Hello Friends!
Welcome back to the blog. At the last update about the chickens, we had settled on getting 2 dual-purpose heritage breeds with the hopes that one or both would go broody.
We did have 2 Jersey Giant hens go broody. They each sat on 9 eggs, we hatched a total of 6. We did lose 2 in the first 36 hours (all errors were ours; I had miscounted the days to hatch and had an inappropriate water dish in the enclosure. 2 babies fell in, got wet, got out, but were chilled and did not recover). I have been very pleased with the mother hens’ abilities. The 2 hens and 4 babies escaped their enclosure during a terrible rainstorm while Mr. L and I were both at work, and I fully expected to lose the remaining 4 babies because of the rain. When I finally tracked them down, THEY WERE BONE DRY! Both mama hens were sopping wet, sad feathers all hanging down, but somehow the babies were still fluffy. I have no idea how they managed it, but it beat the heck out of a brooder in the basement!
Unfortunately, our Jersey Giant rooster was badly bullied and ended up passing due to heat stroke. This coming spring we will add a few more JG hens and a rooster, as well as a few more colored egg layers. We will be sending the rest of our brown egg layers to Camp Kenmore so that going forward all our brown eggs will hatch purebred JGs.
We have noticed significantly fewer losses to predators with the heritage breeds, even with all the free-ranging. The only bird we lost this summer was our JG rooster, and that was not a predator problem.
All in all, I have to recommend heritage breed chickens. They take longer to grow to butcher weight than Cornish X, but the flavor is remarkable. My experience has been that the meat is not tough - it isn’t mushy, it is a bit more firm than I think of chicken being, but it is miles away from tough. They lay well, they sit well on their eggs, they make good mothers, and they don’t simply wander away to get eaten.
Thanks for checking back in with us!
