Healthy soil and sustainable growing

["John D'hondt" <dhondt@eircom.net>]

I would say your best choice depends on what is available locally Barbara 
especially with worsening economic conditions in mind. I know for a fact 
that rabbits or even guinea pigs are much more economical to keep than 
chickens. If you have nothing but free greens available then I would go for 
one of these. They are what kept my great grand parents, grandparents and 
parents alive during two world wars in Flanders.
Chickens do need grain of some sort and unless you can grow what you need 
yourself I would think twice and ideally they need some protein under the 
form of fish or loads of insects to do well. I am just a few miles away from 
free sea fish and sea weed and sea shells that are needed to keep egg shells 
sound. Without that I would not have as many free range chckens as I do.

I think these questions are much more important than what breed to go for. I 
have a mixture of 8-9 different ones interbreeding. No problem and quite a 
qeautiful variety. There are good and less good chickens in any breed and of 
any color and to my mind it is useless to waste energy on deciding what 
color you would prefer.

There is only one choice to make as far as I can see and that is whether you 
want to pamper modern commercial breeds that are slaughter ready in about 40 
days but need high quality care every day OR you want birds that can more or 
less take care of themselves free range, that will survive harsh winters but 
that will take a minimum of 8-9 months before they have put on enough weight 
to make it worth stoking up the oven. The first variety have huge gobs of 
white breast meat and can hardly walk and the second will have so much dark 
meat that people here hardly recognise it has chicken any more. We let our 
chickens get on with their own breeding and never use an incubator and that 
in itself is very rare these days. There is hardly a chicken left that can 
hatch out her eggs succesfully in most of the world today.

Another aspect I was thinking about is that it is imperative in a survival 
situation that you can do the deed yourself without having to pay a 
processor to do it for you. You will find that this is more expensive than 
buying a chicken oven ready. I can kill, pluck (by hand, we use as few 
machines as possible) and dress a chicken in less than 20 minutes as can all 
of my children. I have  a three year old grand daughter who likes to get 
involved in plucking. I mean it is no rocket science and it is stress free 
for the victim for they have no time to worry and the actual killing is over 
in a fraction of a second with a flick of the wrist so there is no pain 
involved.

John


> Still debating raising my own chickens. I get my eggs from a neighbor
> that free-ranges them, but they do get some commercial feed. But, I am
> finding it next to impossible to locate a good source of pasture-raised
> meat (any kind) that will sell small cuts/packages that I don't need a
> huge freezer for. So I'm thinking meat birds, that I can cull on an
> as-needed basis. What are good breeds for:
>     1. greater percentage of dark meat (so many meat birds boast huge
> gobs of breast meat which I end up feeding the cats--hmm, not a bad idea
> save on cat food--but they have skinny little thighs),
>     2. hardy for New England winters,
>     3. disease resistant/easy care in general
>     4. can pack on the pounds with free-range/minimal protein feed
>
> And would it be efficient enough to slaughter one or 2 birds at a time,
> or would it be better to have a processor do a bunch of them? But then I
> am back to needing a big freezer...
>
> ...or, meat rabbits?
>
> thanks,
> Barbara M, Foster, RI
>
> --
> "Animals Are A Gift"
>
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