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Friday, March 29, 2013

Choosing Chickens

If you follow along with the blog you will remember my frantic call for help a few weeks back as I was in search of chickens ... meat chickens to be precise ... actually meat chicks to be more accurately precise. My original plan wasn't going to work out anymore so I needed to come up with another plan somewhat quickly. Thankfully there were tons of helpful comments posted on the blog, e-mailed, and messaged through Facebook. Now ... we have chicks on the farm and they seem to be doing great.

So ... what did I end up doing? I came up with a solution ... that's what I did! It's not my ideal solution, but I believe it will allow me to accomplish some of my goals this year and then prepare for the future (the future being next year). In fact since I was somewhat late to the game when it comes to ordering I couldn't even really get exactly the chicks I wanted. Here is what I ended up doing ...

Step #1 :: Order 125 Freedom/Red Rangers
  • These are the chicks that I have already received and they are doing great
  • I was interested in trying them because I had talked with a farmer who raised them at the processor last year and he loved them
  • They grow a bit faster than the Naked Necks so hopefully they will be ready earlier than expected
Step #2 :: Order 125 Naked Necks
  • I have been very pleased with these birds for the past two years, but I am a little gun shy about ordering from a hatchery instead of a farmer I know
  • They are slow growing birds so they will be ready sometime in July hopefully ... perfect for the market
Step #3 :: Order another 125 Freedom/Red Rangers
  • This batch is coming from a different hatchery in order to try something different, and because I can add it to an order at the farm store in town (where I used to work) to save on shipping
  • Hopefully I can get the scheduling right and then I'll be able to take these into the processor at the same time as the Naked Necks
Step #4 :: Evaluate and Place Following Orders
  • While these three sets of chicks are growing I need to decide what to do for the rest of the season
  • Hopefully I'll be ordering two more batches of chicks
Step #5 :: Get Ready for 2014
  • Thanks to all of the great comments about various heritage breed chickens I have lots to think about
  • One thing I'm very interested in is incubating chicks here on the farm ... so lots to research there
  • The Mottled Java ... that is one of the breeds that was mentioned and I think I'm going to check them out
It seems like a good plan doesn't it? If it is a good plan I'll let you know how it works out ... and if it's a bad plan ... well, I'll let you know about that as well.


3 comments:

  1. Hi Ethan, good post I think you will be happy with the Freedom Rangers. From what I hear they do grow fast and are good foragers. With you being a Iowa farmer you should check out the Iowa Blue chicken. I just did a post about them on my blog. This dual purpose chicken is the only breed that was developed in Iowa. It was brought back from the brink of extinction and has a very interesting story how the breed came about. If you are looking for a breed that can forage for most of its own food and is smart enough to defend and out smart predators then they may work for you.

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  2. If you are satisfied with the naked necks, why not try to hatch your own naked neck chicks?

    The engineer in me would also be wondering if there was a difference in how much feed, expense, and taste difference there was between the naked necks and the freedom rangers. Even a dollar difference per bird could eventually add up to real money.

    I'm not sure if it would be possible to get some good data without having a huge amount of birds, but it might be interesting to try to figure that out. (it sounds like a good way to teach kids about farming, economics, math, and engineering)

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  3. That's funny that you mention the Iowa Blue Chickens ... Literally I was on the Iowa Blue Chicken Club website just a couple days ago. I think once we get the incubation all figured out ... and how to keep a few different breeds separate we might try them as well.

    Along those lines I had thought about raising our own naked necks, but the most of them that you can get from a hatchery use some sort of hybrid breeding so I don't know how the consistency would be.

    Probably my biggest reason for not wanting to stick with the Freedom/Red Rangers is because I want to be able to breed/hatch my own chicks and because I really want to stick with the heritage and rare breeds. But ... the money thing does matter A LOT!

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