low feed to egg conversion ratio
• Excellent sitters and mothers
• Generally more docile than their standard size counterparts

Egg layers

If all you are concerned with is egg production, then I recommend any of the sex-linked breeds. A roo of one breed is mated to a hen of another (generally a white with a red). They come in various colors of red and in black. There are no other colors of female chickens that are color sexed at hatch. You’ll see names such as Productions Red, Cherry Eggers, Red Sex Link, Black Sex Link, Cinnamon Queen and Golden Comet to describe the hybrid sex linked chickens. There are other breeds in this category but none so excellent an egg layer as the hybrids. Breeds that are considered very good layers are Leghorns, Orpingtons, Australorps, Rhode Island Reds, and NH Reds to name a few of the most common.

Meat birds

As far as I know, there are three meat bird sources. No pure breeds exist, that are excellent meat birds.

The Cornish Cross (a hybrid) dominates the market and you can find it at any hatchery and in every grocery store. It is the only meat bird for the commercial poultry industry. This bird consumes as much feed as you provide and grows at a very high rate of speed. They tend to be very lethargic birds that lose the feathers on their chest due to the amount of time they spend lying down and scooting around to feed instead of standing up. They grow FAST. You’ll have these birds to a marketable weight in 6 wks. They get hot very easily so don’t start them 6 weeks before your hottest weather hits. Better to start them during the hottest weather so that as they grow the weather is cooling off. (I had a run at these last year and did not enjoy it, but that doesn’t mean I won’t do it again. Its over with very fast!)

The Freedom Ranger line was produced as an alternative to the Cornish Cross by J & M Poultry in PA. Its now a separate hatchery, find it here. Their information states you can get 5-6 lbs of live weight in 9-11 weeks.  It is a meat bird for free ranging. Not much is known about the origins of these birds, they seem to be hybrids as there are multiple color variations in the flocks. (I might try these, but I’d rather get my hands on the next type)

S & G Poultry has three meat bird types, each with a different growth rate. “Fast, which is a five pound chicken in less than 50 days (7 wks) on a normal ration, medium, which is 70 to 100 days of age (10-14 wks), and slow, which is 100 to 120 days old (14-17 wks).” These flocks seem to be stable, but again nothing is really known about their origins. They may be working towards stabilizing the flocks into breeds that can be recognized in the future. (I’m very interested in trying these birds out)

Dual purpose birds

Most breeds fall into this category. Including the Delaware, Dominique, Jersey Giants, Dark Cornish, Turken (or Naked Neck),  the Plymouth Rocks, Easter Egger (hybrids with the colored egg gene of the Americauna), Buckeye, Barnevelder, Welsummer, Marans, and the popular Orpington. If you are looking for a good homesteading bird, look to this category.  Any one of these breeds will make a good urban hen. Though the Jersey Giants require special facilities due to their large size and adult weight.

Bantams

Bantams are smaller versions of standard size chickens. They are not a breed unto themselves. There are a few true bantams that have no larger size equivalent. Bantams range in size from just under 2 pounds to about 5 pounds, while standards range from about 5 pounds up to about 8 pounds (except the Jersey Giants which can get up to about 13 pounds).

Bantams take up less space, eat less food, but also produce less eggs. If you get more than a few dozen eggs a season from a bantam consider yourself doing great. They tend to be much more docile and friendly than standard size chickens.

I find bantams to be useful on the urban homestead as broody mothers. They raise each successive generation of chicks for me. I always write a post about my newest broody so search the archives if you’d like to read about how it works. I’ve successfully gotten my broodies to accept day old chicks, three week old chicks, and to hatch fertile eggs. I admit its fun to raise chicks up on your own under a heat lamp where you can handle them at will, but its more fun and easier on you and the flock if your hens raise their own successors. Some people segregate their broodies and the chicks for a number of weeks. I do not. I will fence off the broody on hatch day, for about 40-48 hours. This gives the chicks some food that the older girls can’t get to, while they wait for mama to decide that all the eggs have hatched. About 48 hrs after the first chick hatched, mama will give up on the rest of the eggs. She will then get off the nest and take the chicks in search of food.  I also provide a fenced off part of the run for them to have their own feeder of non-medicated chick starter. The opening to this yard within a yard is too small for older members of the flock to get into.

If you are just starting or even if you are starting a new flock, I highly recommend that you include a bantam or three. Some bantams are mostly for show and are not good mothers, so make sure you know which is which. (Silkies and Cochins are great broodies, but Sebrights are not.) Your chicks will be smarter for it. Mamas can teach them much more, in a far shorter amount of time, than chicks can learn on their own or from their human care takers.

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Chicks are ordered one of three ways. Pullets are all female (most hatcheries guarantee only 90% accuracy so you might get a roo). Cockerels are all males. And Straight Run (SR) is a grab bag which is roughly 50/50. The smaller your order of SR chicks is, the more likely you are to get a result that isn’t 50/50. All orders of hatching eggs are SR, there is no way to sex an egg accurately, though there are many ways people swear by to do it at home.

If you can only have female chickens in your flock and you don’t want to deal with any roos, its best to only get pullets. If you can only have female chickens are okay getting a lower number of hens than you hoped for, but you don’t mind a chicken dinner, try ordering SR. If you can find a breeder in your area, you might consider ordering from a local farm. You’ll find that birds from your area are more accustomed to your climate and food sources. Make sure you vet  any farm you consider buying from as not all chicken raisers have the same standards as you. For that matter, not all hatcheries are equal. I have doubts about the breeding stock for my hatchery, but am not able to get all of the breeds I want locally.

I know this doesn’t answer all your questions, but each flock and strain of chickens has different characteristics. Its hard to say with any accuracy what the personality of a breed is going to be like due the vastly different conditions in which each is raised. For example, I’ve never met a friendly red chicken, no matter the breed, so I won’t ever add one to my flock. However, I’ve heard from people all over the country that their particular flock of this or that red chicken is the sweetest they’ve ever met and they wouldn’t have a different breed for anything.

My last piece of advice today is that you choose your chicks wisely. The oldest birds will create a social structure and culture within the flock that will persist.  Each successive generation will learn from the previous ones. Be sure, take your time, and consider making concessions in order to create a flock culture you can be happy with for years and years to come.

First Marans Egg

Not as dark as I'd hoped for, but its nicely speckled!

What a nice gradation of browns I’ve got going from my flock.

The Marans are 24 weeks old. I’m looking forward to the next few weeks as they ramp up into full production mode!!

Chick 101 Workshop: March 22, 2012

Another spring, another workshop!

This year I’m partnering with the Columbia Career Center to provide you with an even better experience. Sign up here.

I’m planning on bringing my Black Silkie, Jellybean and/or my Mille Fluer Old English bantam, Georgia with me. It just depends on who is broody or has a brood on that day. So come out in droves and have a cackling good time with us!

Mary’s Whole Grain Chicken Feed Recipe

I haven’t written in awhile. I’ve been meaning to tell you about my solution to the feed problem, but it’s just that time of year. Harvest season is a busy time of year whether or not you have a garden to harvest.

I wrote a couple posts about this already, so you may or may not be tired of me talking about it. However, what you feed your birds is an important topic. Garbage In, Garbage Out as the saying goes.

To recap: I was fed up with Purina crumbles because of the plastic bag issue, and I found that  even though the organic layer feed came in a paper bag it only came in a meal form, which wasn’t practical for me. Backyard hens need to be easy to maintain for us working folks. The more time and energy we have to expend dealing with their upkeep the less time we have left over to spend enjoying the birds or doing other things at home.

We get the following recipes mixed at Bourn feed in roughly 50 pound bags. Each bag, along with the correct amount of kelp (roughly 2 lbs), is approximately $22-24, depending on grain prices. Bourn needs at least 500 pounds in their mixer for it to work so I’ve had to recruit many other people to be able to do this.

Summer Recipe:
[pounds: product]
40: whole corn
80: soft wheat
60: hard wheat
80: oats
100: sunflower seeds
50: millet
50: field peas
40: flax

20: kelp granules (sold and fed separately)
Winter Recipe (Nov-Apr):
80: whole corn (increased ration for added warmth)
80: soft wheat
60: hard wheat
80: oats
100: sunflower seeds
50: field peas
40: flax

20: kelp granules (sold and fed separately)

Gives us about 16.5% protein content year round!

