Storey's Guide to Raising Chickens (6 page)

Breeds to avoid are those typically described as aggressive — it’s no picnic to be bending over filling a feed hopper and have a belligerent rooster mount a rear attack or, worse, fly in your face. Mean individuals occasionally appear in nearly any breed and are more typically cocks than hens. Despite anything you might hear about taming an ornery rooster, your best advice is to get rid of it before you, a family member, a neighbor, or a young child gets seriously injured. The calmer breeds tend to be more easygoing in urban or suburban confinement.

Where the nearest neighbor is just over the fence, consider the noise factor, especially if you intend to keep a rooster. Cocks of the larger breeds have a deep crow that doesn’t travel far, while the smaller breeds have a high-pitched crow that travels a good distance and can be annoying close up, especially to someone other than the owner. The difference is similar to the woof-woof of a big dog compared to the yip-yip-yipping of a small one.

House chickens are becoming increasingly more common as domestic pets. If that is your aim, you certainly want a docile breed. You’ll also want to make sure no one in your family is allergic to chicken dander. The easiest way to do that is for your family to spend time visiting someone else’s chickens before making your own commitment. And, since chickens can’t easily be housebroken, you’ll need a plan for dealing with chicken “accidents.”

IDEAL PETS
From the largest to the smallest (Jersey Giant and Serama are shown at relative size), many breeds make ideal pets.

In narrowing down your breed choice, if you can’t decide which breed you like best, and you don’t plan to raise future generations for show or sale, get one of each. My own first chickens came with the first house I owned, its backyard pre-populated with a Heinz-57 flock. My already keen interest in chickens deepened as I had the fun of learning to identify the breed of each bird I had acquired.

Colorful chicken feathers are used for making jewelry and home decorations, trimming hats and other clothing, and tying fishing flies. Different crafts require different kinds of feathers. For some crafts, wing and tail feathers are preferred. For fly tying — the most lucrative feather market — only the hackle and saddle feathers of cockerels have value.

The hackle is ideal for fly tying because it’s lightweight and floats on water, like the insect the tie is designed to imitate. The ideal hackle is long — as long as 12 inches — narrow, and free of webbing, and it has a strong, flexible shaft. The best feathers come from fast-growing hard-feathered breeds in colorful varieties, such as barred Plymouth Rock, blue Andalusian, buff Minorca, silver-penciled Wyandotte, and crele Penedesenca. The Coq de Leon from Spain is an ancient chicken specifically bred for fly tying; its feathers are so suited to the purpose that even hen feathers may be used.

Flocks are selectively bred for feather color and shape and specially fed for optimum feather production. When the feathers are prime for harvest, the cockerel
is killed and his hackles removed in a cape with the skin attached. Saddle feathers are sometimes individually harvested, but more often are removed as a saddle patch or as a unit together with the cape. Capes and patches are then dried for use or sale.

You can turn a good profit marketing feathers or selling products made from them. First you have to find out what kind of feathers are in demand for the market that interests you and what those feathers are worth. Then learn how to harvest, process, and package feathers for that market. The most successful feather sellers are associated in some way with the craft for which their feathers are used.

Of course, you need to find out which chickens grow the priciest feathers, and in some cases you might breed and sell the chickens themselves. I’ve been visited by a fly tyer looking for suitable birds to include in his own breeding program. I’ve made scores of feather earrings, have woven feathers into tapestries, and have furnished feathers to other weavers. In my living room I keep a ceramic vase filled with an ever-changing bouquet of colorful poultry feathers.

Whether you keep purebreds or hybrids depends in good part on whether you wish to incubate your flock’s eggs. Purebreds, also called straightbreds, will breed true, meaning their chicks will grow up to be pretty much like the parents. Hybrids won’t breed true. Because they result from matings between different breeds (or highly specialized strains within a single breed), the only way to get more chickens exactly like them is to reproduce the cross they came from. So a major issue in deciding between hybrids and straightbreds is whether or not you wish to perpetuate your flock by hatching eggs from your own chickens.

It’s true that hybrids are more efficient than purebreds at egg or meat production, but they also require expensive high-quality feed. By contrast many pure-breds do well on forage and table scraps as supplements to commercial rations, and they also enjoy a longer productive life. On the other hand, if you plan to raise meat birds to stock your freezer, hybrids will get you there quicker than purebreds — but won’t taste nearly as good.

The decision of whether to keep purebreds or hybrids may depend on whether you intend to show. Except for 4-H shows involving production birds, most shows require entries to conform to breed descriptions in the
Standard
. Show birds should be purebred, although some breeders secretly cheat by crossing their birds with other breeds to improve such things as plumage color or comb type.

If you’re raising chickens as pets or just for fun, you might want a mix of interesting breeds. For this purpose, some hatcheries sell ornamental assortments.

Once you know what kind of chickens you want, the next step is to decide whether to purchase eggs to hatch, newly hatched chicks, started birds, or full-grown chickens. Each option has distinct advantages and disadvantages.

Hatching eggs are fertilized eggs that will hatch if incubated for 21 days. Starting out with a small incubator and a dozen or so eggs can be a fun and educational
project, but finding fertile eggs of your chosen breed may be a challenge. And if you do find them, the project may end in disappointment if the eggs are suboptimal for hatching, the incubator’s temperature or humidity aren’t properly set, the power goes out, or any number of other things go wrong.

Once you overcome the challenges of hatching, you have a new set of challenges in caring for freshly hatched chicks. Unless you are particularly adventuresome, or have prior experience running an incubator, consider starting out with live birds.

Chicks are a surer bet than hatching eggs and are usually cheaper than older birds. If you want your chickens to be pets, chicks will bond with you more easily than started or mature birds. Baby birds shipped any distance travel much better than eggs for hatching and are less likely than older birds to bring disease into your yard. Chicks come in two options: sexed and unsexed.

Unsexed chicks
— also called
as-hatched
or
straight run
— are mixed in gender exactly as they hatch, or approximately 50 percent cockerels (males) and 50 percent pullets (females). Some people swear hatcheries stack the deck by throwing in extra cockerels, since the mix often comes out more like 60/40 or even 75/25, but some hatches just naturally turn out to be nearly all cockerels, while others are nearly all pullets.

Sexed chicks
are sorted so you get exactly as many pullets or cockerels as you want. Within a given breed, sexed pullets cost the most, straight run next, and sexed cockerels the least. Cockerels have the least value because a flock needs
fewer roosters than hens, or none at all, if you or your neighbors don’t want to hear crowing.