# Southern's - Long Overdue Update PART 1



## Southern by choice (Oct 12, 2014)

Southern's Long Overdue Update and I mean LONG! 

I have been rather absent since about February. I thought I'd update and share the many changes that have, and still are taking place on our farm.
Earlier in the year the whole family caught a nasty bug and thus began my hiatus from BYH and my other farming group of friends. Of course the farm still needed tended to regardless so busy I was.
Some of our adult children have moved on to other opportunities, school, jobs, etc. of course they are all still living here!

This left the farm with basically 2 people to do everything. Some of you know we originally started out as a poultry farm and then expanded to goats. We had 17 breeds (varieties for those that want to get technical) of chickens, 2 breeds of geese, 2 breeds of ducks, 2 breeds of turkeys, sheep, dairy goats, and meat goats. This began to be too much and was quite overwhelming. Simply not enough time to do everything. We needed to really make some changes! In the midst of all this I was asked to be part of an advisory committee, responsible for goats. I'll get to that in a bit.

Because we are asked often about poultry and what has and hasn't worked I thought I'd share our experiences.

I will start with the *poultry* first-
We were averaging 250 birds. Free range. We were getting request from all over the country for hatching eggs from some of our birds. Our normal routine has been to take only a few breeds and place them in breeding pens (at the time it was 4-5 pens) allow the hens to “clean out” then break and check eggs to make sure they were ready for their roos! A month of clean out then adding roos, allowing time for fertilization and then collecting eggs for hatch. Sounds simple yet our birds LIVE free range and do not like to breed or lay in confinement. We only do this once a year per breed. Birds end up being penned for about 2-3 months total. Hatching eggs just not possible. This year was better as over the winter we built open, outdoor pens. This made a big difference. Yet still too many pens and birds. We reduced our breeds and continue to still reduce number of breeds and birds.

Our goal was to get down to 5-7 breeds and 75-90 birds.

We have found having 5 main breeds and only breeding 2-3 varieties at once, filling the cabinet full, hatching, and rearing them up was best. 2 of our other breeds are bantams. I don't include them in my main group. LOL

We then raise the chicks. Cockerels are raised up to 4-5 weeks and offered at $1. We hold back a few to look for great potential breeders. They sell very quickly as they are going to places that raise them up to 16 weeks and eat them. A win win for us as we do not need 100 roosters and often our freezers are so full we cannot use anymore. We also do not need to keep feeding them. The pullets are then raised and sold accordingly. The trend has been for started pullets. Very few people want to deal with baby chicks, heat, feathering out, transition brooders etc. Most sell starting at 8-10 weeks. This has been the most productive and profitable year for our poultry. Of course it all goes back into the farm but we have found this threshold to be the most cost effective. We get eating eggs, chicken for freezer, chicks for selling and all feed and care cost are covered.
I do miss some of the breeds we discontinued, however the workload has been reduced immensely.
For those of you working toward poultry production I can assure you we have tried just about everything and have found lower numbers to be best.

*Waterfowl*- Although our waterfowl are easy keepers and great sellers we have discontinued them. They sell out quickly but the care required for goslings and ducklings that are not being raised by their parents is time consuming and costly. Messy too! Timing is key. Too early and they need so much care and heat etc. Feeding can cause issues especially with geese. Later in the season they don't need much of anything and are eating grass right away. The decision to discontinue was based on POOP! Yes POOP! Our geese are guard geese and they do a great job, they also lay down every night by the gates. In the morning you are walking through piles and piles of poop. Of course it is all grass and not splatty gross poo, but all the poo kills the grass and then we are left with dirt and mud in front of every gate. They foul every water bucket and then the dogs and goats will not touch the wayer with the oils in it. They are also VERY LOUD! The more geese the louder and they become rather “pack-like”. We have had many people say... not sure what I am afraid of more the dogs the geese or the turkeys! LOL

All are so territorial. The geese get going which triggers the dogs and also in reverse...wow...loud! We sold all off except 3 of our Brown Chinese, and 1 mutt duck! The geese are going to the processors soon. Kinda sad but it is the right call. They generally live off the land and do not create any expense, however come fall/winter we will be in a bad spot. We lost all our cool weather grasses in 2012-2013 when we had 9 months of rain. We have a great deal of erosion that needs to be repaired. More on that later.

*Turkeys*- We have had great success with our heritage turkeys. Blacks and Chocolates! Great mom's! Great sitters and take great care of poults however our hens started going way far away and out of the protection of our LGD's and we started losing them. They become extremely territorial and were highly protective of the property. Not great when you have customers coming and going. We slaughtered some, sold some and then my son decided to do Narragansett. He loves turkeys. Of course we ended up with all males! UGH. We will do another hatch keep a female and slaughter all others. Freezer meat! Keeping only a pair. Turkeys sell out very fast here. We do not sell newly hatched poults because poults seem to like to find ways to die, they also do better not penned but in the open. We learned this over the years. We raise the poults til 4-6 weeks so when they go to their new homes they have the best chance of survival. We know so many people who have tried day old poults and they all die, it is something about poults. We rarely lose a poult especially if they are raised with a good mom. We have found that it takes usually to the second generation for moms to be good moms. LOL Our hens were too prolific... never stopping, hatch after hatch... laying even when the season was off and they should not have been.

So as the poultry/waterfowl goes we have changed so much. We still have lots of birds to sell as we just raised up some more to bring new genetics in and need to “select” for our best birds.
We are only keeping-

*Standard Breeds-*
Welsummers
Speckled Sussex
Delaware
Barred Rock
Sometimes RIR/ Sex Links Red & White
Standard Cochins Blks and Barred

*Bantams-*
Cochins, self blue, blacks, reds frizzles
Modern Games

We still have our Anconas, Penes, EE- I love my Anconas!
In July we were down to 94 birds over 4 months of age... so we have about 135 now. UGH
Our goal by Novemver is to sell off extras and slaughter so we are down to 75 birds including bantams.
Small breeding groups of 9hens/ 1-2 roos.

So this concludes PART I  Part II  the BIG CHANGE! Our goats!


----------



## Baymule (Oct 12, 2014)

I am enjoying the update! Waiting on Part 2!!!


----------



## OneFineAcre (Oct 13, 2014)

Sounds like you have a plan


----------

