NH Homesteader- turkeys!

[Southern by choice]

I loved our Dorkings!
Keep in mind though they are a more sensitive breed.
Many struggle with them.

One of the birds we are keeping even though she is old is our Red laced Cornish. I love her!

Here are my young Silver Dorkings (breeding pair) They sure were beautiful!

My favorites are Speckled Sussex! They are beautiful!
I miss breeding birds.

 

[NH homesteader]

Sensitive in what regard? What lovely birds!

Speckled Sussex are beautiful, a farm up the road has some.

You're way downsizing birds huh?

 

[Southern by choice]

The first six weeks they can be touchy. They do not do cold well when little.
We downsized a few years ago.
I bred 17 varieties. Heritage and rare breeds mostly.

Many down hatchery birds yet depending on the hatchery they will be your hardiest.
With space and goats etc it got to be too much.
We only pen them for a short period once a year for breeding because they were all free range. Our Breeder flocks numbered over 250 birds.
We would pick 4 breeds pen the hens - allow them to "clean out" after there were no more fertile eggs then we would place the rooster with them til we gathered and hatched for that breed for the season. So for about 2 months they were penned. They loathed being penned because they were range wherever birds.

 

[babsbag]

Speckled Sussex are on my radar, as if I need anymore birds. I lost all my Marans to the stupid coyote, and my Polish, so those might have to be replaced too. You never know. I also like the Cornish, I had some Bantam ones but lost my entire group of them in a coop fire and never replaced them My coop is looking pretty lonely with no barred rocks so it is time to add a few of those back into the mix too. Eye candy, that is all they are.

@Bruce do you have a time of use meter since you have a solar array or is that a CA thing?

 

[NH homesteader]

Thanks @Southern by choice that's good to know! I really want them to do well and be one of our primary breeds so I'll make sure to take extra good care of them when they're little! You had a whole lot of chickens! We only have 12 at the moment and my cutoff is around 50. It would be too much to get many more with the goats, pigs, dogs and oh the human child too! Lol

We try to go for heritage breeds, we really love our Dominiques. But we are probably going to have our breeders and then our layer flock, which will be full of random breeds because it's fun!

We need to find some pretty colors for our coop. We have one little hen that is not a variation of black, gray and/or white. This includes the turkeys. Maybe some New Hampshires. Chicken math!

 

[Bruce]

@Bruce do you have a time of use meter since you have a solar array or is that a CA thing?

Green Mountain Power does have some time of use plans. One is:
Customer Charge of $0.571 per day (vs $0.433 for 'normal plan' or about $4 more per month to have service)
plus
During peak hours: All energy at $0.20607 per kWh (vs $0.14840) - 4 consecutive hours between 7 AM and noon
During off peak hours: All energy at $0.10745 per kWh- 4 consecutive hours between 4 PM and 10 PM

These are Monday through Saturday. All other hours are off-peak. I don't know how they decide WHICH 4 hours, nor how often they do it. Could be an "after the fact" calculation based on actual peak usage for a given day.

There is a section in the net metering that says if you are on a time of use schedule, the monetization of excess power at the on and off peak times shall be the same as is charged during those periods. Basically this is the same thing as "normal residential" where you are charged $0.14840 no matter when you use the power and have credits at the same rate for excess you put into the grid at any time. It would take some serious analysis to figure out if the time of use plan would benefit us or not given the high variability of the solar production.

 

[Southern by choice]

I love my chickens!
One of my other favorites is the Delaware. Meat/Layer bird! Before the cornish X came about the Delaware was the primary meat bird in the US!

I also love the variety. We had 17 breeder flocks but we also had lots of other birds... eye candy birds!
I loved our selling eggs too! The colors were amazing!
Although one time a lady wouldn't buy eggs because she thought the green ones were "bad" as in rotten!
Funny too because we had hardly any white egg layers and each carton had to have 1 white egg.... funny how that white egg up against all the other colors was just so beautiful!

Our eggs!

 

[NH homesteader]

Wow those are beautiful! I ordered some colored egg layers so we could sell eggs with fancy colors, lol. I wanted some Marans because of their super dark eggs but I've heard less than stellar things about their personalities.

Have you eaten a Dorking? I've heard they're amazing... We are also looking for heavier dual purpose birds because we are done with raising Cornish X. I say that every year but this time I mean it! And I even have my husband in agreement.

 

[frustratedearthmother]

I had Marans for awhile - personalities were fine. Laying...eh...not stellar. I've eaten a Dorking! Really, long full breast and big thighs. They were really good.

 

[Latestarter]

Now that's my kinda girl.... uh... I mean chicken! The thighs and wings/dark meat are my favorite part of the chicken. Not much for the drumsticks,and love the crispy skin from all over. So basically, I guess you could say that I prefer the worst/fattiest part of the chicken Yet when I'm buying chicken at the store, I always buy the huge breasts vice the thighs... even though the thighs are generally half the price of the breasts. What can I say

Wasn't sure what breeds I'd be doing this time around, but thinking I'll try some dorkings. The white wyandottes I had got huge, while the delawares really didn't. My favorite were my New Hampshires; heavy birds, good dependable layers, and good foragers.

Why did you have to have one white egg in each carton?