Hi from New Hampshire

[CrealCritter]

Look like I'll have to do some additional prep work to keep the wild ones away from my turkey poults in the Spring - thanks @NH Homesteader and @CrealCritter

I'm raising bourbon reds, an old heritage breed. My understanding is they used to be "the" table bird in the 20'. They are about 1/2 wild anyways so I tend to believe it. I started off with broadbreasted both brown and white. Their behavior was way different and a lot more friendly than my Bourbon Reds. But Bourbon Reds are just so delicious.

 

[Lazy Gardener]

You should be able to breed Bresse or Dixie Rangers as a sustainable flock. However, in order to keep the carcass size up, you will need to keep them from crossing with other breeds. I do believe that DR are a hybrid. But, my experience said that the size remained good for the first generation, even when putting a EE roo over a DR hen. So, it's my opinion that you would do ok for several generations if you kept a DR cockerel and a couple DR pullets. Those DR roos grow massive, so I would not want to keep one as a breeder in a standard layer flock.

@Beekissed really likes White Rocks. She says the carcass size is good, the egg production is good, and the breed is very hardy. A lot depends on how many people you are feeding, how much meat you tend to eat. And, whether you can free range without feeding the local predators. Could be that you will produce enough meat with a modest sized DP flock. Most flock keepers hatch a few chicks every year to replace the older hens. This provides a lot of cockerels, plus older hens to cull every year.

My suggestions: Try a number of different breeds. Keep a closed flock. I either: hatch my own chicks from my own flock, or buy day old chicks. I will sell some of my birds, but will never allow anything other than egg or day old chick to enter my property. The risk of bringing a "forever" disease onto my property/into my flock is too great to allow older birds to come here from someone else's property.

 

[NHMounttainman]

if you are "in the wild" and plan on doing any serious gardening i recommend a good 7-8ft fence. you will not keep raccoons out with this, but you will cut down on their traffic. the main thing it discourages are deer, groundhogs and rabbits. we don't grow corn so i don't mind the raccoons in the gardens they don't seem to damage much at all (i don't use commercial fertilizers or fish emulsions i only use worms and worm compost). the main pests here are the (DGR) and chipmunks (so i should just say CDGR?) but you need a much finer mesh up a ways to help deal with chipmunks as compared to the others. the mesh fence i use for just DGR is 2x4 inch welded wire fence that comes in 7ft rolls. i'd actually like a 10ft roll as then i could use it as one piece to lay it along the ground too to discourage anyone from trying to dig under it.

Thank you for the advice. We've been gardening here for a few years now and have been pretty successful. We've never seen a raccoon or skunk. The biggest issue we've had has been porcupine - the damn things will walk along taking 1 bite out of each squash, pumpkin, eggplant etc and they've killed multiple apple trees. I've turned into Elmer Fudd {be vewy vewy quiet, I'm hunting porkies, hahahaha" ). I use electric fence and bait the fence with apple caps to shock / train the deer and black bear. The biggest issue I've had is moose. Those dang things just walk through the fence and trample anything and strip the apple trees bare. My moose strategy has been to redirect them. I've dropped trees across the game trails to send them in a different direction.

 

[NHMounttainman]

I'm raising bourbon reds, an old heritage breed. My understanding is they used to be "the" table bird in the 20'. They are about 1/2 wild anyways so I tend to believe it. I started off with broadbreasted both brown and white. Their behavior was way different and a lot more friendly than my Bourbon Reds. But Bourbon Reds are just so delicious.

I was thinking Bourbon reds and Narragansett to start, and see where we go from there. But you all have made me rethink my plans for spring because of the wild turkey in the area. something I need to noodle on for a while....

 

[NHMounttainman]

You should be able to breed Bresse or Dixie Rangers as a sustainable flock. However, in order to keep the carcass size up, you will need to keep them from crossing with other breeds. I do believe that DR are a hybrid. But, my experience said that the size remained good for the first generation, even when putting a EE roo over a DR hen. So, it's my opinion that you would do ok for several generations if you kept a DR cockerel and a couple DR pullets. Those DR roos grow massive, so I would not want to keep one as a breeder in a standard layer flock.

@Beekissed really likes White Rocks. She says the carcass size is good, the egg production is good, and the breed is very hardy. A lot depends on how many people you are feeding, how much meat you tend to eat. And, whether you can free range without feeding the local predators. Could be that you will produce enough meat with a modest sized DP flock. Most flock keepers hatch a few chicks every year to replace the older hens. This provides a lot of cockerels, plus older hens to cull every year.

