Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

My laying flock is currently white rock hens and a black Jersey giant rooster. Like most laying breeds the whites do not get broody. So I have incubated eggs from them and have a bunch of young black hens and "barred" roosters. The latter will be meat, they are good sized. I tried silkies for setting without much success, they would abandon the nest with the first chick. Silkes have black skin and little meat.
The white rocks have gone into molt now and are giving one or two eggs a day for seven hens. Not good. In the future I will cull them after the first year. When going into molt I give them extra protien by replacing their evening snack of scratch with catfish food.
Here in the desert where is little greens to forage except for the raised bed gardens. That means few bugs for them. I keep a bug light over the pond and after the fish have had their fill in the morning I scoop up baskets of bugs for the hens and turkeys. When I seperate cream for butter I make skim cottage cheese for the girls. They also get meat, fish and veggie scraps from the table. Every month the local St. Vincent De Paul has a food give away. I get any produce that has gone over or wont keep. That give additional scraps for chickens pig and goats.
The idea of sexing chicks is from the mcmurrey hatcheries. They sell red or black sexlinks and you may read about it on their website. The advantage is that you can harvest the cockrels young and tender and not have to feed them untill they can be sexed.

Picked 10 eggs monday, 7 eggs yesterday and 11 today Prolly the most I will get in a day unless the roosters start laying I may stick a couple dozen eggs in the incubator tomorrow and 4-5 days later stick a few dozen quail eggs in so I can brood them together to see if they will behave better togather.

Two of my hens have been clucky and sitting on unfertilized eggs for the last month (sometimes working in shifts) so I decided to get a rooster an see if I could hatch some chicks the old fashioned way.

I got a young pure Australorp rooster for free off Chooknet.

www.chooknet.com.au

This is an excellent resource for all Australian poulty fanciers. You can see who is selling or giving away all sorts of poulty in your area.

Chooknet, nice resource, would like one of those over here.
I'm trying to keep mine from setting and getting broody so I've been taking the eggs daily. I didn't expect them to be such productive egg layers so I now have a fridge full of eggs. I just filled the incubator and I'm waiting for the temps to stabilize. I plan on leaving in the am. I hope they don't get broody while I'm gone for a few days. 3 doz+ chicken eggs and 2 doz quail eggs.

I wasn't ready for chicks atm either so I was removing the eggs daily but they remained broody, as soon as an egg was laid they were back on it and if they only had one egg they would both sit on a roster they had sorted out.

Did the roster have applicable "shift penalties" ?

Yeah the penalty for shifting off the nest was the other chook stole your egg.

hah - musical chairs of egg hatching

I started to do something besides give away extra eggs:

Grass isn't growing yet and I had to purchase more feed. 2-50 lb sacks scratch grain and 2-50 lb sacks rabbit pellets $45.00. I'm considering purchasing a corn grinder similar to what JohnnyH has in florida.
Scroll down, it's the 6th item down the #60 mill.
http://www.reallycookinggood.com/p275.htm
I can get a ton of corn for like $220.
Still thinking in line of making my own feeds.

Hatched out 2 dozen baby chicks a couple weeks ago...plus I have 3 left of the dozen I bought which are about 8 weeks old and I have a couple chicks that the brooder failed during winter killing all but two chicks an they are about 3 months old I will be taking out a few of the adults soon maybe tomorrow along with a few quail and rabbits. I won't be hatching/brooding anymore in winter losses are way to high for me.

I know how you feel Bill. My feed bill is often more than groceries each month. I do not have a local farm co-op to buy from so grinding feed is not a benefit. However I do save on feed costs by pciking up over ripe fruits and veggies at the local commoditis food bank. Right now for example I have 5 or 6 cases of grape tomatoes, several cases of parsely and some summer squash. I do not feed anything out of garden or food bank to my rabbits. I give them pellets and bermuda hay only.
Yesterday I found a doe rabbit dead in her cage. It was the Belgin giant and she was due to deliver. I was going to cull her if she failed to have live babies again, anyway. So I drilled holes in a bucket and placed her in it between bedding and hung it in a tree for maggots. The chickens will love those. This time of year I start skimming bugs off the pond for them also. in the morning there are so many left after the fish are full, that I fill a cullindor in a few moments. Regardless of what other goodies the hens have, they can free feed on all the lay pellets they want. Egg production suffers without that high prtien feed with dthe supplements they need.
The last batch from the incubator are out in the yard now. This batch we only got six chicks. We tried to raise the humidity somewaht to get better than 50%, our normal yield from the 16 eggs. They cant seem to get out of the shell. Next time, which will be next spring, we will only raise the humidity when we stop rotation, three days prior to hatch. Even at 50% hatch it is better than depending hatcheries and postal for layers.

I have 4 Chooks, 2 Muscovy Ducks and 2 Indian Runners.

The Chooks Bash the Muscovys, the Runners Bash the Chooks and try to rape everything! So its a happy family!

The Chooks are around 5 years old and 3 arent laying so Im thinking of knocking this lot off and starting with 6 new ones. If the meat is good I will eat them but have been told because of their age they may be a bit tough. Locky dogs if it is.

There's a place on-line that sells everything you need to add to corn to make a well-balanced feed. Looks like a good deal.

I've heard non-organic feed for meat birds has arsenic in it. Supposedly makes the birds hungrier so they eat more.

I have 9 Chantecler hens - dual purpose, tolerates cold and lays during the winter. I also have 4 misc hens and 2 Chantecler roosters. One was looking sick a few months ago and the others started picking on him so I thru him in the paddock with the sheep.

6 weeks ago I killed 6 roosters but my husband thought I should spare Sideways Bill (he had balance issues while sick). 2 days ago I was working in the sheep paddock and bent down to pick up a nail and Sideways Bill flew up and scratched me in the face! Now hubby wants to kill him! I'm not ready for vengeance yet, but when I do we'll have Sideways Bill soup.

Who knew a 4 lb rooster would be more dangerous than the 1400 lb bull who spent last summer here? Once I got in between him and the hay and he gave me a little shove. My fault though, really.