Our chickens

From eggs to roast chicken and everything in between, we try to do as much for ourselves as we can.  We raise Rhode Island Reds and White Leghorns.  We've chosen these breeds because Rhode Island Red chickens are traditionally are average layers and nice size table birds, whereas White Leghorns are supposed to be exceptional layers (though a bit scrawny for the table).  We have found though that many of the traditional characteristics of these birds have been bred out in favour of "show qualities".  This means we have some beautiful birds that don't lay as much as they should, but we are working on it with a bit of a breeding program and we love to see them wandering around the yard.

See these posts for more details:

• Why support heritage breeds?
• Why raise your own chickens for eggs and meat?
• How do we hatch out own chicks using an incubator?  More on the incubator.
• Caring for chicks in a brooder box
• Introducing new birds to the flock
• What do we feed out chickens?
• Keeping chickens in fixed vs movable pens - more on chicken tractors
• Killing poultry for dinner
• We try to use natural methods for parasite control
• Dealing with broody hens
• Preventing egg eating hens
• Thing to consider when buying new chickens

And for a while we tried turkeys, but they are so crazy (too difficult to free range them) and HUGE, we take a week to eat one, we've decided to stick with our chickens instead, but it was fun to try them!

Other references
Jackie French's Chook Book, it has everything from choosing breeds, raising chicks, curing illnesses, egg recipes and recipes for old roosters :)

The Small-Scale Poultry Flock - An All-Natural Approach to Raising Chickens and Other Fowl for Home and Market Growers by Harvey Ussery is also excellent (my review here)

I recommended a few other books in my book store as well.

All my chicken posts are here....