Not Quite a Hobby Farm

Peacocks

2011-06-01T07:21:00.000-07:00

Here are some gorgeous pictures of our peacocks that I decided to share. Hope you like them, they are of our black shouldered male this spring.

*Also check out some graduation pictures I took for a friend with one of my horses*

Giving a Broody Hen Live Chicks

2010-02-07T14:52:00.000-08:00

Q: Can you give a broody hen live chicks from a hatchery or incubator?

A: Yes, under the right circumstances. We have done that a couple times now, I had 10 chicks hatch out of the incubator that I thought it would be silly to heat up a brooder for them, so I gave them to one of my bantam hens who I know is a great mother (she is in the photo left) and she was the happiest chicken in the world...she got babies and didn't even have to work for them. They are my sex link and RIR chicks. We also did this a few years ago with some chicks ordered from the hatchery with a different hen. You just have to watch them closely, and we put her in a very small area, so she could not move around with her chicks for the first couple days, or else she would get off and pace her small 3' X 2' pen.

Poultry Genetics - Breeding for Egg Color

2010-02-07T12:50:00.000-08:00

The single most popular article I have wrote for this blog has to be Which Hybrid Chicken to Choose?, so I think I am going to talk more on this subject. That is, breeding hybrid chickens for egg color.

What is egg color?
Lets start this off with what is egg color, or how it gets there. The brown egg color is actually applied on top of the shell...if you don't believe me, just run your fingernail over a brown egg, I bet you can scrape some of the color off. This coloring is applied in the abdomen of the chicken before the egg is layed. A combination of genetics determines how dark or light the coloring will be. A white egg is absent of this brown coloring added, it is simply the egg shell. A blue egg, is like the white egg. It is the color of the shell itself with the absence of any brown on the outside of the shell. A green egg on the other hand is a blue shell with the brown color applied to the outside. This happens when a blue egg laying chicken (ie Araucana) is crossed with a brown egg laying chicken, commonly seen in the hatchery mutts called Ameraucanas or Easter Eggers.

Why breed for color?
Well, it really does not matter what color the eggs are, as far as quality of nutrients in the egg, or shell quality. It really comes down to personal preference. Many of the people that buy eggs from us prefer to see the brown and blue/green eggs because it creates a color difference from the mass produced white eggs found in the grocery stores. Some people really like blue/green eggs, because they are pretty and there are some myths about them being lower in cholesteral. Like I said it is all personal preference.

Why cross the breeds in the first place? How does this concept of hybrid breeds work?
Many chickens are inbred. If you are familiar with inbred animals, you will notice that they are weak and less productive. This same concept is true for chickens, when you cross the breeds, it introduces new genetics and if they line up just right (called nicking in the horse world), you will end up with an exceptional animal. You however should not use the offspring of the hybrid chickens for breeding, the reason being you will end up with bad traits showing up, the first generation is always the healthiest. It is entirely different story when you are developing a new breed though. All in all, if your breeding is successful, you can make more efficient egg layers.

How to get the color you want?
You always need at least the male or the female to lay the desired egg color when breeding for blue, green or brown eggs, where when breeding for white eggs, you need have both the male and the female to lay white eggs.

Green or Blue Eggs

The blue color is dominant, so breeding a blue egg layer to a breed that lays another egg color will get you another blue or green egg layer (unless blue egg laying bird was heterozygous for that trait then there is a chance of getting a bird who lays a different color egg such as brown or white). So in other words, your odds a pretty good of getting a blue egg laying chicken. If the chicken layed actual blue eggs and you breed her to one that lays brown eggs then you will get a green egg layer, however when the blue egg layer is bred to a white egg layer, you will retain the blue color without adding any brown on top which creates the green color. Sorry if that gets a little muddy in there...sometimes putting forth all those hypothetical scenarios gets confusing. If you are confused, just ask a question in the comments and I will try to clarify.
It is also thought that the green/blue egg color is linked to the peacomb of the Ameraucana and Araucana breeds, however it is possible for these two genes to separate as I have had a blue egg layer with a single comb.

