Chickens
Chickens are a vital part of any homestead. They give us eggs, meat, fertilizer and in general - they are just a whole lot of fun. Different breeds are often better at certain things. We keep a variety of breeds to fulfil these purposes.
How we raise our chickens
We are a firm believer in breeding hardy, healthy animals. Being very aware of what we put in and on our own bodies we adopt the same approach with our animals - within reason. Our chickens are all free range and have access to non-GMO feed as well as kitchen scraps, organic greens from the garden and black soldier fly larvae.
We never incubate eggs but instead leave this to our broody hens who typically give us a phenomenal hatch rate of over ninety percent. Weak animals are never bred with or sold so you may see the odd unusual chicken walking about not really paying their rent.
Roosters who aren't used for breeding are separated into their "rooster camp" where they live as bachelors until they are sold or culled as humanely as possible by ourselves.
Brahmpingtons, Easter Eggers and Speckled Sussex
"Brahmpingtons" as we have fondly called them, are a mix of Brahma and Orpington chickens. We created this breed simply because we couldn't decide which breed we preferred. Brahmpingtons are our favourite of the three breeds, simply because they are hardy and handle our harsh climate, they go broody easily, make fierce mothers and lay really well and a good size egg too - although they do take a break over winter. To this day, every Brahmpington rooster we have bred has been gentle and non-problematic. Most of the roosters we consume are Brahmpingtons and so far the feedback has been good. Brahmpingtons are also easy to handle and make great children's pets as they are not particularly flighty.
We needed a breed to fill in the gaps when our broody, hard-working Brahmpington hens take a break from laying or raising their babies. Enter the Easter Egger - with their cute little beards and occasional tophats, what's not to like? These chickens pump out eggs, generally green or blue, like it is in an Olympic Sport. They are low maintenance and don't eat very much. However, we find them to be very flighty and not much fun to handle. The roosters are also quite small typically so they aren't our favourite meatbird.
We had been curious about the Speckled Sussex chickens for a while now so we went ahead and put some eggs under our trusty Brahmpington hens, and then a couple more. We now have a good-sized flock of Speckled Sussex chickens who are year-round layers and great meatbirds. They are generally easy to handle and very pretty to look at.
I must also give a special mention to my cleaning tools. My son's chamois Polish Bantams - Smoothie the hen and Mossy the frizzle rooster. They are largely useless and I regularly threatened to use them to mop and shine the kitchen floor!
