The first livestock
most new homesteaders bring home to the farm are chickens - and
rightly so.
They’re small,
relatively harmless, provide both meat and eggs, and if they have to and
are given the chance, they even rustle up their own grub (literally).
The majority of
articles written about getting and keeping chickens start with “Buy your
chicks”, and describe the pros and cons of hatchery vs. feed store and
hatchery vs. other hatchery. Of course you have to start somewhere,
so for your FIRST round of chickens, this is the first step. Find
chicks and purchase them.
If meat birds for
yourself and for sale to others are what you are raising, they have a very
limited lifespan before becoming a block on the food pyramid, and a lot of
people prefer the breeds that are specifically used as dinner- Cornish X
being the most popular. For a large amount of meat in a short amount
of time, they really can’t be beat.
If, however, your
goal as a small homesteader is to have a flock of chickens for both meat
and eggs, there are a number of "dual purpose" breeds in an amazing array
of colors (and that lay eggs in an amazing array of colors), and a lot of
these birds have the added advantage of being prone to broodiness.
For your purposes,
this is a good thing, and does not include heavy sighs, hoarding of
chocolate, or tearful outbursts on the part of the hens. Broodiness
in chickens is the tendency to WANT to sit (or set) on their own eggs,
with the end result being more chickens.
Way back when, this
is how chickens made more chickens.
Black Australorps
(my personal favorites), Buff Orpingtons, Rhode Island Reds, Hampshire
Reds, Speckled Sussex, Barred Rocks and the Brahmas are among these
dual-purpose breeds, although there are certainly others. These are
the birds who made up the feathered backbone of the family farm- hens who
laid eggs, sat on those eggs, hatched out and raised up several clutches
of brand spankin’ new poultry every year. These breeds are bulky
enough (the reason they are referred to as Heavy Breeds) that the tiny
roosters that get hatched out make darn good eating right before they
become problematic teens.
Meat.
Eggs.
And repeat.
The ultimate
renewable resource.
Somewhere along the
line, egg production became commercialized and hens who ‘went broody’
became more of a bother than an asset- who wants to get bloodied every day
when stealing a mother’s offspring? Plus, all that extra weight and bulk
just takes more feed to keep healthy. Thus, the advent of the White
Leghorns (which look nothing at all like Foghorn Leghorn, unless Ol’
Foghorn were to become anorexic and twitchy), hens that are ADVERTISED as
“Non-Setters”; in effect, bad mothers who drop an egg every single day, go
on about their business and never look back.
The average dual
purpose laying hen will lay an egg every day or so, for about 2 years.
At that point, their production drops off and a lot of folks recommend
making them all into stew and buying a fresh team.