Brown Eggs

This is a dominant trait, so as long as one gets passed on to the offspring, they too will lay brown eggs. This allows you to breed a brown egg layer to a white egg layer and get a brown egg layer. Some of the "red sex links" are bred this way, with the white chicken being a white leghorn. This is really pretty simple, what gets more confusing is what shade of brown they will lay. It is passed down from the parents, but it is much more complex. Breeds that have been laying dark brown eggs like Marans and Welsumers will keep doing so, but when bred to a light brown egg layer, they could lay something in between, dark eggs or light eggs.

White Eggs
It may not seem this way, but white eggs are actually a recessive trait, so they must have acquired it from both parents. This is why when people are breeding show Leghorns and such, they will throw out any bird that lays tinted eggs, because it will cause their pure white egg layers to lay tinted eggs as well.

So there is my quick little post on breeding for egg color.

I Ordered Some Chicks

2010-02-06T12:55:00.000-08:00

I am trying something new this year, I ordered my chicks from Ideal Poultry. My order consisted of 25 Buff Cochin Bantams, 15 Buff Orpingtons (5 males and 10 females) and 10 Ameraucana Pullets. I have never bought from Ideal poultry before. I am hoping they will be of good quality and not like that time I bought some from Meyers Hatchery...I had two Cochins with extra toes and another bird that was a complete mutt!

My order will be shipped on the 10th, so I am getting chicks early this year, I guess they will be living in the shop for quite a while!

I have the picture up now, it is a standard light Brahma chick we bought a few years ago. I love photography, so I made a backdrop and added some artificial lighting and took pictures of the chicks that year. This was one of them, I absolutely loved the white with black background. I have another picture like this with all 4 breeds we bought that year on the contact page at Highland Grove Farm.

Poor guy...

2010-01-13T06:07:00.000-08:00

The other night in the barn our peacock was apparently roosting a little too close to one of the calf pens. One of the heifers in there would much rather annoy someone than eat the best grain in the world...anyways she started sucking on Captain's tail (he has already grown about 10-12" of it) and the poor guy could barely get away. He was flapping his wings as hard as he could.

I wonder if I will ever see him roosted there again...?

I just thought that was cute, it would have been a candid photo if I would have had the camera ready too!

New Look and everything else

2009-12-30T09:28:00.000-08:00

I am sure you guys noticed I have changed my blogs look...again. I wasn't really happy with the template I found, so this time I did the editing.

I made the background, it is flowers. I am not sure if that is the best, but I thought it was cute and had a little bit of a rustic look.

For more information on what I did go to my design page and scroll down to the "blog" part. This will actually bring you to All Around Horses, but you can use the back button on your browser or there are links to bring you back here.

I am in the blog editing mood lately :). I also did Olson Quarter Horses blog for them and All Around Horses.

I kind of feel like I failed this blog :). I had intentsions of making it something great when I first started, then reality kicked in. There are tons of websites out there that have been around longer than this with all the information I could ever write up. I still post occassionally, lately it has been a couple a month or like December only 1. I almost deleted this blog a couple times, but people keep visiting it. Mainly because they find it on google while looking for information on sex link chickens. They usually end up reading my post "Which Hybrid Chicken To Choose". So I cannot come to delete it. That leaves me here, putting one or two posts a month up. I hope you guys do not mind too much. That just means there is not an overload of stuff to read right :).

I noticed today that my blog has 5 followers. Wow, for the longest time I only had 2. Maybe it isn't too bad.

I just have a stronger passion for horses than chickens I guess :). Because at All Around Horses I ususally put up 6-15 posts a month.

Maybe the winter months will get me to the computer more often than the outdoors and I will get some more posting done. I really should take some more pictures of our peachick. He is not much of a baby anymore. We still do not really have a name for him...that is really suprising. I just call him "mini Captain" because his dad's name is captain.

