Naj Smith wrote:Butchering a goat is a complex process that requires skill, knowledge, and proper equipment. It's important to note that this response provides a general overview of the process, but I strongly recommend seeking guidance from a professional butcher or local authority on food safety and animal handling if you're considering butchering a goat. Additionally, the methods and regulations may vary by region, so always ensure you are in compliance with local laws.

[Snip]

Again, it's crucial to consult local regulations and seek professional guidance to ensure you follow safe and legal practices when butchering a goat. If you lack the experience or expertise, it is advisable to have the process carried out by a trained butcher to guarantee food safety and quality.

Ehhhh, I sorta agree.  It’s not especially hard to learn, and if you’re clueless it’s best to get someone knowledgeable to either help you learn or do it for you.  But it’s not some great mystery or requiring some extensive training.

If OP has land and freezer capacity raising a whole years worth at a time provides an economy of scale that can significantly reduce the per chicken costs.  Both in $$ terms and the time spent caring for the chickens.  It doesn’t take any extra time to feed and water 100 chickens than it does for 10.  And if she raised 100 she can keep 50 for herself and sell the rest of the 100 that survived to slaughter day and make back some/most of the input costs.  That’s what I do.

If she doesn’t have enough land for that, lacks freezer capacity, or is just committed to butchering as she eats them and never freezing them then obviously that won’t work.

Beth Mouse wrote:I would like to raise 3 or 4 hens for meat as I don't want roosters.  I plan to butcher one at a time maybe each week.  Like what my Great Grandma talked about doing.  I have 3 laying hens in a coop that I would like to let out in the evening to forage for a bit and think I would like to keep these birds separate from the hens.  I bought electric poultry netting and also bought an A frame poultry chicken tractor that I raised some roosters in this Spring (they started crowing and I can't do it again).  It was great when they were old enough to stay out there in it but when they got older, they never went into it at night and roosted on top of it so I need to have something bigger they will roost in at night.  It's around 3 1/2 feet tall and 3  feet wide and 10 feet long.  Not sure how big I need but I want them to go inside because we have owls.  Surprisingly none of my roosters got taken though.  I guess I will raise hens as meat birds and wonder if anyone can share what I could keep them in out on my pasture with a poultry fence around it?  Thinking about Sagitta breed.  If I got Freedom Rangers not sure if they're sexed.  

Working backwards on your post.  Freedom Rangers (from the original hatchery in PA) are sexed.  You can order all males, all females, or straight run.  Minimum order is 25 I believe.

Sagitta are OK as meat birds, but nothing like Freedom Rangers.  You'll get a much bigger carcass in a lot less time with Freedom Rangers.

Raptors are a problem everywhere.  The most effective deterrent I've found is fishing line strung every 10-15' with flagging tape or something flashy every 10-15' along the line.  The bald eagles in my area though got smart enough to hover down carefully and still picked off a lot of my hens this summer.  I might need to go tight enough with the line that they can't get down between them easily.

As others have mentioned, cockerels will work fine if you butcher them before they get noisy.  I'd probably just identify each bird as it starts to crow and take them in that order.  Freedom Rangers will often be barely crowing or not at all when they reach butcher age/size at 10-12 weeks old.  Obviously all females won't have that issue, but they're also much smaller.  Never kept any accidental females (sexing is 90-95% accurate, so you'll always get some small number of wrong sex birds) so I don't know how well they lay.

Jim Fry wrote:Simple fix to stop your chickens from flying. Early in the morning while they are still all in the coop, pick them up one at a time and use a scissors to cut short the feathers on one wing. Then toss the chicken out the door so you don't get confused which are done. By cutting the feathers on just one side it unbalances them so they can't fly. Repeat every six months or so, as needed.

I found if I don't clip both sides pretty heavily the slender ones still fly over fencing.  Results may vary.

Andrew Mayflower wrote:

Ryan Hobbs wrote:We are talking over our options.


The Pig Option: Justin Rhodes has a video out on youtube about raising pigs in a small space which he calls the "pigport". Nothing too crazy. And we have considered something a little bigger to add a wallow. Carports are expensive, but we could build them a little wood shelter, and pigs are not fussy; or prone to get killed by raccoons and birds of prey. I already have the posts for the enclosure, I can use woven fence for it. Pig wire is half as expensive as sheep wire, and I would need only a half as much of it. Justin uses deep bedding. What I can get is leaves and hay. Still working on finding woodchips. The watering system could harvest roof rain from my feed shed. The feed and water are right there. No carrying feed and water out to a distant pasture system.

The Meat Chicken Option: Red Rangers, an electric poultry net, and a chickshaw. This one has less financial outlay, but is more work. I would have to move them often, even when I don't feel well. However, They are very productive. We eat about 50 chickens a year. Assuming 10% loss to predators and mistakes, we would need 60 meat birds. They would improve the pasture in prep for eventual sheep.

We are not ready for any other critters. Ducks need a turtle-free pond. Egg layer chickens need more financial outlay than meat birds. Sheep and Goats need lots of equipment. Cows we don't have the space for.

Regarding chickens.  Consider Freedom Rangers.  I've raised them the last couple of years in a similar style to what you're considering.  They hit their weight a couple weeks sooner than the Red Rangers, but are still slower and have fewer health issues than CRX.  Mine produced an average 4lb 14oz dressed carcass (not including neck or edible organs) in 9.5 weeks.  Saving that couple weeks on grow out time is nice in that it reduces the risk of predator loss just because of the shorter time period.  Also, if you don't want to listen to crowing it's that much less time to deal with that noise.  Last year they started crowing at 7 weeks old, though it didn't become obnoxious until 8.5-9 weeks old), and this year there was almost no crowing at all up to slaughter day.  And, FWIW, we did a taste test comparison with a Freedom Ranger and a Wyandott rooster we culled at probably 16-20 weeks old.  Nobody in the family could tell the difference between the two in terms of flavor or texture.  That said, the Freedom Ranger hatchery also sells Red Rangers, and the Reds are less expensive as chicks.  You'll feed them more however, so if you're using economics as part of the calculation you'll need to work out which is cheaper at the end of the day.  They ship on different days, but you might be able to call them and see if they'll ship 30 Reds with 30 FR's if you are close enough to be likely to get them the next day.  They might say no, but it's worth asking.  If not, order the Red's to arrive 1-2 weeks before the FR's, and then you can do a proper side by side comparison between the breeds, and have slaughter for both groups at the same time.

If you do get the meat chickens you might consider getting another large bird to go with them, like turkeys, or geese.  I found that having some broad-breasted turkeys mixed in with the chickens kept the aerial predators at bay (I had 11 turkeys with 100 chickens).  I got them as early in the spring as I could, and then got the chickens 4-5 weeks later.  By the time the chickens were ready to be on pasture the turkeys I think 7-8 weeks old and were averaging 7.5-9.3lbs live weight.  The ravens didn't mess with my meat birds at all, even without any physical barrier to keep them from flying in.  We slaughtered the 3 smallest turkeys with the chickens, and the dressed out a little under 14lbs each.  I think they were 14.5 weeks old at that point.  The rest we let go for another month.  The biggest tom dressed out over 33lbs.  I think if I do it again I'll get the chickens when the turkeys are 6-8 weeks old and then slaughter them all together.  That should give me some turkeys in the 16-20lb range for roasting, and some pushing high-20's to low 30's that I can part out and do things like smoke the breasts for lunch meat.

We built a coop for our hens.  Not cheap, but not super expensive either.  With the hens we're taking care of for friends, plus the hens that survived the winter, and the chicks we got again this year I think we have around 36.  So far no crowing from any of the chicks, so maybe we got lucky with no roosters.  Or if there are roosters we got lucky with some quiet ones.  Right now they free range on our 4.77 acres.  But we're trying to get fencing up to contain them to about a half acre.  The poop on the deck, and everywhere else we like to walk is getting annoying, plus they're hiding some eggs.  But if you know you only want, say, a dozen hens the coop doesn't need to be very big or fancy.  

Bit of an update, given 3.5 or so years more experience.

I still find Freedom Rangers to be a great meat bird.  But, there's more variability from year to year than I'd like.  That original post I got almost 5lbs dressed weight (not including necks) at 9,5 weeks.  This year at 10.5 weeks I saw about 4.5lbs including necks.  Kind of disappointing.  But they still taste just as good.

Turkeys are next to useless at guarding chickens.  They might try to intimidate the aerial predators, but eventually the raptors and ravens learned to ignore them.  I now put fishing line with flagging tape over their area.  Much more effective, if also more unattractive.

I like to get the turkeys (broad breasted) 6-8 weeks before the broilers.  That gives them 16-20 weeks (I give the freedom rangers 10-12 week) to grow out.  That gives a nice size for even the hens, without the toms getting tooooo large.  I usually will keep a few turkeys to 6-7 months to let them get super huge and will cure and smoke the breast and thigh for lunch meat (wings and drums are excellent braised, and of course the rest of the carcass makes great stock).  

I now have permanent fencing to contain the meat birds to a portion of the yard.  I'd like to put up permanent fencing with gates for cross fencing, but not there yet.  Making due with temporary cross fences.  Much easier than electronet to move them around, but also a big investment.  However that investment has allowed me to get sheep too.

Nancy Reading wrote:As others have suggested, we also make use of the goodness in bones for our dogs. I actually boil them up to make bone jelly and feed this to the dogs since I am worried that bones alone could splinter and cause a problem if fed directly to the dogs.

Raw bones are entirely safe for dogs.  Note, even large dogs shouldn't be given the major weight bearing bones of ruminants - they're too hard and dogs can damage their teeth trying to eat them.  But those weight bearing bones also are great for marrow extraction.  

Bone jelly would be better than otherwise whole but cooked bones.  But you can save the bother by giving them raw to the dogs.

Depends entirely on the pasture.  Most ruminants will eat 3-4% of body weight per day from pasture (2% roughly in dry mass).  If the acre will produce enough to feed them and/or you’re willing to bring in enough hay to fill the gaps then you’ll be ok.

Keep in mind that the longer you keep them on any given paddock the worse their parasite load becomes.  And you need to give at least 60 days without grazing animals to avoid recontamination of the animals, and 90 days is much better.

Running chickens behind the grazers can help reduce parasites as well as the chickens will break up the manure and they’ll consume parasites eggs and larvae.

Assuming we're talking homestead level butchering here, not commercial scale.  Between a preference for bone-in cuts, making stock, and letting the dogs eat them we don't really have any issue disposing of bones.  Cooked bones go in the garbage.  Could compost them but I'm not set up for hot composting.  I cut a salmon yesterday for dinner.  Our female german shepherd scarfed the carcass as part of her dinner (the male turned up his nose at it).

If you have 200 acres why not get both?  Not like you'll be at risk of running out of forage.  If one type just isn't working for you they always be sold on to someone else, or eaten.  The one acre that's fenced right now won't be enough for either breed, so you'll have to fence additional areas regardless.  If they're trained (or if you can train them) to respect polywire hot fence it'll be relatively easy to move them around the property.

I have no idea if they're available in South America, but Freedom Rangers are a popular alternative among homesteader types to cornish cross for a reasonably fast growing (but not freakish like cornish cross) broiler that will forage effectively.  Mine usually average a 5lb carcass weight at 10 weeks old, 6.5-6.75lbs at 12 weeks.  I usually order all males, if I had a straight run the females would probably average a pound less than the males at the same age.  If you have the ability to be flexible, harvesting the males at 10 weeks and the females at 11-12 weeks would result in them all being about the same carcass size.

https://www.freedomrangerhatchery.com/shop/product/freedom-ranger-chickens/

You might contact those folks and see if they either have a licensed breeder in South America or if they know of a similar/comparable breed available there.

Steve Taylor wrote:I didn't know till recently how wonderful possum's are.  They like to pick through our worm bin for produce scraps. We have the bin just off the deck out of sight.  Now we all like it when the local crew drops by at night.

Turns out opossums are basically useless for controlling ticks.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34298355/
https://www.fieldandstream.com/conservation/possums-dont-eat-ticks/

Hair sheep are 80% as good as goats at clearing brush, and are infinitely easier to contain.  They're called hair sheep because they have hair rather than wool, and they shed it naturally each spring.  Mine have done an amazing job on my blackberries.  It's not perfect, I still have to clear the big woody canes, but it's surprisingly effective.

Elena Sparks wrote:I would highly suggest getting a few other chickens to introduce along with the hen (assuming the other girl doesn't come back), and preferably from the same flock as the new hen came from originally so they already know each other.

And Rich is introduced to Chicken Math.  You have 5, get 2 and wind up with 10.

Kristine Keeney wrote:Here's an easy fix on weird governmentally contracted adults pressuring your child into doing things without your knowledge that might have an impact on your home life - home school. Or Pod School. Or saying no.

No is both a complete sentence and a firm answer.

I have every sympathy for parents who are trying to manage their home lives while dealing with whatever your local education system is, but there are alternative answers for most circumstances that surround our communal children.
I did not get into chickens because of my kids - I wasn't that lucky. I got into chickens because I wanted to get into chickens. I'm sorry that wasn't your situation.

QFT!

We homeschool our 4 kids.  Not because of chickens, though I suspect we wouldn't have decided to get chickens if we weren't homecschooling.  But the situation from the OP is one of innumerable reasons I'm glad we homeschool.

While I'm very glad for how it worked out for you folks, I'm vehemently opposed to teachers doing things like pressuring parents to take chicks the class watched hatch.  The chicken is a living breathing animal that depends on humans for a good life, and many families are not prepared to meet the needs of such an animal, especially for the 4-8 years they often live.  If they want to hatch out chicks for a class project that's fine, if they have homes prepared to properly care for them lined up ahead of time.

Teri Capshaw wrote:Are your freedom rangers fairly consistent in weight? I had 70 last year and some were huge while others were really tiny at 20 weeks. I didn't know if it was a fluke or my supplier or if they're always like that.

It is great chicken. People at our church potlucks make a beeline for the pot after I put it down!

Andrew Mayflower wrote:

Teri Capshaw wrote:Regaining a strong healthy bird that lives a good life, acts like a normal heritage bird, and just happens to put on plenty of meat is what I'd really like to get closer to having.

That's a Freedom Ranger.  Except you can't breed them on the homestead.  You might see if Red Rangers, or some other "slow" broilers will breed true.  If you find something that grows out in under 15 weeks to a 5lb carcass and breeds true please post back to this thread.

You have to be sure to order all males.  If you got a straight run the females will be smaller.  I only order direct from the hatchery.  With all males the size is reasonably consistent.  Obviously some will put on more weight whether due to better genetics or just being more aggressive with feeding.  I’d say 90% are +-0.5lbs from the average.  With occasional outliers on both ends.

Teri Capshaw wrote:Regaining a strong healthy bird that lives a good life, acts like a normal heritage bird, and just happens to put on plenty of meat is what I'd really like to get closer to having.

That's a Freedom Ranger.  Except you can't breed them on the homestead.  You might see if Red Rangers, or some other "slow" broilers will breed true.  If you find something that grows out in under 15 weeks to a 5lb carcass and breeds true please post back to this thread.

Kristine Keeney wrote:

Andrew Mayflower wrote:If you were to do the original Cornish Rock cross you wouldn't get the frankenchicken we see in the grocery store.  You'd get something a lot closer to what was sold in stores 50-60 years ago when that breed first became commercially viable.  Rather than a 5-6lb carcass in 7-8 weeks it would probably be more like 12-14 weeks for that same size, and the breast meat wouldn't be as ridiculous.  Probably more breast meat than a "normal" chicken, but still within natural bounds.  The commercial hatcheries have spent the last 50 years or so "improving" that cross, and now have proprietary parent stock that would be nigh unto impossible for an individual to recreate without deep insider knowledge.  Even the Freedom Rangers are all but impossible to really recreate on a homestead.

This is something I would raise - the Not-A-Frankenchicken version. I've looked at the various hybrids, but decided against them due to an experience I had over 20 years ago with two Cornish Cross birds that were given to me when they stopped "being cute". One had a heart attack and the other got too heavy to stand on it's own. Never again will I have such birds and I feel for the critters created for this horrible mess. But ... I also support your right to do what you want, so ... ?

