Allotment Gardening Advice Help Chat
Poultry and Pets => The Hen House => Topic started by: Craig69 on June 10, 2010, 17:19
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How easy is it to start breeding with your hens?
(This sounded better in my head than reading it back over :D)
I am looking to buy some land if i can & start breeding them along with other animals.
It is something my partner & i have thought about for a while & are seriously thinking about taking them plunge.
We are looking into everything we are thinking about before we decide if we ca make it work.
I would like to be able to breed rare breed poultry, but just wondered if anyone on here can give there opinion on breeding them.
Cheers Craig
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the breeding part is easy - you will need seperate breeding pens to keep them pure. An unrelated cock to two or more hens (you can mate father to daughter but not brother to sister) from good stock. You needs an incubattor and a brooder shed. lots of feeders and drinkers of different sizes to suit different ages and sizes. A way of disposing unwanted cockerels and quite a bit of money to have a good set up. You would find it hard to make a living doing this, most just about break even.
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This is just one thing we are thinking about. We have other animals to run alongside we are also looking into.
We are doing all the thinking & planning well before we go anywhere near starting this.
I know proper planning is the key to getting it right as i did all this when i started my small cleaning business which i still do.
I earn a good fulltime wage from part time hours & starting something else off small would be nice to run alongside.
It is something we have always wanted to do but were afraid to even start looking.
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besides reading everything you can about this Craig also visit other setups so you can see how others do it (and how you can improve on their setups - there are some very bad ones out there) and start off with good strains of birds. Make sure your bio security is very good as people coming in from outside can bring infections with them.