That is all for now, I hope you like the new look and wider post size! I will probably do a few more changes, but not as many as I did on All Around Horses. I still have Captain as my header image, that will probably not change for a long time.

Bunnies

2009-11-30T11:19:00.000-08:00

Here are some photos of our bunnies!

This one is missing the needed dark on each side of his nose for his breed's coloring.

This one has the dark on each side of his nose.

Finally here is our all white bunny with pink eyes.

Sorry guys, I cannot remember what they named the bunnies. Those boys come up with names for everything, including all of our butcher steers...it just ends up being a lot of names to remember :).

Bunnies...a peachick...some more chicks and a broody hen

2009-10-05T08:06:00.000-07:00

We bought some bunnies, 3 to be exact. They are mini rexes and really cute, I am not exactly sure why we need them but why not :). One is all white with red eyes, I wanted to call it albino, but I was told that was incorrect?? The other two are white and grey.

Oh, and our peachick is officially bigger than his mommy (a barred rock bantam), and we have decided based on his coloring ect. that he is a peacock, so a boy! They are the pretty ones, so I am ok with that :). So now we have 3 peafowl. One mature male, one mature female and a baby boy :), what a perfect family.

Q: Can you have a broody hen take baby chicks from an incubator or from the hatchery?

A: Yes, we have done that a couple times now, I had 10 chicks hatch out of the incubator that I thought it would be silly to heat up a brooder for them, so I gave them to one of my bantam hens who I know is a great mother (she hatched out some chicks this spring) and she was the happiest chicken in the world...she got babies and didnt even have to work for them. They are my sex link and RIR chicks. We also did this a few years ago with some chicks ordered from the hatchery with a different hen. You just have to watch them closly, and we put her in a very small area, so she could not move around with her chicks for the first couple days, or else she would get off and pace her small 3' X 2' pen.

When I bred my Sex links I put my brahma hen in there too, just because I thought it would be neat to have a half brahma chick since I like thier disposition ect. And I got one baby. I know because it has feathering on his legs. I am thinking it is a boy thought because it is white and that would have to be true if the brahma has the silver gene. I guess I will know for sure with time.

Hmmm...

2009-09-10T07:04:00.001-07:00

Well, I took some pictures of the peachick, but none of them turned out that great because of the lighting, he and his family are in a big 12x15 enclosed pen for now until I feel they are safe to go outside into the world, so I am going to try again...

Last week a bunch of chicks hatched from my breeding pen. I was breeding RIR, Production Red, Black and Red Sex Link and New Hampshires. I also threw one light brama hen in there just because I think they are cool and I got one brama/RIR baby! It is soo cute, a little white chick with fuzz on his/her legs. I kind of have a hunch it is a boy because of the color, but I am not sure if light bramas carry the silver gene, so who knows...I sure hope I am wrong and it is a girl!

Growing

2009-08-30T08:25:00.002-07:00

Our peachick is starting to look like something! When he was born he looked like a yellow chick on stilts, now he is getting some color in his feathers and starting to grow his crown. He is so cute, and his has a bantam for a mommy and two chicks for brothers and sisters...I know an odd family, but they all get along! Although he better be able to survive without too much extra warmth soon, because I am really not sure how much longer he will be able to fit under his mommy!

I should really take some pictures of him. This is the first peachick we have ever had so we were not really sure what to expect. We just have one male (captain) and one female (skipper...well there is a little bit of a debate over her name, but I usualy call her skipper). Skipper is sitting on 6 eggs scheduled to hatch on tuesday. I am not exaclty sure how this will work out since she is on top of a big square bale stacked 3 high. We have been told that she will not take them down until they are ready to be able to fly down, but we worry about them falling behind the bale. Well, we will see. We also have some bantam hens sitting on other eggs including guinea and chicken, so hopefully I get some babies!

Polled Cattle

2009-08-20T20:55:00.001-07:00

I do not think it is fair that the only cattle that get to be polled are Angus and Herfords...ok there may be more, but that is all I know about. We had a lovely half angus/half holstein bull calf that was polled! I wanted to keep him so badly because he gave me this crazy idea (by the way, he is now a steer). Since he shows the gene to be polled, then the polled gene must be dominant. So if I cross him with a holstein, there is a 50/50 chance of him having 3/4 holstein polled calves! That sounds great to me! But unfortunately no one saw this as such a great idea because it puts angus blood into some great milk producing holsteins and it would take too much time and money to make an almost pure blooded holsten that is polled. Not to mention a lot of animals that will potentially have no use in the world other than slaughter, but that already happens, nothing would be new there.

....so just in case I ever become a rich an borred old lady, just watch, I will be breeding polled cattle. Maybe I will even have to make a "Polled Cattle Society". So, just in case such a thing already exhists, I am not at all making fun, I really think it would be a great idea! That would be a way that we could communicate, keep breeding polled animals without inbreeding!

So that is my idea of the day, since I very much dislike dehorning, and I think cattle that are polled have really cute heads!

....crazy life....

2009-08-18T08:17:00.000-07:00

This summer has gone great! Unfortunatly we are nearing the end, even though up here in Minnestoa, last week was the first week I remember this summer that actually "felt" like summer. I did not mind though, it just made my time in the saddle and the horse shows more fun.

My hatchings this year have thus far been unsuccesful, getting only a few chicks out of each hatch. The bantam and chicken mothers have done fairly well hatching the guineas though, oh and we have one peachick!!!! That was really exciting, something came and scared our peahen off of her nest and only left 2 eggs, so we gave them to a bantam to hatch, and now we have a baby and the peahen is sitting on 6 eggs. Our poor peacock does not know what to do without her since she is on the nest all day.

My latest try is I have 48 eggs sitting in the incubator, they are RIR, Black Sex Links, Red Sex Links and Production Reds. I know, quite a variety, but I wanted to hatch all of those breeds and with my previous unsuccesful hatches I am trying hard to get all of them in before it is too late to hatch anymore. I also have a few bantam hens sitting on eggs in the barn...hopefully I will have good hatch rates this time. I am not exactly sure what the problem is, the temp is right and the eggs never get to be a week old before set. I also make sure they sit at a constant temperature, and not so hot.

Oh, well. We'll hopefully get 50 chicks this year and I will be happy. We always order some from the hatchery too, so I have 30 pullets and around 10 roosters from them too.

Only 2 Chicks

2009-05-06T08:40:00.000-07:00

I only got two baby chicks from my mother hen who was sitting on 8 eggs, three of them started hatching but died because they were underdeveloped or something. It was weird. Oh, well, I got two chicks.

One is a full Ameraucana and the other one is my experiment with crossing with white leg horn, so we will see how that goes. I have not done a full look over of the chick yet, but we will see if it has white earlobes or red, and if it lays blue eggs!

This is all I have until my incubator hatch comes in a few weeks.

Now I am breeding a read Araucana rooster (rumpless and stuff) to my Ameraucanas, we will see how this goes!!

Web Design

2009-04-20T10:03:00.000-07:00

I like to mess around with designing websites sometimes, and I thought I would let my blog readers know what I have done.

I have designed Highland Grove Farm, a website for our farm. It has information on all of our animals and stuff. Lots of pictures too.

I also designed Performance Quarter Horses, for a horse breeder. It is completed now, but I still need to get some more pictures from him, so in some areas I have "picture comming soon" or something like that for now.

For our farm, I made the website from scratch, for the horse breeder, I started out with a template from a page, then modified it and stuff, until I had my desired template then made all the pages from that.

For both of the websites, I used 110mb.com as the website provider, I chose them after hours of research, and trying a few. This one has good uptime ratings and was also a little bit faster than some others and had a lot of bandwith room.
So, you guys can go and look at them, and if you would tell me what you think, that would be great!

A Little Update

2009-04-15T18:12:00.001-07:00

Well, for the most part, this blog is educational, but I thought I would through this fun little piece of informaiton in here. It is kind of relavent.

So I like to play with genetics, and I know this has been done before, but I have not done it, I have to give it a try, so I can see how my results turn out!

I am playing with the Ameraucana breed.
My plan was to cross it with white egg laying breeds because in theory it should not effect the egg shell color, but in realilty because of the rate of lay it might, but that is just why I have to try it, to find out! Last year was the first year I ever bought a white egg laying breed so they were finally ready to breed this spring...so I am giving it a try. I finally got one of my sweet bantams that gives me at least one batch of chicks every spring, to go broody so I set my eggs just a couple days ago. I am also crossing the Ameracaunas pure, I had 2 roosters and around 7 Ameraucanas and 3 brown leghorns and 2 or 3 white. I can tell whose egg is whose by the color. I wanted to put 12 eggs under my bantam, and I really should be able to, but these ladies are giving me BIG eggs, so the poor girl can only handle 8. If I remember right I set 3 white eggs, and 5 blue eggs. I only set the blue eggs, if they where green we just put them in an egg carton to be sold...the people who eat our eggs do not really care :), but I do when I am breeding.

So in around 18 days, hopefully I will have some cute chicks hatching! I sure hope it works out for me to get all peacombs and green leggs, ect. So they have the confirmation and everything of the Ameraucanas. I have one more bantam that just went broody, so I am going to collect enough eggs to get her sitting for me, and then I will start breeding the Sex Links. I think I am only going to breed black sex links, but I may through a few of the whites in there to get a few red sex links, just because I can, not sure yet. Last year we bred these things and I got a TON of roosters, I am hoping to have better luck this year. Of course we can not just kill baby chicks like that because they are boys, so we grew them out and butchered them to eat...it just seems better this way.

It is kind of funny because last fall I had one black sex link rooster that got away and hid, so the naughty guy is still alive and running around like a proud boy! Those sex link roosters really get big when you let them grow out all the way!

*Exciting News---We finally got a peahen! For a few years now, we have had a peacock and the poor guy has had to put up with just chicken and guinea friends for the most part, but none of those guys are impressed by his tail, so finally this year he has a mate...maybe we can make some babies :).

Breed Showcase: Rhode Island Red

2009-04-12T14:27:00.000-07:00

The Rhode Island Red is a fairly common breed, found at most hatcheries. Although there are many shades known to the Rhode Island Reds, the best show quality birds almost look black because of the deepness of the color.

Specs
American breed, found in both bantam and standard size
Heavy weight dual purpose breed
The breed is also found in white, but the white is much less common
Single comb (most common) with clean legs and 4 toes
Tend to have nice personalities

History
Originated from crosses of Red Malay Game, Leghorn and Asiatic breeds. Originally they had both straight and rose combs, but now are bred specifically for each type. They were bred to perfection in RhodeIsland, just as the name says.

More...
They are known to be one of the best brown egg layers of the purebred dual-purpose breeds. For more information on all the hybrid layers they can be used to breed read my post on which hybrid chicken to choose, along with tips on breeding them. Some red males have been known to be aggressive , but are known for it. The hens tend to be nice and calm good layers, that weather the cold well.

My Opinion
I love this breed, along with barred rocks they hit my favorite brown egg layers. They are pretty and although they do not seem to lay as much as the "statistics" say, they lay really well. They like a breed of any other chicken will have times when they are laying an egg a day and when they do not lay quite as often. I also really like the offspring they can produce with the black and red sex links.

What Do You Want To Hear About?

2009-04-10T19:44:00.000-07:00

I almost wrote a post on natural treatments, the alternatives to antibiotics and stuff. But I am not sure if that is what everyone wants to hear about.

