Of Dogs and Chickens

[Saibrock]

Such beautiful dogs, and such beautiful music.

[zebracharm1]

I like this song! What is it called?

[joachimdippold]

@zebracharm1 It´s Connie Dover with the song "Cantus".

[Voodoobabe72]

Hi there again wonderful video you have shared once again... How many chickens do you have approx? your brahmas are so incredibly beautiful and we enjoy viewing them!

[joachimdippold]

Thanks for your compliment! How many, oh, this varies, I´ll try to explain: Since I think ALL supermarket-meat is cruel/torture-meat (meaning the animals must suffer for this "cheap" and tasteless meat the consumers ask for) I only eat meat from animals where I know they have had a "good life". Plus: by eating our birds (at a minimum age of 10 months!) we respect them by "using" their dead body to fill our stomach, so their dead was not "for nothing", see? "2 other points we consider are....

[joachimdippold]

...1st: one of our goals is breeding birds that can reproduce naturally, hence we select for all the cluckie-traits and let our birds breed/raise chicks all year round. 2nd: our cocks for breeding are VERY active!LOL! So our hen:cock-ratio must not be under 35:1 for the simple reason of if we had less hens they would be bare-backed in a short time due to (physically) overstraining. After all mating here means that a 6-kg-cock jumps onto a 3 to 4-kg-hen and does the cock´s treadle(sp?)....

[joachimdippold]

...ant this means simply mechanical wear due to the weight, see? So we don´t have a "fixed" flock size, but we rather look that we don´t have less than 35 hens all year round. As for the cockerel-flock we look that we don´t have less than 15 cocks because otherwise they would fight with each-other too often. If there are 25 cocks for example the chances for 2 specific cocks meeting in combat are less than if there were only 10 cocks, see what I mean? Hence we have a minimum...

[joachimdippold]

...of about 20 males and 40 females at any given time. Then there is the chicks-flock with 1 (experienced) cock and 2-4 cluckies with their chicks for 2-3 month depending on how fast the cluckies want out of the chicks-flock by starting to lay again. We take them out to the main flock just before they stop leading/raising their little ones so they can defend/support their chicks in our big/main-flock for some time and by doing this making the integration fo rthe chicks easier...

[joachimdippold]

...than if we would put the chicks into the main flock without their clucky. So our chicks-flock is another additional 10-20 birds. Then there are our bantams (my wive´s favorites;-) with a flock size of about 30-40 birds. We look that we have either more or less than 30 birds per flock for the reason of studies have proven that a flock size of 30 birds means more stress/fighting fo rth ebirds than a flock size of 20 or 40 birds. I don´t know why...

[joachimdippold]

...but 30 birds are less harmonic than 20 birds or 40 birds per flock. Regardless for the reason behind we just respect/accept this information and look that our flock size is either less or more than 30 birds, and our personal experience proves the stuies correct: we monitored more fighting in our flock when we had 30 birds than we monitored when having 20 or 40 birds. Oh, and before summing up I almost forgot our pins!LOL! We always have 20-40 Indian Runner Ducks, also....

[joachimdippold]

We let our ducks breed "as they want" because our only aim in breeding ducks is that they produce naturally, we don´t select/breed for color and stuff. So all in all we have around 20-40 pins, 30-40 bantams, 20 cocks and 40 hens (Brahmas) and 10-20 chicks/cluckies (Brahmas), meaning about 120 to 160 birds at any given time during the year. This leaves us with harmonic flock-sizes on the one hand and enough meat/eggs to support our family on the other hand. Hope this answers your question!

[slightlychill]

I really enjoy just watching the calmness of your backyard....with that variety of animals moving free around ....they are all integrating on a peaceful way and just letting all the others BE.

Humans could learn how to get alone by watching this video,that`s for sure!

Thank You for sharing this video here in YT. :))

[joachimdippold]

Thanks for your kind words!

[slightlychill]

You are Most Welcome.

Blessings to You,Love ones,and your backyard animals. You Live a Beautiful Life. To me that is what Heaven on Earth should be. :))

[APoliticalSemtex]

welch harmonie....