Who ordered the bucket of chicken?
- Thread starter British Red
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Hey Guest, Early bird pricing on the Summer Moot (29th July - 10th August) available until April 6th, we'd love you to come. PLEASE CLICK HERE to early bird price and get more information.
Reminds me of growing up with Three big incubators full of eggs and having to turn the eggs once a day and 'lamping' them.
We generally hatch under broodies because we find it makes for calmer better adjusted birds. That said we are currently running two incubators to bulk up the brood size ( including the latest OvationEX by Brinsea that doesn't just turn the eggs & control temperature but even has programmable humidity control 
). Candling is always fun - like peeking at presents
). Candling is always fun - like peeking at presents
Give them time, right now they are nuggetsAh! Cute. Which breed are they Red, Kentucky Fried?
Yep, cute! And according to the news they're getting more valuable all the time!
That's one of the reasons that we have spent a decade on our proper utility strain of Buff Orpingtons Tony - they genuinely "self replicate" as a strain which has great broody & rearing tendencies and are great for meat and eggs
How does the broodiness weigh up against the egg laying? I use pekins for hatching and hybrid layers for laying, so my 2 flocks are at opposite ends of the spectrum. The hybrids rarely go broody and can't be trusted to sit for 3 weeks while the pekins lay for about 2 weeks a year and go broody every time the sun comes out!
The Orpingtons lay well most of the year but there is a Summer interlude whilst they hatch and raise the chicks - but they lay unlit in the Winter to make up for it. We keep a few Crested Cream Legbars & Welsummers to ensure year round eggs
It varies hugely by time of year Steve. We run around eight core breeding Orpington hens, plus one or two unrelated cockerels and half a dozen Legbars and Welsummers just for eggs. So in Winter say 16. As we move into Summer half a dozen of the Orpingtons will go broody covering around 18 eggs each. With a following wind they will hatch c. 70 chicks, taking us up to 85 or so. Two or three of the hens will brood again in Autumn. Say 80 or so chicks per year. We will keep a few hens as rolling replacement broodies. One clutch will be from eggs we get from another good breeder and from that clutch we will keep only the two best cockerels providing unrelated breeding stock for the following year. Remaining hens we sell along with occasional unrelated cockerels for those who want a breeding flock. The money we make pays our annual cost for feed, bedding and infrastructure ( coops, fencing etc.). Unsold cockerels are processed here, by us, for the table when they reach maturity. Clearly dual purpose old breeds mature much more slowly than modern broilers creating in my opinion a much superior table bird.
A long way of saying between 16 and 85 birds depending on the season