Also, always ALWAYS allow free choice (do not put it in their feed) of grit and calcium. Sand is NOT grit, egg shells are NOT grit. Grit is made up of very hard small stones, in the feed stores it comes as granite, but often yard pebbles will work too. Calcium can come in the form of oyster shell (most common), ground up egg shells, or certain limestones.

The kelp adds trace vitamins and minerals unavailable in this limited diet. The kelp comes in little granules, which can be difficult to get the hens to eat. I’ve found that if I put it in something wet and then stir in some of the grains and top it all with a handful of the grains they eat it right up. Others have had luck putting it in yogurt, which your hens have to be trained to eat, but once they know its food they will devour yogurt.

Everyone who bought feed on the last order says their hens LOVE it. I still had some commercial feed and made the mistake of feeding my hens the whole grains before finishing off the crumbles. What a mistake! Now I’ve got 30-40 pounds of crumbles that they won’t eat.

This recipe has only 8 ingredients, all of which we can get at grain prices. A more varied diet would be better, but it also has to be priced reasonably in order for all the people in the buying club to afford it.

Bourn doesn’t carry organic grains, as around here people wouldn’t buy it, but they do try to buy from non GMO and pesticide/herbicide free farmers.

If you are interested in getting in on an order, please comment on the post or I think there is a place on the blog that you can send me a message. I’m not trying to make money on this venture, just to get the best available feed for my hens and offer that same chance to others.

Organic Layer Feed

I wrote an earlier post about our local feed store, Bourn, starting to carry organic feed. I was very excited to be able to buy feed in a paper bag again, much more excited than to be able to buy organic feed with the same ingredient list as the non-organic. The only other choices we have are Purina at Bourn and the store brand at Orschelns, both of which come in a woven polystyrene bag which is not recyclable though many people have come up with ways to repurpose the bags into reusable grocery bags. I don’t need 10-15 new grocery bags a year, nor would I enjoy being forced to make them so that I wouldn’t have to throw the bags away.  However, a paper bag is always useful in the garden or to put my fiber recycling in.

Since that post I have used up the last of my Purina layer feed.  I was looking forward to switching the layers over to organic. However, when I got the bag of, what I thought was layer crumbles, home I found that instead of crumbles I had a mash. It looked like all the crumbles had been mashed up into dust with a bunch of ground grains and some whole grains. I’ve had this happen with the Purina before so I just took it back to Bourn expecting to either get a new bag or wait for the next shipment. Much to my distress, I was told that the organic layer feed comes in that consistency and is not in fact a crumble. The company’s website confirms this, click on the features tab to see that it comes in meal form; as does the grower ration (which Bourn doesn’t carry), while the chick starter is a crumble.

I know my hens. They will not eat the dusty parts of the crumbles (and I will not leave them without food long enough to force them to), let alone an entire bag of dust. Instead they would pick out all the corn and then the wheat and other grains and leave the rest. That much corn would be terrible for their laying; they’d put on too much fat. I can’t justify  $24.44 for a few pounds of grains and a drop in egg production.

The unfortunate result of the organic layer mash is that I’ve gone back to Purina Layena and its woven plastic bag.

I think if I mixed it with something wet, like yogurt, they would be happy to eat a mash. I barely manage to prepare my own meals, I do not want to spend that kind of time preparing food for my hens.

If any of you out there have success with the Natures Grown Organics’ layer feed, I would be very interested to hear from you.

Marans Hatch Day

A day in pictures

Mama sits tight on the nest despite my intrusion

Ginger wants to know what's going on in that nest box over there?

Omelette investigates the activity

Oh Mama!

Mama and babe

That egg looks promising.

"Who me?"

"Hello?"

"Hello!"

"Hello!" "Hello!" "Hello!"

Three empty shells wait for three more

What a fine day this has turned out to be!!

Update: Two more have hatched! The last egg hasn’t pipped yet.  At this point, I’m not expecting it to. However, it is still viable as we haven’t reached the end of Day 21 yet. So anything can happen.  I may candle it tonight to see if I can tell if it is alive, my guess is that it will be so full of chick that I won’t be able to see into the egg at all.

Day 2:

New ground floor digs

"What's up there?"

"More feathers?"