So if you have anything you have wondered about or would just like to read about, if you could just leave a comment, that would be great! I have my settings set that anyone can leave a comment (just set the select profile thing to anonymous, or if you have a website you can put that in there too, whatever you want), then you will have to type some letters in a box to prove that you are not a computer. So it is really simple to leave a comment, I just think that so many people think they have to have a google account to leave a comment (on some people's blogs you do), but on mine, I like to leave it open to anyone!

I appreciate all ideas! It simply gives me a better idea of what, you, the reader wants to hear about. Kind of like how many companies have polls...but I do not have that, so I am just going to try this, this way.

Other things I could get into are: the genetics of eggshells, showcase different poultry breeds, cattle breeds, egg production...and much more, it is all up to what you guys want to hear! Oh, and there is the pros and cons of teat amputation, yes cutting the teat off of a cow...our vet found this project interesting.

Here is a thank you in advance!

Which Hybrid Chichen to Choose?

2009-03-16T13:38:00.001-07:00

So have you ever wondered which hybrid chicken to choose, or even if you should use them? Or maybe you are wondering if you would want to try a hybrid chicken...

I will start off by giving you some of the hybrid egg layers commonly found:
(Male X Female)
Black Star/Black Sex Link
Rhode Island Red (RIR) X Barred Plymouth Rock or New Hampshire X Barred Rock

Red Star/Red Sex Link
RIR X White Leghorn

Cherry Eggers
RIR X New Hampshire Red

Cinnamon Queen
New Hampshire X Silver Laced Whyandotte

Golden Comet
New Hampshire X White Rock

Red Sex Link
RIR X Rhode Island White or Production Red X Delaware

Ambers
RIR X White Rock

Hybrids used for meat use:
Cornish Cross
White Rock X Cornish

Silver Barred Hybrid
Barred Rock X White Rock

So which ones are best?
Much of it is really up to you and what you want. As you probably noticed most of the high production egg layer hybrids are bred to be sex link (the sex of the chick can be determined at birth based on the color). This gives you 100% accuracy sexing without having to do that very invasive sexing done at hatcheries. I have looked up how to do it, but I think I will leave it to the pros, plus there are many physical characteristics that quickly appear, allowing for determination of sex.

I personally like to buy for the most part my purebred chickens and breed all my hybrid chickens, that keeps my breeding stock fresh. For my own breeding of purebreds I will also mix different strains of the breed to make them healthier and more productive.

So when you look at the hybrid layers, you will probably notice there are two main groups, red sex link and black sex link, the red sex link is easier to clean if you butcher you own birds once they are finished with their laying career, but the black sex links tend to have a longer laying career. I personally have bred more black sex links because I like them better.

Black Sex Link
The roosters will look like a barred rock, with a slight tint of red when full grown and black with a white dot on their heads when babies. The females will look all black as chicks and black with a red/brown breast when full grown. These guys tend to lay larger eggs for an extended period of time.

Red Sex Link
The males look white as chicks and when full grown look white with some odd colored feathers mixed in. The females hatch out buff/red and their adult feathers either look buff or red or some color in between, it really depends on the cross you used because as you can see there are quite a few to choose from, since all you have to do is cross a reddish and a white chicken.

Why does the crossing work?
Many chickens are inbred. If you are familiar with inbred animals, you will notice that they are weak and less productive. This same concept is true for chickens, when you cross the breeds, it introduces new genetics and if they line up just right (called nicking in the horse world), you will end up with an exceptional animal. The crosses listed above are some common crosses that hatcheries sell, they seem to line up the genetics just right to make a good producing chicken, but I am sure there are other crosses that turn out good too. You however should not use the offspring of the hybrid chickens for breeding, the reason being you will end up with bad traits showing up, the first generation is always the healthiest. It is entirely different story when you are developing a new breed though.

