We picked up our broilers on the 17th from Ideal Poultry along with 3 Buff Orpingtons or the buffy's as we call them. We have already lost 1 chick to our 3 year old, in fact this is the second chick she has accidentally killed (she sat on the other one) this year. So we will order a couple extra in the future keeping this in mind. We got 15 White Cornish in a straight run, next we will get the Dark Cornish so we can have a self perpetuating flock. As the Dark Cornish are good layers, setters and have not been constantly breed to make their breasts larger.
We hope to market and sell our birds to the Asian Market for their consumption. As they will purchase a live bird and do all of the processing themselves which will save us time & money.
The Buffy's job is to 'set' (sit) on our eggs. There are a couple of kinds of birds that are good at setting on eggs and the Buff Orpington is one of them. It is also a sweet sociable chicken and since they are going to be around for a long time we wanted something cute! The other kind of chicken that likes to set is the Banty (I am not sure if it is all banty's or a certain kind, since we decided to go with the Buff Orpington's I did not research all the different bantys).
In January we are going to order 9-10 more chickens (Arucana's & Layorcas) to round out our flock to 32 until our large purchase of 100 chicks in May. We are going to specialize in a multi- color dozen of eggs. We are aiming at participating in the Farmer's Market in 2010 or starting a CSA with (broilers & eggs) either way we have a lot of work ahead of us!
We may also buy an incubator depending on how many birds we are trying to hatch at a time. The total cost of an incubator will be around $60 and I forgot to check to see how many birds we can hatch with it. We really want to be able to grow our own flock and be more self reliant.
Merry Christmas & Happy Homesteading!
from RH
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