Of Dogs and Chickens

First you can see our puppy Dana with 2 cockerels from 2008, note how unimpressed and relaxed, not to say cool, the birds are! Then our plain blue cockerel (the youngest bird in our cockerel-flock) enters the scene to look what the dogs are doing. Arwen is on our "spare-Volvo" and jumps up and down a platform where we feed the birds, the other dogs run around below, playing. Then you can see Balu with Arwen and in the background our new "tire-feeder". Several cockerels are eating from (and on) the new feeder and you can see our Goldies and Brahmas side-by-side in harmony, note how calm the whole scene is although Dana and Wendy are playing rather wild and Willow is lying right between the birds. You can then see the "Red Connection" (a handful of Red Columbian cockerels from 2008) and sometimes a bright white guy from the "Wheaten Connection" (a bunch of Light cockerels from 2008) shows up, also. Finally you can get a short climpse of Strommer, our "dog-cat", enjoy!

Category:

Pets & Animals

Tags:

• golden
• retriever
• brahma
• puppy
• cockerels
• playing
• eating

[zebracharm1]

I like this song! What is it called?

[joachimdippold]

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

[Saibrock]

Such beautiful dogs, and such beautiful music.

[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!

[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]

...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]

...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]

...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]

...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]

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....