Which ones can I breed on my own, and which ones should I buy from the hatchery?
Most of the egg laying breeds are easy for the common poultry owner to breed, in fact since many of us pay attention to the production of our poultry you may end up with an even better chicken than you could buy at the hatchery. With any one of those I would say GO FOR IT! It is fun and rewarding to grow your own chickens, especially when they are good producers.
The Cornish Crosses on the other hand I would not recomend breeding, the reason being they really have the genetics stacked on the birds they breed. If the average poultry owner was to try to breed these, it would be highly unlikely they would be the fast growers you could buy at the hatchery. But to look on the positive side, Cornish Cross birds tend to be the cheapest birds in the whole hatchery because of the large quantities they are bought and sold in. Often times these hatcheries do not breed these birds on there own, but instead buy the eggs from some other company and then distribute them to us.

Note--When you breed a male and female sex link to each other, their offspring will not be sex linked, it just has to do with the genetics. Because apparently a female chicken tends to take their characteristics from the rooster, and vise versa. This does not always work, but does in the case of the sex links, I do not have a scientific answer to this one, but if I find one, I will post it.

Here are some interesting hybrids that I found someone selling on the internet once, they are a play on some more rare breeds, making them lay better:
Nova Ranger
Based off the RIR, they did not specify what it is crossed with, but it is red colored, so not quite as dark, sounds something like the production red.

Cuckoo Nova
Based on the Cuckoo Maran (prised for their really dark eggs), color is blue/grey and has a cream striped/speckled plumage, once again they do not give away what they crossed them with.

Amber Nova
Like the Nova Ranger, but instead is based on the Rhode Island White. Weighs slightly more than the RIR.

Blue Nova
No breed origins disclosed, all they say is it is one of the most popular and has a blue plumage.

Black Nova
RIR X Barred Rock, Basically a Black Sex Link.

Nova Noir
BAsed off the Resh Copper Black Maran (must be a relative of the Cuckoo Maran but solid black rather than barred).

Sussex Nova
Cross with the Light Sussex.

White Nova
Based off the utility Leghorn.

Silver Nova
Like the Sussex Nova, but instead based off the Silver Sussex.

Columbine
Based off the Cream Crested Legbar (blue egg laying chicken, an established breed that I believe is a spin off of the Aracauna, like the Amaraucana is but they are sex linked naturally, always)

Leave a comment talking about what you have done for hybrids, or with your questions. Everyone's feedback is appreciated!

Added 2/7/10
To learn more about egg color genetics read this article I wrote today.

Welcome

2009-03-16T07:08:00.000-07:00

This blog will be dedicated to poultry, cattle and everything in between. Including genetics (I will do my best to include the scientific side and write it in simple terms everyone can understand), breeds, saving money and increasing productivity.

Antibiotics at our farm are a last resort when it comes to saving an animal's life. We do not use hormones to fatten up our beef, nor do we use the antibiotics to thin their intestine walls making them absorb more nutrients, which does more bad than good in the long run. I mean everyone has heard of antibiotic resistance. The poultry are free range and are mostly brown and blue/green egg layers. The horses are happy all around horses that do everything from showing Western Pleasure to working cattle.

Everyone knows Holsteins make good dairy cows, but has anyone ever heard of the Normandy? How do we keep our chickens healthy and respiratory infection free without antibiotic use? Ever wondered what the genetics where behind egg color? Or maybe which breeds lay best, or cross best for laying hybrids? Is growing broilers on a mix of scratch grass and corn effective? These are just a few topics I am planning on including in my blog.

I am writing this from the perspective of the college daughter of two great parents who raised me on our family farm. I am studying economics (with an emphasis in business). I have also studied much more science than the average person and get along well with math. Some people would call me smart, but I just prefer to give everything my best effort.

Thanks for visiting, I am hoping to make this a great educational blog! If you want information on horses you can check out my blog All Around Horses.