The Accidental Smallholder Forum
Livestock => Poultry & Waterfowl => Topic started by: Kitsuni88 on February 27, 2015, 10:22:12 am
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Ok im shiny newbie with wonderful ideas of what I can do with our land to make our lives oh so amazing lol. Well partly true, I am a newbie to the smallholding scene but I am not under any illusions that it will be all grandeur and perfect. I know things will be hard once started and things will need my absolute attention no matter the time or weather!
First animals that are going to grace our land wil be either chickens or ducks. I can't decide which.
Duck eggs are very rich, but how are they with general noise, upkeep, accessories, needs?
Chickens are they meant to be better layer? Noisier?
Pat some point I may have both but what do I need to take into consideration when deciding, they will be food too not pets, well ok we may keep a few layers that my stepson can call his own but the rest will be honouring us with thir presence on our kitchen table.
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Most folks I know started out with chickens. Get a good poultry book and read it from cover to cover. If you choose an old-fashioned large, soft-feathered utility breed, which will produce a fair number of eggs but also make a good table bird, you probably won't regret it. Find a friendly farmer or smallholder and go and look at their birds. If they're healthy consider buying some POL's (Point of Lays) on the understanding you can get lots of advice if you need it. I'd recommend a Dorking or any of the Sussex or Wyandotte colourways, but no doubt other people will have their own favourites.
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Im a new smallholder and started with 6 hybrid POL chickens so maybe as a novice my tips might help you :)
Our chickens are very quiet. I was surprised how quiet. I only hear them chattering when I take food out. I understand that ducks are much noisier, but you might like that.
Ive found chickens very easy to handle. Our hybrids are friendly, squat down when I offer to pick them up and are very good layers.
In fact..... TOO MANY EGGS!! There are only 2 of us but we get between 4 and 6 eggs a day! Ive never baked so many cakes in my life but Im still giving eggs away. We didn't expect this many eggs in the middle of winter from girls who were only just starting to lay.
Our hens are free range. They scratch around quite a big area of short grass, hedges and an old flower bed. We feed them layers pellets and they have mixed corn and mealworms mid afternoon as a treat. Occasionally we give them half a tin of sweetcorn, which they fight over. Their eggs are the most eggy-tasting eggs Ive ever eaten and the cakes come out bright yellow. I certainly wouldn't want richer eggs than we get.
I was also surprised at how busy the hens are all day. They never stop. We have dogs, cats and horses and they all take regularly snoozes....not the hens! So I think its important that you give them enough space to keep busy in all day.
The hens are not at all stupid and they are funny little things. I can spend a long time just watching them. They have their own personalities.
Our first 2 weeks were not easy as the 6 ladies sorted out the pecking order. We have 2 Light Sussex who are very much in charge.They had come from a different flock at the same breeder's farm. The Sussex picked on a small Black Rock and she stopped eating and drinking. Our farmer neighbour told us she would die as she had given up. NOPE!! I didn't want to give up on her so I used a pipette to give her water every few hours with a poultry tonic in it. On day 3 she rallied and she's now abs fine and the pecking order is established and all are happy.
You will need to de-louse them and worm them regularly but with hens that are easy to handle this isn't difficult. The wormer just goes in their water.
Oh yes, water: I was so surprised at how much water hens drink..... gallons. We have had to buy a second big water feeder as we were filling the tank up so often.
Chickens do a lot of scratching and tramping about and that does cause some mud but its not deep. On the other hand ducks are mud-masters.
There are some amazingly helpful poultry keepers on here and you will never be short of good advice. I just thought that you might like to hear some of the things that took another new keeper by surprise.
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Generally with both ducks and chickens you'll find the ones that give you plenty eggs are hardly worth eating and vice versa.
Runner ducks and Khaki Campbells will give you as many eggs as a good laying chicken breed but there's not a lot of them once plucked :)
Muscovy ducks are heavier and good eating though lay less eggs but are still a decent layer.
They also make great mothers and they are deadly silent compared to other ducks, if mine didn't splash in the pond the neighbours wouldn't have known they were there at all ;)
Commercial hybrid laying chickens will fire out well over 300 eggs per year, they can be bought fairly cheaply at a year old from a commercial farm or rescue or you can buy them at point of lay for a bit more money.
A lot of the pure breeds chickens have good egg and meat qualities, its all personal preference really.
Ducks make a muddy mess, with chickens you need to keep an eye out for mites/lice etc but I don't consider one to be any easier or harder to keep than the other.
If I were forced to keep one breed it would be Muscovys ;)
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I keep both-I have Minorcas, Marsh Daisies and Scots Greys and Muscovies. I started out with hybrids but wouldn't bother with them again-they don't last/thrive IME. The pure breeds lay well in season but don't always come back into lay after the summer/autumn moult (except the Minorcas which are awesome layers for purebreds).
There's only so many eggs you can eat. Although selling them sounds like a great idea, IME its not worth the effort. I sell to a few friends and give away some to family. I bake and cook, a lot.
The garden hybrids were noisy, even when I just had hens. My current lot aren't too bad (I also have five males) but I live in the middle of nowhere so its not a consideration. Mites and worming are your biggest considerations (and predation). Chickens will also make a muddy mess if they don't have enough room and sometimes even when they do!
I am new to Muscovies but am rather smitten. The girls are quiet and pretty calm, they really seem to figure things out and are quite smart. Despite what you read on the internet they love water and need more than a dousing bucket IMO (mine wait for the pond to be filled and have two other large troughs and two further sources of drinking/dunking water). Once they lay they lay like clockwork and the eggs are brilliant-not as rich as some other breeds but large, with concrete shells and very thick whites. Awesome for omelettes, baking and poached eggs. I've not yet eaten muscovy-that will come later when I have to cull some boys. My drake, well he might be a special case as was hand reared (by someone else). He's quite noisy (hissy) and territorial. I thought he was aggressive but now I think he's just a bit too horny. I keep explaining that I'm just not that into him :P [size=78%].[/size]
[/size] I only have two hens for him, he could do with more but I'm going to want to keep some of his offspring. They're the only birds that have complete run of the whole place and I'm glad I got them. [size=78%]
If I was told I could only keep one species it would be the muscovies, no question.
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Generally with both ducks and chickens you'll find the ones that give you plenty eggs are hardly worth eating and vice versa.
Disagree with this! I've got large Silver Appleyard ducks that are amazing layers (better than any of my chickens) and make a great meal too.
Having said that, I'd go for chickens to start with. They make far less mess, the eggs are easier to sell (although I've had a rush on duck eggs recently and am currently sold out) and they're generally friendlier. You can always move on to ducks too later.
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The only enterprise on our smallholding that makes a surplus is the laying hens. We have hybrids fro that.
We buy day old meat birds in a batch every spring, run them on grass and pellets, kill them at 12 weeks at between 3 and 6kg dressed weight. The laying hens are skinny wee things but awesome layers. the ones we bought last spring have given at least 24 eggs a day from 29 birds all winter; we had 27 eggs yesterday.
We've never kept ducks because our friends did and they were SO messy (the ducks not the friends).
Depends what you want to achieve. And you can always change your mind :eyelashes:
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I have both, but would suggest starting with chickens as they are not as messy by a long shot! The whiff of duck poo in the morning is something special to build up to :roflanim:
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We started with ducks for eggs & weren't disapointed, lay almost constantly, my family love the eggs and I love the ducks :thumbsup: they are very quiet, easy to keep but poop a lot! Love their trough of water and popping down to the river.
We then moved on to some free range chickens, Wyandotte Bantams & Large fowl light Sussex, easy to keep, have them free ranging - like the ducks they put them selves to bed and I just go shut the door! Our cockerel terrorises the children and me if I don't wear anything but my boots! :-J
(I've 10 light Sussex chicks in a brooder at the moment - planning on eating the boys - will be our first time :o hoping to do it all myself)....I'd never eat my duckys!!!!!
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Generally with both ducks and chickens you'll find the ones that give you plenty eggs are hardly worth eating and vice versa.
Disagree with this! I've got large Silver Appleyard ducks that are amazing layers (better than any of my chickens) and make a great meal too.
I disagree with you disagreeing! ;D
I said "Generally" this is the case...
there are exceptions and birds which are reasonable (but not great) performers in both utilities but in the majority of cases thats not how it works, you either get a good lighweight layer or a heavier bird which doesn't lay as well.
