(01-30-2024, 10:42 PM)Rocketman Wrote: I hope you are doing well out thar in the countryside. (Me too now. Very few folks out here by Riding Mountain National Park in Manitoba. This spring thiugh - chickens I hope! Thanks for the welcome.
Doing good here, well, as good as someone in their late 90s can be doing. The problem is that I'm not in my late 90s.
You were missed. I enjoyed your posts and will enjoy them again.
Chickens are worth having IMO. Have you decided on a breed? OK, I'm going to go off on chickens. Our first breed was Buff Orpington. Very friendly, very lazy, and not very good layers as meat birds they were just OK, delicious though. But they were almost pets. They'd mob me before going to roost, and settle on my head and shoulders looking for a handout which they got. White leghorns were great layers but their health suffered and they die easily. Brown leghorns lay about the same as the Orpingtons but aren't friendly. When it's time for more chickens I think I've decided on the way I'm going to do it... 2 coops, one with Jersey Giant meat birds, and the other for great layers. An incubator will keep us in birds even if they die easily.
If you've never eaten meat from an old meat bird you're in for a treat. Modern chicken from the store is raised fast for profit and not for flavor. An old time breed designed for meat grows slowly and develops lots of flavor. Where a thigh on a modern bird is white, on a real meat bird the drumstick and thigh is really dark meat because it's actually used for walking. The flavor is huge and that might be offputting at first but that's the way chicken is supposed to taste. After having home laid hen fruit it's hard to go back to store eggs.