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Post by illinoisfisherman on Apr 4, 2024 17:19:53 GMT -5
It would be great to have a flock of mature birds like those that you are raising. Free ranging fowl that can protect themselves against predators sounds wonderful. If a person had said type birds would they even be able to gather eggs for food from them?
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Post by bullfrog on Apr 4, 2024 17:53:43 GMT -5
It would be great to have a flock of mature birds like those that you are raising. Free ranging fowl that can protect themselves against predators sounds wonderful. If a person had said type birds would they even be able to gather eggs for food from them? Yes, its easy to lure the hens to use nest boxes. You scatter them about chest high around the farmyard. On fence posts and barn walls especially. Put in some hay or wood shaving in them with a ceramic egg. I estimate I can get 75% of the eggs that way.
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Post by illinoisfisherman on Apr 4, 2024 19:05:05 GMT -5
It would be great to have a flock of mature birds like those that you are raising. Free ranging fowl that can protect themselves against predators sounds wonderful. If a person had said type birds would they even be able to gather eggs for food from them? Yes, its easy to lure the hens to use nest boxes. You scatter them about chest high around the farmyard. On fence posts and barn walls especially. Put in some hay or wood shaving in them with a ceramic egg. I estimate I can get 75% of the eggs that way. 👍 Are mature birds of these varieties available to purchase anywhere online? I have to try to obtain some of these for a friend of mine in the next year.
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Post by bullfrog on Apr 4, 2024 19:24:47 GMT -5
Yes, its easy to lure the hens to use nest boxes. You scatter them about chest high around the farmyard. On fence posts and barn walls especially. Put in some hay or wood shaving in them with a ceramic egg. I estimate I can get 75% of the eggs that way. 👍 Are mature birds of these varieties available to purchase anywhere online? I have to try to obtain some of these for a friend of mine in the next year. Yes and no. The gamefowl guys, some whom are underground cockfighters, have open online presences but can be a pain to deal with. Very clannish and distrustful of people who they don’t know in their circles. Some are real-deal, old-fashioned cockfighters. Others only raise the birds for the love of them, but are afraid of being falsely accused of cockfighting. And many of the online-only gamefowl breeders are scammers and methheads that will charge inflated prices for substandard birds. Gamefowl of quality genetics are worth $500-$1500 for a trio (one rooster and two hens). While trash birds are worth $20-$40 a piece. Its hard for someone inexperienced with gamefowl to know the difference. Your best bet is to ask around locally. Somewhere around you, there’s likely to be an old-timer that has a free range gamefowl flock. He’ll have a mature brood cock and 12-20 hens that just roam his farm. He’ll have extra pullets and stags every year that grow up semi-wild and he’ll probably sell you a trio for $50. If you want the reptilian-looking gamefowl, the oriental gamefowl, you’ll probably have to find them from a commercial hatchery. Hatchery birds are watered down but its a place to start. Tell me what general type you want and I’ll pull up some hatchery links.
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Post by illinoisfisherman on Apr 4, 2024 21:16:58 GMT -5
Mr Bullfrog. Thank you so much for the advice and thank you for your offer of help. I hope to ask you for help later this year. Ken
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Post by bullfrog on Jun 15, 2024 23:44:32 GMT -5
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Post by ferris1248 on Jun 16, 2024 8:33:11 GMT -5
Looking forward to it. I've missed the chickens.
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Post by swampdog on Jun 16, 2024 11:38:51 GMT -5
Yep this is one of my favorite subjects. Thanks for sharing!
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Post by bullfrog on Jun 16, 2024 12:52:39 GMT -5
Top mature rooster was Number 1. You may remember he was my Cracker brood cock that I intended to replicate through line breeding (basically a naturally way of cloning, not true cloning of course but practically it produces offspring that might as well be clones). I distributed several hundred of his offspring, but when I turned to keep some for myself he received a wound either from a snake or a bird of prey and he died of the subsequent gangrene. That left me with very few offspring to work with to try to make another one. Then what few I had were prone to the Marek's disease that burned through my flock last year. Now I have a grandson that looks like he may be what I'm looking for. So far he seems to be Marek's immune, has the red ear I was looking to instill into the Cracker genetics, and may end up having the build and plumage of Number 1. He's only a bit over 2 months old now. He's already crowing and mounting pullets and he's transitioning into adult colors. Overall, the Marek's disease knocked me down to about 24 chickens at the beginning of winter, with there only being about a dozen on free range. Now I'm back to about 125 chickens. Of those, all but 11 are on free range. No sign of the Marek's disease. It's highly likely the genetics of the surviving birds have beat it and their immunity has been passed to their offspring. In my war with the Marek's, I culled most of my favored birds, including Indo and Lanky. I culled anything that shows systems of the Marek's or even simply showed signs of struggling on free range such as weight loss. The videos I posted in my last post show some of the vast numbers of chicks and sub-adults growing out. All of my project lines are represented in the survivors, but I'm looking to pair my lines down. At he moment I have the genetics to represent 5 bloodlines. I'd rather focus on doing 2 or at the most 3 bloodlines well. The two bloodlines I'm committed to are the two lines of modified Crackers I have. The first is cut with American gamefowl to make a larger Cracker. The second line is cut with Old English Game Bantam to make a bantam Cracker. The bantam Cracker line was divided into a line bred to American Game Bantam standards and a line bred to red junglefowl bantam standards. But the Marek's disease required that I fold the lines together to defeat inbreeding depression to the degree that plays into susceptibility to Marek's disease. I don't want to divide the line again. I'd rather pick one standard or to the other and breed to that standard. But I haven't decided which way to go yet. I added some new genetics to the terrorfowl project to attempt one more time to infuse the large size into them. Again, it seems like crossing the large chickens to other lines creates a smaller chicken, which suggests to me that many instances of abnormally large breeds of chickens are resultant of inbred mutations that want to work themselves out of the lines when the genetics are freshened up. If this doesn't work, I'm going to let the terrorfowl absorb into the mixed free-range flock and just become a locally adapted landrace. The yard birds themselves are mostly black. They're the terrorfowl that survived the Marek's with no symptoms. But they are taking more the form of a normal chicken as they mix with the Crackers and other birds on the yard.. This is the last pure terrorfowl of the original line. Even he has taken more the form of a normal gamefowl.
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Post by illinoisfisherman on Jun 16, 2024 13:01:32 GMT -5
This is the most interesting thread on this forum by far. Thank you for sharing!👍
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Post by stc1993 on Jul 9, 2024 6:44:20 GMT -5
I saw a video on facebook the other day a rooster attacked a hawk. The hawk couldn't get away fast enough. The rooster whipped the hawk. 1st time I've ever seen that. He wasn't afraid of the hawk at all. He jumped right on his butt.
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Post by illinoisfisherman on Jul 9, 2024 18:09:51 GMT -5
Sure hope the chickens are doing well
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Post by bullfrog on Jul 10, 2024 11:06:59 GMT -5
Sure hope the chickens are doing well The chickens are doing well. I have something around 125 head of chicken growing out free-range. No sign of disease, except I culled one grow-out for stumbling. It looked more like an injury instead of nerve damage from Marek’s, but I culled it all the same just to be safe.
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Post by PolarsStepdad on Jul 10, 2024 11:41:58 GMT -5
I thank God almost daily for the lowly chicken. I feel he put me on this earth specifically to control their population and to keep them from taking over
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Post by illinoisfisherman on Jul 10, 2024 11:43:30 GMT -5
Sure glad to hear that they are doing well. They sure multiply quickly. Do you have to cull out the younger roosters so that they don’t fight?
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