January 21-24 Happy Hen Farms Weekly Newsletter: Chicken Breeds Part 3 of 3
Good Morning,
Everyday except Monday this week is available for delivery! My grandparent's store is open Tuesday and Thursday (10-3) and Friday (10-5).
Eggs:
To start the week out, I have about 25 Medium dozen available, and about 10 Large dozen available. Egg production has continued to stay at 5 dozen a day, which is pretty good for this time of year!
Newsletter:
Over the past few weeks, I briefly talked about Egg production chickens and Meat Chickens. This week, I decided that I would talk about Heritage Chickens, since the term "Heritage" has come up several times in the last newsletters (both have been published on the Happy Hen Farms Blog.) If you would like to receive additional posts, then you can hit the "subscribe" button at the top of the page, and you can have posts delivered right to your inbox!
There are many color variations within the Plymouth Rock breed, such as:
- Blue
- Partridge
- Buff (orange-brown)
- White
There are several other colors, but as you can see, there is a ton of diversity within one breed. Diversity is created by introducing or discovering a gene that causes different coloration. Selective breeding has played the biggest role in diversification, especially among almost all Heritage breeds. While I would like to go through several of those breeds, there simply is not enough space in one email for that amount of information! If you would like to explore and dig deeper into the wide world of chickendom, then here is a link to the Livestock Conservancy's Website.
What makes Heritage Breeds better, worse, or comparable, to modern day hybrid production chickens?
While answering these questions, I will be using the Barred Plymouth Rock (BPR) as the generalization of all heritage breeds, just for the sake of saying "Heritage Breeds" like 30 times.
BPR's are considered by several organizations, breeders, and individuals as better than hybrids, simply because they breed true to type (BPR x BPR = BPR), whereas hybrids are a mix of highly refined heritage breeds. Breeding hybrid's together not only makes another hybrid, but also creates a bird highly inferior to both of its parents. Essentially creating a chicken that can't get big enough to be eaten, as well as one that won't lay hardly any eggs. That is the reason why industry hybrids are only first generation (F1) crosses, generally. (The field of genetics has grown so much, that there are some exceptions that have been discovered as far as 'double crossing' hybrids).
On the other hand, the Poultry Industry, as well as smaller egg producers (100-10,000 chickens), are absolutely enthralled with commercial hybrids, and regard BPR's as worse (mostly). The main reason(s) backing their arguments have to do with efficiency and profitability. Considering that hybrids eat 30-40% less feed, as well as produce almost 50-100% more eggs (and meat, for the Cornish X's), that translates into several hundreds, and thousands (or hundred of thousands of dollars for really big producers) of dollars saved and gained because of efficiency. However, hybrids are kind of finicky and touchy when it comes down to how their diet affects their production. BPR's are much more forgiving when it comes to their diet's affect on production, except they aren't efficient.
BPR's are comparable to commercial hybrid's in regards to their hardiness. Both do great during the winter months when it comes to the bird's comfort and toleration of cold weather. Both are very disease resistant, which is an even bigger plus on both sides. Now, obviously, shoving hundreds of thousands of chickens (of any kind) into a confined space, especially with inadequate airflow and unclean living space, can immediately shove the disease resistance factor out the door. Cleanliness is the biggest and most important step to insure success, and to prevent a myriad of problems, in any animal.
So, you might ask, "Jack, what kind do you prefer, or think is better?"
Well, I definitely like both Heritage Chickens, as well as Hybrids. I originally started off with 13 Heritage chickens, including the Plymouth Rocks. They definitely were great starter chickens, and at the time, the need for lots of eggs wasn't necessary. It was a great first experience, as none of them died as chicks, which is almost unheard of, especially for a first time.
But, as the customer base grew, the need for more eggs became more of a necessity, so I bought some more heritage chickens (all sorts of them), but still didn't end up with enough. I will say, one of the best decisions I ever made was getting some of the Dekalb Whites, as well as Bovans Browns. The first one's I got were mostly as an experiment, but then realized how great they performed, which then led me to converting almost the whole operation to hybrid chickens. Now, most of them are Bovans Black, which have been kind of the guinea pigs as far as my experimentation with feed formulation. I can say two things about them:
- Amazing egg layers
- Extremely efficient, resulting in better ways to fine tune their diet.
The Bovans Black are kind of like Holstein dairy cows. Their production and performance are easy to spot, but when their diet is off, or is changed, they let you know about it the next day based on production. For me, that's been one of the most fun and challenging parts about them. It has really tested my observational skills, as well as the ability to trace results back to the, or possible, causes. You have to remember, the eggs I get today are a result of what happened yesterday, so there is an element of living in the past with chickens!
All that said, I honestly like both classes of chickens a lot, but they each have their place and purpose.
I hope you all have enjoyed this three part series on chicken breeds and classes. As always, if there are any questions that arise, please ask!
Thank You!
Comments
Post a Comment