Good chicken varities?

[ottawagardener]

I have heard some people say that there are no good multi purpose birds. Anyone disagree?

[mjc]

Dual purpose bird?

Any of the Orpingtons...I like the Buff Orps. There are White, Black, Blue and Buff...Buff are probably the easiest to find.

[castanea]

I ahve no experince with them, but I have a friend who loves Barnevelder chickens. Says they are a very good dual purpose bird with good personalities, make good parents and are cold hardy.

[mnjrutherford]

We've got Buff Orps, Amerucaunas (but not really cause they don't match the standards), Rhode Island Reds, and Barred Rocks. I have to get the guys to actually count them all but at 5 months, we are getting 4 to 5 eggs a day AND we've butchered 6 birds. The first couple of birds were meat sparse but tasty. The next 4, butchered about a month later, were almost the size of supermarket birds.

Mind, I am ignorant of all the details of meat vs. egg birds. But I can tell you that we are satisfied with our current results.

[lavandulagirl]

I think there are people who only consider a bird a good meat bird if you can butcher at 8 weeks. However, those birds, usually CornishX, are never egg birds. A dual purpose bird, by definition, has laid some eggs for you before you serve it for Sunday supper, so yes, any of the heavier birds would be good as dual purpose. Orpington is an excellent choice. I don't eat my hens, but the heavier breeds I have (Australorp, Barred Rock) would probably also be good eating!

[bluelacedredhead]

Aug 23, 2010 18:53:58 GMT -5 ottawagardener said:

I have heard some people say that there are no good multi purpose birds. Anyone disagree?

Telsing, You live in the Ottawa Valley...get Chanteclers. I don't mean ones that were developed by a hatchery like McMurrays.
I could put you in touch with someone who has birds from our breeding line on the farm, which has it's origins from QC. Or, you could contact Rare breeds Canada or M. Auclair at the number given in the link below.

Beautiful birds with thick plumage and a pea comb for the cold winters in Eastern Ontario. Large brown eggs, docile hens.

www.cfagrf.com/Chantecler_chicken.htm

[canadamike]

Blue: a farmer told me they had a lot of problems with diseases in the Chanteclerc breed in Quebec and that the race is disappearing. Is it true?

[nuts]

I think it is of no use to be racist.
For chicken,in general,people tend to want their race 'pure',often resulting in strong inbreeding with all the negative implications it can have.
Sometimes I just go to see a neighbour to see if he has a spare rooster,putting the old one in the soup. With the offspring I do some selection and eventually some inbreeding,to try to get a type that pleases me,but after some time(a few years)it's time for going out to find a new rooster.

Personally,I like to do some breeding so I have a kind of dwarf type mix that go easily sitting on the eggs,so I don't have to go trough the incubator thing.For eggs the are not so very good because if I take the eggs,often they end up to want to sit on eggs that are no more there and they stop laying for a while.But you can manage it by eating only part of the eggs
Any way I eat more the birds then the eggs.(I have to,if not the population go out of controll )

[bluelacedredhead]

Michel, I suppose that is possible? (Has this been in the last 6 weeks that you were told this?? )

First email back says that the breed is alive and well in QC. The breeder whose line we had, is hatching for government funded Chantecler meat and egg production.

[mnjrutherford]

Aug 24, 2010 14:36:04 GMT -5 @nuts said:

I think it is of no use to be racist.
For chicken,in general,people tend to want their race 'pure',often resulting in strong inbreeding with all the negative implications it can have.
Sometimes I just go to see a neighbour to see if he has a spare rooster,putting the old one in the soup. With the offspring I do some selection and eventually some inbreeding,to try to get a type that pleases me,but after some time(a few years)it's time for going out to find a new rooster.

Interesting that you mention this very thing as it's something I've been pondering.

How often would you introduce an "outside" bird to the flock? I was thinking perhaps a fresh hen and rooster each year? Would that be sufficiently diverse?

[bluelacedredhead]

Jo, Yes. Once new male a year would help, or even just a new pullet to hatch from.
I believe it takes 7 generations in fowldom before obvious traits of inbreeding occur, such as beaks so crossed that the chicks can't eat.

[mnjrutherford]

Oh YIKES Blue! That would be horrible! Well, we've found a nice lady that has invited us to her place to take a peek at her birdies and talk with her about how she does what with whom.

On another note, I'm kinda interested in maybe having a pure strain of Amerucauna. Arucauna would be preferable, but as I understand it, they probably no longer exist. Any one with thoughts on this?

[mnjrutherford]

Nearly forgot! Telsing, have you ever checked out this site:

www.ithaca.edu/staff/jhenderson/chooks/chooks.html

This was a great tool for kinda narrowing down our issues and what breeds we wanted to aim for. I liked how the egg production is measured with the eggs. Took me forever to realize what that meant!!

[heidihi]

I will chime in
my favorite meat/egg birds are either the orpingtons as mentioned above or Jersey giants and barnvelder
they give a beautiful big egg a day and also are meaty birds!

[mjc]

Aug 26, 2010 5:57:17 GMT -5 mnjrutherford said:

Oh YIKES Blue! That would be horrible! Well, we've found a nice lady that has invited us to her place to take a peek at her birdies and talk with her about how she does what with whom.

On another note, I'm kinda interested in maybe having a pure strain of Amerucauna. Arucauna would be preferable, but as I understand it, they probably no longer exist. Any one with thoughts on this?

Here's some interesting info...especially the fact that it is a 'doomed' breed without careful breeding.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Araucana

From the one line in the article, it seems that it isn't necessarily an 'extinct' breed...but rather, to find it, you'll need to go to Chile?

The European equivalent of the North American show standard variety Araucana is what one comes across in South American villages.