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Running continuous batches of chickens this year now that we have an incubator. Tried growing the flock with broody hens and had poor success. With our flock dwindling down and the price/availability of chicks going up it was time to upgrade our chicken system.

Soon when the weather warms up will be able to go directly from the incubator to the brooder outside. For now, we have a stock tank inside until the chicks get some feathers.

#permaculture #permies #homesteading #grownostr #regenag #regenerativeagriculture #chickens #localfood

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Discussion

DefiantDandelion 2y ago

Where the hens just not consistent in sitting? Just curious what the challenge was.

rev.hodl 2y ago

They would fail to hatch any chicks and if there was success all but a handful would survive to maturity. It's likely that we should have been more involved in the process. We would basically just let the chickens do their thing and see what happens.

DefiantDandelion 2y ago

Ok, got it. what was the breed? Or do you find it doesn’t matter?

rev.hodl 2y ago

Black Australorp or Buff Orpington were the ones that would go broody for us most often.

Jacky 2y ago

Having an incubator is a must, in my opinion, just to keep them separate from the food eggs. Doing it with a hen makes it so difficult because you have to assume all of the eggs are old and fertilized. It was a mess. Now, we have a lot more control.

We will collect over the next few weeks so we can identify all incoming chicks that are roosters by the fall, and we can butcher with the meat chickens.

phenixfalconer 2y ago

I've been raising chickens using broodies exclusively for 12 years. I usually raise up 50 to 70 this way every year without too many issues. I use partridge chantecler. I should post more about this... will start.

Backwoods Industries 2y ago

That is awesome. We just had six eggs hatch in our incubator.

rev.hodl 2y ago

Culling extra roosters and stocking up on chicken soup

We finally got an egg incubator this year to start rebuilding our chicken flock. A fox cleaned us out a few years ago and we thought we could rebuild the flock by the broody hens hatching eggs. It didn't work out, we only ended up with a handful of chicks that would make it to maturity. So we got an incubator to hatch some more chicks. With the hens came roosters as well. We let them grow all summer and now the time has come to turn them into chicken soup.

Seven roosters skinned and rested in the fridge for a week, good for over 15lbs of meat (no skin). Pressure cooked and soon to be pressure canned into a few gallons of soup. Resting them in the fridge seems to have done well for the texture of the meat. In my experience, I find pressure cooked meat to be a little more tough, chewy and dry than I expect. These chickens turned out better than past chicken soup batches. Maybe the extended resting time had something to do with it.

#homesteading #permaculture #permies #meshtadel #chicken #rooster #harvest #chickensoup

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rev.hodl 1y ago

Saving up a stockpile of eggs after rebuilding chicken flock

Bought a egg incubator to hatch some chicks last season and it's paying off now. Getting more eggs than we can eat each day so we are building a stockpile. We pickle a couple dozen at once, which make for a good quick snack. We are also scrambling them and freezing them in 6 egg packages. Hopefully this winter when our chickens stop laying we will have enough frozen eggs to make it through the winter without buying any. We tried water glassing eggs in the past with success but wanted to try freezing instead.

#homesteading #permaculture #permies #meshtadel #chicken #harvest #eggs #foodpreservation #grownostr

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kerimae 1y ago

This is great. I'd love to hear how this all turns out this winter, for example how the frozen cooked eggs are. I need to get myself an incubator; that's something we haven't done yet.