Number five was taking a nap

Simply beautiful

Moved the chicks out of the nest box into a cardboard box on the floor of the coop. Provided them with food/water while mama waits to see if the last egg will hatch.

Update 2: Removed and candled the last egg and found no movement inside. Within about 4 hrs of removing the egg mama was up and about teaching the chicks how to find food.

Candling My Marans Eggs

Last week on Thursday, Day 10, I candled the Marans eggs with my neighbors. We were able to see veins and the shadows of the embryos in 6 out of 7 of the eggs. The 7th egg was completely clear, my belief is that it was not fertile.

Tonight, Tuesday, Day 15, I candled again. This time with my partner and my neighbors. We were still able to see veins. I was really amazed at the amount of movement we could see! I’ve been doing my research on candling Marans eggs (and other very dark egg shells) for awhile now and nearly everything I’ve read has proven that people can’t see much inside eggs this dark. The chicks themselves were not distinguishable, but we were able to see a great amount of movement along the edge of each chick’s body. It was unclear which parts of the chick we were seeing, but it was very clear that these eggs were alive and growing! I have to say it was an amazing experience, that I’m glad I got to share.

I made my own candler. I did a lot of Google searching, and looked at many DIY candlers before I started to look at the objects I had on hand.

My homemade candler in words:

I found one homemade candler that I really liked. It was made of wood and had a sliding cover with three different sized holes. Since I don’t have a rooster the likelihood of me needing to candle eggs much is pretty low, so I decided to use a cardboard box instead. Next, what light? I wanted to use a CFL bulb since they don’t generate as much heat as an incandescent. What light fixture? I had read about people using their heat lamp fixture, but mine is still at a friends house. So instead I used a shop light, loaded with an 100 watt equivalent CFL, the kind with a wire cage on the end of an extension cord. I took the wire cage off and threaded the cord through the bottom of the box. When I folded the bottom of the box back up I didn’t need to make any cuts, instead I just pushed the cardboard against the cord until the bottom of the box was closed. That provided me with a leak proof bottom. Once the light fixture was in, I cut a small hole over the bulb. Then I covered all the seems on the top of the box with strips of cardboard from a cereal box and taped it all tight with masking tape, thus providing a leak proof top (aside from the hle the egg will sit on). I used a small plumbing fixture to trace a circle around the small hole I had previously cut. I took some time to get the hole the right size. Lastly I tested it out with the 8th Marans egg that I had cracked the very first day (saved for just this occasion). The egg lit right up and I could see all the way through it so I figured it would work well enough.

I waited until full dark to candle due to the dark nature of the Marans eggs. The hatch rate on these eggs is notoriously low, so I don’t expect all 6 eggs to hatch.

My homemade candler in pictures:

The top of the candler, that hole in the lower left lets the light out

The bottom, where the electrical cord exits the box

The brown cardboard is taped over the seems of the box

Another view of the taped up seems

The pieces of cardboard taped to the larger box keep the light from escaping

I made as close to circular hole as I could for the egg to sit on

An infertile egg from one of my Orpingtons sits on the candler

The same egg when the candler light is turned on. As you can see it is completely empty, no shadows or veins. You can also see some light leaking out around the bottom of the egg due to my imperfect hole.

I didn’t want to cause any harm to the Marans eggs so I didn’t take the time for pictures of them during the candling.

Marans Eggs

Over the weekend I asked a country friend if she had any fertile eggs I could buy/trade off of her. Her reply was positive, but she also mentioned she had a country friend who had some Marans, Wheaten and Black Copper, and maybe he had some fertile eggs he’d be willing to barter for.

So this evening I went and picked them up! Take a look at how beautiful the eggs are.

They are out of Black Copper hens and a Wheaten Roo. I put two eggs from my Orpingtons in the top of the carton for reference. The birds are beautiful too.

I put 7 of them under my broody Orpington tonight. I cracked one when trying to put them under her

Lice Treatment

A few weeks ago, my hen Crooked Toe went broody and then my Orpingtons began to molt. Egg production dropped down to one egg a day for about five days, then it stopped altogether. This last Friday it occurred to me that I hadn’t checked my hens for parasites since before the egg production problems began, so I started catching hens. I found lice on every one of them, even my broody and the chicks who are 13 weeks old.