My suggestions: Try a number of different breeds. Keep a closed flock. I either: hatch my own chicks from my own flock, or buy day old chicks. I will sell some of my birds, but will never allow anything other than egg or day old chick to enter my property. The risk of bringing a "forever" disease onto my property/into my flock is too great to allow older birds to come here from someone else's property.

Really helpful suggestions - thank you. I found this site from the backyard chickens sister site. I've gotten similar advice there as well. I plan to isolate the breeds initially to see how it goes for each breed. Because I can only eat poultry and fish, we eat a ton of chicken. I only processed 12 of my own this first year, and know that we'll be closer to 50-75 chickens per year for the two of us...plus what we end up giving our 3 adult kids.

I don't think I can genuinely "Free" range - we do have a high predator load. We have a lot of abutting land with coyote and bobcat as the local apex predators, but we also live on an exposed ridge, with raptors drifting overhead often. I've been successful (so far) with my first egg / dual purpose flock - they have a very solid coop and run that I think will keep out anything but a bear, and let them range within about a 1/2 acre surrounded by electric poultry netting. So far (please don't jinx me) - no losses. I also use game cams, and if I notice either tracks or a picture of a predator, I lock the chickens down for a few days or weeks , and try to change the pattern of when I let them out. And a great big dog that wanders amongst the chickens, and around the fence. He barks at any raptor, and even the planes or helicopters that might fly by - not sure how he does it....

With the DR - are you suggesting that I'll need to bring in a new rooster every year or two, or start an entire new roo/hen combo to keep the size up?

Also.... do you know if they would eat gypsy worms and tent caterpillars ? I'm thinking of putting the DR in amongst the apple trees, in hope of keeping the bugs down and fertilizing? Really curious about creating a symbiotic system if possible?

 

[tortoise]

@Beekissed really likes White Rocks. She says the carcass size is good, the egg production is good, and the breed is very hardy. A lot depends on how many people you are feeding, how much meat you tend to eat. And, whether you can free range without feeding the local predators. Could be that you will produce enough meat with a modest sized DP flock. Most flock keepers hatch a few chicks every year to replace the older hens. This provides a lot of cockerels, plus older hens to cull every year.

I have raised commercial cornishX, rock, and cornish, and attempted hybridizing them. My advice is to go with dark cornish. The carcasses awesome - just as good as cornishX. They grow out slower (in a good way) and their quality of life is fine (unlike the freakish commercial hybrid). The buff rock were fine. My hybrids were no-go. Not as bad as a Rhode Island Red carcass, but no improvement over the parents. one caveat, the dark cornish were not good temperament for free range and having kids on the property, and when penned they were nasty each other. But that might just be the hatchery line, I think @NH Homesteader had a good experience with Dark Cornish?

 

[tortoise]

I don't think I can genuinely "Free" range - we do have a high predator load.

are you suggesting that I'll need to bring in a new rooster every year or two

high predator load? You're going to need a new rooster every year or two.

 

[NH Homesteader]

Nope my dark Cornish roo was psychotic! The hen was great though! The roo was the meanest thing I've ever seen and he met an earlier than planned demise.

 

[NHMounttainman]

I love your inspiration!

As far as natural remedies, I'll leave you with sulforaphane

Thank you for this - got a chance to watch it. I know debating on the internet is never successful - so I'll summarize my perspective as "it can't hurt." And I really do appreciate you sending this link, as I've got a lot to learn. She is a somewhat controversial researcher, but a highly credentialed biochemist.The controversy around her seems to be that she has authored none of the studies she references, and the authors of some of the studies seem to challenge some of the conclusions she makes on correlation vs causality.

That said... don't we all agree that eating more raw organic veggies makes a lot more sense! Every single cancer patient I know looks back at their illness and questions what WE did to cause us to have cancer. And almost every one I know also says that they wish they'd paid more attention to their diet. Whether it's Keto, Paleo, Atkins, etc - it seem that most research, and many of us intuitively, points back towards our bodies being able to process foods that hunter/gatherers ate seems healthier than foods that thrived under agricultural society .. But then again - life expectancy for hunter gathers was something like 30 ......

 

[NHMounttainman]

Nope my dark Cornish roo was psychotic! The hen was great though! The roo was the meanest thing I've ever seen and he met an earlier than planned demise.

Right now I have 2 Bresse, a Flarry Eyed Grey and a Liege Fighter cockerels in a bachelor coop. So far, no issues. The last two are game cocks, so I may need to separate them at some point, though the breeder tells me that isf there's no hens around, they should be fine. Once grown, the bresse will move to a breeding meat bird area, and the others will move in with egg layer flocks. The game cocks are supposed to be great protectors. At 5 moths old, they are still very easy going - good with me and love being near the dog. We'll see how spring things look once the snow melts!