infomaniac, i may have missed this, what is it you are doing with chickens? you seem to have several breeding programs, experiments going.
Thank you for your post, Robbpa. I have a
Wow, wish I had the time and facilities for chickens like you have! I bet you have a ball with all those chicks and blue eggs. But then again, I bet it's a ton of work everyday too.
Thank you for your post, Hannah. I believe we
Well thanks so much Info! I know that shipping eggs can mess up the hatch rate, but that's ok. I sincerely hope I'm here in two years. By that time my whole back yard may be pens of birds! No really, that would be great of you, maybe CJR would like to get some from you too!
By Infomaniac on Thursday, December 27, 2001 - 02:26 pm:
part-time job as a computer programmer with a
small (family-owned) consulting firm. I maintain
the suite of computer programs and handle most
of the low level 'customer service' issues .... when
the clients have a question about the programs or
how to run them or some question about the input
files, I'm the person on the other end of the
keyboard communicating with them.
The farm here is another family project. My
sister-in-law bought some baby chicks for her kids
for Easter many years ago and that's what started
the poultry here. We had chickens when we were
kids but neither I nor my brother cared about them.
The egg business started as a way for his kids to
learn responsibility and love of animals.
Everything just started growing from that point.
Our ongoing breeding projects are:
the black barred line (faux Marans), the red barred
line (featured on the Spring 2001 issue of Poultry
Times Magazine), Sil-Go-Link Layers, Delaware
line, RIR line (which includes our Production Reds
as well), Leghorn line, Araucana, Ameraucana,
and the blue egg project. At least right now, the
blue egg project is taking up most of our facilities
(breeding pens, incubators, feeders, waterers,
brooding facilities, et cetera).
So far, the egg business has been paying the bills.
But, dang....these 200-300 babies are eating a lot!
Sheesh! 200 six week old babies can really put
away the chow! And there are incubators to hatch
yet (the next on Dec. 31).
The Black and Red Barred lines are brown egg
layers. I believe we can sell chicks from that line
locally as a way to try to recover some of the
expense. We are rural and many local people
keep chickens for their own use. Our Black Barred
line is strikingly similar to Marans and they lay a
very dark egg. Although they are most closely
related, genetically , to our Sil-Go-Link line.
If our blue egg project is successful ( and we have
reasons to be optimistic at this point) we will
probably sell point-of-lay pullets from that line ...
but, we have a lot of work to do yet with them...
After all this work with the blue line, I am gaining an
appreciation for companies that patent their
chickens. I'm not sure we would go that far, but we
very well may consider a license agreement for
people who want our blue layers for breeding
purposes. That is a little bit down the road.... but
we have already obtained some nicely blue eggs
from the blue egg project.
I am not married and have a physical disability and
I seem to find a great deal of joy in poultry keeping.
By HannahH on Thursday, December 27, 2001 - 09:39 pm:
I would be interested in some of your birds, but don't think I could afford shipping grown birds right now. If you get any that lay good color blue eggs, or have babies from blue eggs that lay good color eggs, I definetely would be interested in some fertile eggs. I could only take a dozen or less though, I only use a silkie for hatching eggs, I don't own an incubator.
By Infomaniac on Friday, December 28, 2001 - 04:08 pm:
spoke before and mentioned the option of
shipping hatching eggs. I really don't like that
option as I know that hatching eggs shipped via
US Post usually hatch at the 25% - 30% level.
Most recipients are disappointed in that hatch rate,
but I don't know any way around it.
Hannah, I hope you are still here in a 18 months
or two years... if you are, I will send you some
hatching eggs from our blue egg project.
Best wishes
By HannahH on Friday, December 28, 2001 - 10:49 pm: