Buff Orpington hen with baby.
The hobby, project, or whatever one wishes to call it concerning people raising chickens in their backyard or at their home appears to be getting more popular in recent years. It is something that is not difficult and will provide meat and eggs for the family.
I strongly recommend that it is understood that it is generally as, or more expensive to raise chickens for either eggs or meat yourself than to buy at them at the local store. I do know you won’t find the quality in any of the stores. Possibly a farm market or just some small scale chicken farmer selling a few eggs out of their home would compare, but the eggs in the supermarket, just aren’t of the quality you get from having your own chickens and eggs.
The picture to the right shows some chicks I recently ordered. It includes Barred Plymouth Rock, New Hampshire Red, Buff Orpington, Silver Laced Wyandottes, and Rhode Island Reds. The darker one’s are the wyandottes and barred rock, and the lightest are the orpingtons. It is almost impossible to distinguish between Rhode Island Red and New Hampshire red as their colors can be almost identical.
These chicks are what I believe to be some of the most popular, “dual purpose” breeds. They have similar egg laying characteristics other than I feel the Buff Orpington does actually lay a few less eggs per year than the others. It is a little heavier and might even be classed more as a “heavy” breed. It also has white skin when dressed for the oven.
Tags: barred plymouth rock, buff orpington, chick, chickens, hobby, rhode island red
With the movement toward cleaning up our environment and going green the question, “How Green Are Chickens?”, would seem to be one that many people have asked themselves, or thought about in some way.
Chickens if I understand green, are Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: compost, droppings, How Green Are Chickens, manure
Because I feel that I have no qualifications to discuss health issues of poultry I will just say that I believe you should just read any poultry book as any I have seen do cover some of the primary diseases and health related problems.
On the right are a few of my flock in the front yard.
Therefore I sort of go off on things that happened when I began raising chickens. You probably will never forget your first flock.
Chickens walking around your yard doesn’t Read the rest of this entry »
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