I'm sure your silver Appleyards are good layers but it would be unusual if they were anywhere near the Khaki Campbell league and also up there with the heavy duck meat breeds in terms of weight.
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Something I don't think anybody has mentioned yet is that hens will put themselves to bed at night, whereas ducks usually won't.
If you're going to be around at dusk EVERY DAY, that's not much of an issue, but if you're not (remember that it gets dark at 4pm in the winter), that alone would be enough to swing me towards buying hens and an automatic door closer.
If I had to only keep hens or ducks, it would have to be ducks, purely for their entertainment value (I love my indian runners! ;D ).
However, if I was being practical and considering all the other things like messiness, smell, laying, motherhood, noise, etc etc it would have to be hens!
Also, for eating, we have had both cherry valley meat ducks and hubbard chickens. Whilst the hubbards were pretty straightforward, the ducklings were SOOO messy, I'm never EVER doing that again!
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Ours do Womble, they waddle back to the yard around 6pm, I pop out at 8pm to feed everyone, if they aren't already in their barn waiting on supper they follow me in :)
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I did say usually! :)
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Mine must be special ;D
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Maybe one thing to consider in all of this is your land. If it is wet and would be easy to put in a pond than that would suggest that ducks would be a good option as they are also excellent slug control.
Where we are any depression in the ground turns into a pond so it is ideal for ducks (though we also have chickens). We have Blue Swedish ducks which although not prolific layers do lay decently and give an excellent carcass.
Ducks are much quicker growing so if you want to eat your surplus they are better than laying hens - though I have never bred meat hens so can't compare for them.
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I find surplus chicken eggs easier to get rid of than duck eggs. Hence why I have 20 hens and only 2 laying ducks. Chickens scratch up the land whereas ducks don't, so my hens are in an area of land that doesn't matter if scratched up too much, and my ducks are in the back garden (normally free range but fenced off at the back as our grass is waterlogged. They don't have a pond, just tub trug for water and a kids swimming pool if/when it's filled to splash about in.
I enjoy watching my ducks more than the hens, they seem to have more character :)
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I'd like to counter Womble's comment. Yes chickens do put themselves to bed and ducks tend not too...... However if you need to get them in early one day ....in my house this is when dusk clashes with a meeting....... Then ducks are easily herded into their house ......, the hens are a different matter!
I love both but for entertainment you can't beat ducks... Especially runners. Runners don't need a pond, nor do my KCs they spend all day foraging ...... I call then my anti fluke patrol!
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I would suggest if you are going for hens to get a proper pure breed from a decent breeder (not the usual high volume outlets). They will lay less per yer but should live longer, be hardier and lay for a good few years. The problem is with hybrids is that they have a short productive life, sometimes 18 months and then you start to get poor shell quality, illness etc. That's in my experience anyway. Our own hybrids have been fine (pure rhode red x pure sussex / marans) but any I have bought in as POL have been useless.
What will you do with 5 hens in 2 years time if they can't lay a decent egg because they are spent?
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What will you do with 5 hens in 2 years time if they can't lay a decent egg because they are spent?
Make chicken soup? :yum:
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What will you do with 5 hens in 2 years time if they can't lay a decent egg because they are spent?
Make chicken soup? :yum:
from a 2yo hybrid? hardly worth the effort of skinning it, let alone the electricity slow cooking it ;D
Stereo makes a good point-so many buy as many chickens as they can house up front. Then in two years time they have a load of hens that don't lay as well. If people are happy with that then its fine but it needs thinking about first-alot like what you are going to do with the boys if you decide to hatch.
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I would say get some pures and hybrids. A couple ginger ranger types who will lay through winter but have a limited lifespan and a few marans / CLB / welsummer etc. who will gove you lovely big eggs year after year but probably switch off for winter.
Neighbours of ours came down from London for the good life (nice folk and good friends) and spent a fortune on an Eglu, net etc. and bought 3 hybrid sussex types from a dealer. They had all stopped laying within 2 years and were all dead within 3. I had the job of putting them down and it was depressing. They all got peritonitis and they spent a fortune on vets against my advice. In the end they sold us all the kit cheap and gave up. I can't help thinking that one of my first gen hybrids, a copper marans and a lavender araucana would have been a much more joyous experience for them.