Meet the Fowl
Chickens
We have 26 hens total, and usually a surplus of eggs. We've been up to figuring out who is laying which egg, but we do have several laying XL and Jumbo sized. We're looking to cut down on the ones producing smaller eggs, so we've been doing some egg trials to see who goes and who stays based on egg size.
All the eggs taste great, but those really big more round eggs are just the best for making over easy (which is my favorite.) They have a nice white that holds together well and holds the yolk up off the pan which leaves most of the yolk still runny.
The Roo we have is a Turken (pictured above) and so far the Turken hens are laying XL. We don't keep aggressive animals here, this rooster has been a perfect gentleman around everyone. It's actually the only reason he's still here. He was an oops, not a pullet. I originally did not want a rooster and had ordered all pullets. We have in the mix of hens Turken, Mystic Onyx, Jersey Giant, Amberlink, ISA Brown, Lavender Orpington, and a Welsummer.
We have eggs in the incubator that all weighed in at 68g and up with most over 70g. There were even a couple 78g ones that did not look to be doubles. The roo is confirmed as much as can be without DNA testing to be homozygous for the naked neck gene. Every single egg (hatched alive or not) was a naked neck chick. If all goes as planned, all of our chickens will be producing XL or Jumbo size and we plan to be offering the eggs for sale as well as these hybrid Turken mix chicks, all hatched from XL and Jumbo sized eggs. The lack of feathers makes them very heat resistant and they do well with the heat here. They kind of give me weird dinosaur vibes and are just funny to watch. The Turkens are pretty large and considered dual purpose for eggs and meat. Most of the hens are dual purpose as well.
I will be posting hens that didn't make the cut on the sale page. All but one are 1 year old, and the one is 2 years old. All are laying and healthy. I'm only bumping them because of egg size.
Hatch day was a bit of a bummer. Quite a few didn't hatch. Most were fully developed, a few just slightly underdeveloped, about half of those that didn't make it were upside down in the egg. We're trying a foam support for lockdown next time to try to position these big round eggs with air cell slightly up. We have a full incubator to try again and we're keeping the humidity on the lower end and trying a dry hatch technique. Air cells looked fine, but it is pretty humid here. We currently have 10 chicks that we're hanging on to for the moment as we'd like to swap some chickens out. The smaller egg layers can go, and hopefully these guys will have the nice larger eggs. The smaller egg in the extra slot is a guinea egg. I'm assuming it's not fertile, but we'll see.
We got our Welsh Harlequin ducklings! We selected this breed for the decent egg laying and calm, friendly personalities. They're too heavy to fly well, so generally don't fly. They're very pretty with the males having iridescent green heads and females being a white or cream color as adults. They're also supposed to be good eating and get to a decent size. We plan to offer eggs and ducklings for sale if we get enough eggs. These are supposed to be easy to sex at a day old based on bill color, so we plan to be able to offer sexed ducklings. Upon receiving them it was pretty easy to tell male from female even before I could see the bands. The boys have a dark bill and the girls have a lighter or mixed color bill.
Ducks
Guinea Fowl
We have one guinea hen. We've not yet decided whether to keep her and get more, or to send her off so she's not alone. We might try seeing if she'll lay some fertile eggs with our Turken rooster. As unlikely as it would be to get viable offspring, it would be fun and I've seen some pictures of some cool mixes. So, it is possible. For now she seems content with hanging out with the chickens. Guinea fowl are a lot of fun, they're one of my favorites here. They are very noisy and alert to everything, but they do a good job eating bugs, especially ticks.