Off to the inter-webs to find a solution that we could all live with. I found two forums on BackYard Chickens that showed promise. This one was earliest, and this one referenced the first one. I took stock of what I had on hand and figured I could make it work.

First off, I set  about a gallon of water on the stove to boil. Then I went to gather three 5-gallon buckets and rinse them out with the hose. I set them in a semi circle around a stool in the closest section of shade to the coop. Then I gathered up my salt, dish soap, and peppermint oil. I took the latter two out to my buckets and put the salt on the stove. Then I began to fill a big stock pot with hot water from the kitchen faucet and made multiple trips out to empty it into two of the 5-gallon buckets.

When the water on the stove was boiling I began adding 2 cups of salt. It reached saturation point before I had all the salt in the water so I just called it good with what I could get into it. I dumped the salt water into the empty 5-gallon bucket and used the hose to cool and fill the bucket the rest of the way. When it got to within about 2 inches of the rim I turned the water off and added 1/2 cup of dish soap and about 20 drops of peppermint oil. I left two buckets for rinsing as I couldn’t see any reason why the salt would interfere with the soap or oil and rinsing the soap/oil/salt off the hen’s feathers would be a very important task.

The most important bit of advice I have for the novice chicken bather is that they have wings and know how to beat them! I started with my biggest hen, Omelette, who promptly beat her wet soap/oil/salt covered wings in my face and my eyes started to sting. So keep hold of those wings when you begin dunking! I held her under and gently agitated her up and down for about 5 minutes. The I held her up over the bucket to let her drain some before beginning the rinsing process. I used a towel to get her out of the dripping stage before releasing her. She was a bit unsteady on her feet when I put her down into the run. This process continued through the rest of the flock. The I chased them all out of the coop/run into a grassy patch of sun. They all stayed pretty much in that spot for 20-30 min.

They looked pretty pathetic, but Omelette was beginning to look normal by the time I finished with the last hen. I’ve got a broody hen right now and I worried that she wouldn’t dry fast enough in the nest box so I took her into the house for a session with the blow dryer. She’s so far into her broodiness that she didn’t move through the whole session except to flap her wings back into place when I moved them.

A day later they look like normal molting chickens and I haven’t found a live louse yet! Unfortunately this approached does not kill lice eggs, so I will have to retreat them in 7-10 days.

I’m hoping to pick up some fertile Marans eggs today, so I’m not sure what that will mean for my broody when it comes time to delouse again. I don’t want the chicks to have to start life with lice, but I don’t want to interrupt the brooding process with a bath in case the increased humidity interferes with the eggs ability to hatch.

Processing Day 2011

We began processing the 7 Cornish Cross with 4 people at 7:30 am. Processing was quite a bit messier than I had planned for in my head.  Next time I want to have a kill cone set up over the compost pile so that the heads and blood can go straight into it and the mess is restricted to two areas, the kill zone and the processing zone. None of us were particularly interested in the hassle of plucking in order to save the skin. Instead we just cut the skin off . We finished cleaning and packing the birds into the fridge about 9:15 am. Two people processed and two were helpers to the processors.

My neighbors ended up with 4 whole chickens weighing from 4 pounds 5 ounces to 5 lbs 3 ounces. The roo was too big for my freezer bags so I ended up quartering him and removing the ribs and backbone (to avoid puncturing the bag) which brought him down to 5 pounds 5 ounces.

The two birds I kept I cut into thighs/ breasts and wings/misc pieces and ended up with 5 bags each weighing right around 1 and a half pounds. That’s actually more meat than I would like in a package, but I’ll make do.

The remaining pieces, that went to make stock, weighed in at 3 pounds and 12 ounces. All together I weighed 39 pounds and 5 ounces of usable chicken parts today. I didn’t weigh the hearts, gizzards or livers though, as most of that is going to friends.  We got about 5 and a half pounds on average from each bird.

We spent about $119 on chicks and feed, which makes our cost per bird about $17 or about $3 per pound of bone in, skinless, organic meat; not including electricity or water costs to cool the birds during our hot, hot July.

Raising our own meat birds hasn’t saved us any money, but we have gained knowledge and know exactly where our meat came from. The next batch of meat birds I raise will either be from S and G Poultry or J.M. Hatchery.