While this makes them less able to peck and injure each other in a confined environment, it can also impact their ability to forage and we want them to be really good at that! I find that with enough space and compost to scratch through, my birds don't usually get bored enough to start picking on each other over the winter and in the summer they have an exciting life on pasture chasing bugs and scratching through cow pies! We raise our own pullets because we are pretty far from any hatcheries that sell "ready-to-lay" 16 week old pullets and also most of those barn-raised birds have the tips of their beaks removed as chicks. PulletsĮvery fall I order day old golden comet pullet (female) chicks to raise on the farm and replace our layer flock. A typical hen will lay 6-7 eggs/week during the summer and 4-5 eggs/week all winter. These hens start laying early (first egg typically at 16-18 weeks old) and lay consistently year-round. Golden comets are reliable layers of large brown eggs. If the purebred parents are also carefully bred for certain traits, you can end up with a hybrid offspring that performs better than its parents. Hybrid animals benefit from an increased genetic diversity that typically makes them grown faster and be generally healthier. This means that when they hatch the chicks are different colors (golden comet females are brown/red, males are white/yellow), which means that the birds don't have to be examined to determine if they're male or female, a process that is never 100% accurate anyway! The other reason is "hybrid vigor". Why would you want to crossbreed? One reason is that this is the only way to create "sex-link" chicks. It is a hybrid which means its parents were both purebred of different breeds, in this case it is either a New Hampshire or Rhode Island Red rooster crossed with a White Rock hen. What is a Golden Comet? This is a fancy name for a breed of red sex-link hen. *Update 12/16/22: 1.5 year old hens available starting February 10th* Golden Comets
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |