A Chicken-ey Sort Of Sunday

The girls and I have been looking at all different sorts of chickens that we'd like to hatch out.

The Meat birds from last year - Ross Cobbs

We've had ex commercial birds for the few years (probably 5 or 6 to be honest!) and they've done brilliantly for a second year of laying for us, so long as you know not to keep them past when they rapidly go unproductive. But it's not given us a self sustaining flock.



That has never been more obvious than this year. We're down to our last few chickens and they're meat birds. The laying hens have all gone, so for the first time in about 8 years we're buying eggs! I can hardly believe it!

So with our new incubator it's time to begin some new flocks of birds. and to be a little more adventurous in our choices. I'd love to be able to breed the birds to a high standard and maybe even let the children show them, so we want to choose some with good potential for these things as well as the being good examples of the purpose of the breed.

A key one for us is to have a good meat bird first as we can always pick up laying hens easily from some of the bigger farms when they clear out their birds every 16 months. We don't eat huge amounts of chicken but when we do we like it to be our own. The last few years have shown us that we can comfortably survive on 25 chickens a year, bought in as day old chicks, although these are quite big by the time they come to slaughter.

One that has always caught my eye (and the eye of my eldest daughter) is Indian Game. Good solid looking birds, with plenty of meat on them. talking to a breeder he says they lay a fair number of eggs and have a surprisingly good temperament as well. Luckily I was speaking to someone on Twitter and they suggested I came round to pick up a dozen Indian game eggs they had put by for me.

I took the girls as well (the boy had a party to go to) and we ended up having a brilliant morning being shown around lots of chickens! The couple had such a great collection of many different breeds. Unfortunately I took no pictures as it was raining and I was too interested in what he had to say!

So we went there for 12 eggs to hatch out and came back with 30 and two bantams! Such a good morning! The bantams are happily roosting in a converted rabbit hutch outside my workshop and the eggs are set to go in the incubator tomorrow!

In the afternoon my younger daughter and I converted the rabbit hutch and then set to butchering 4 chickens that I had slaughtered earlier in the week. We have a good system going, I cut the bird into portions while she bags them up and vac packs them. Considering she's only 6 years old she really speeds up the process and can happily managed the vac packer.

Because my jaw and other things slowed everything up over Christmas, the birds have got huge. the picture above shows a single breast off one of our biggest birds! I couldn't quite believe it!

So with lots of eggs about to go in the incubator it feels like there's lots of potential for the coming months! Should be fun!

What chickens would you hatch out if you could hatch any breed?