A sustainable Cornish Cross, not the current version as produced out of the Big Hatcheries, but a more reasonable bird is something I would consider as a meat bird. You're still talking about about a 4 month period for a grow-out, but the birds wouldn't be the mushy mouth feel you see in commercial chicken or the too fast Frankenbird of the "C-Monsters", to use a well known advocate's term.
But, yeah. I have my own flock of "heritage" meat birds and no reason to raise just for meat purposes. I'll be happy with my small flock of Dorking-on-the-hoof. I've found I don't need a large freezer if thy don't need frozen.

I seem to recall someone (Joel Salatin??) trying to develop  a meat chicken that could be raised by homesteaders.  So it had to "breed true" in addition to having the faster grow out and carcass size needed.  I believe he tried crossing CRX commercial birds with Delaware.  Or maybe it was a heritage Cornish x Delaware.  Basically he was trying to get a reasonably fast growth with (niche) commercially desirable carcass quality, that didn't require artificial insemination to breed.  

IIRC that project was eventually abandoned because all those goals couldn't be met, or least not in an economically viable manner.

That's why folks that are raising commercially still skew very heavily to CRX, and those that don't like raising CRX mostly raise Freedom Rangers or similar alternatives.  I tried CRX once, and won't raise them again.  The FR's at least don't have near the health problems, they'll actually forage like a real chicken, and if you kept them long enough at least the females could breed (males might get too big, regardless they won't breed true and the off-spring won't have the growth characteristics you want).

I do have to have a (well, several) freezers, but that's OK for me.  I like the idea of just killing one a couple days ahead and eating it fresh, but I also really like being able to fry and grill my chicken, and that would not work out well with birds over 14-16 weeks old.

Elena Sparks wrote:Have you looked into Bresse? They are the american take on a really old French breed that was known for marbled meat (like a beef cow) if finished with a diet of grain and milk. Because of the unique taste, they quickly rose in fame and were the preferred chicken meat for royalty. Due to the introduction of faster growing Cornish Cross they largely died out, but are beginning to be brought back by a few devoted breeders. I got two orders from Bresse Farms of white and blue Bresse and have been really pleased with them. As a hatchery they have some order issues, so they send the chicks at weird times and sometimes mess up chicks and send a few of a different breed, but all the extras have preformed beautifully as well so I don't mind. They are strong foragers, great egg layers (they are technically a dual purpose breed), really hardy, and are pretty gentle. They mature at a more normal rate, so that is a possible drawback, but it means you get a niche in the market with a rare and specialized breed. Murray McMurray has some white Bresse available now, and they're another of my favorite hatcheries.
I got them to add to my Wyoming Landrace, so I haven't used them as meat birds, but the roosters we butchered were tasty even though we didn't finish them specially.
I know that the Cornish Cross was created by crossing a Delaware with a white Cornish, and it made them grow super fast. I don't want meat chickens that grow too fast for their body (I think that's poor stewardship as humans that we breed for things like that), but it would be helpful to have them grow a bit faster than an average chicken. From that standpoint, I've wanted to try crossing the Bresse with a Dark Cornish to try and get a similar (though way less intense) result. I don't know if it'd work, but a feel like we need a balance between the crazy out of control Cornish and the slow growing heritage breeds. Keep the foraging instinct, breed in a bit more growth speed, but not too much, and keep the hardiness.

If you were to do the original Cornish Rock cross you wouldn't get the frankenchicken we see in the grocery store.  You'd get something a lot closer to what was sold in stores 50-60 years ago when that breed first became commercially viable.  Rather than a 5-6lb carcass in 7-8 weeks it would probably be more like 12-14 weeks for that same size, and the breast meat wouldn't be as ridiculous.  Probably more breast meat than a "normal" chicken, but still within natural bounds.  The commercial hatcheries have spent the last 50 years or so "improving" that cross, and now have proprietary parent stock that would be nigh unto impossible for an individual to recreate without deep insider knowledge.  Even the Freedom Rangers are all but impossible to really recreate on a homestead.

Joseph Lofthouse wrote:"Meat" birds seem like they belong in factory farming, and not on a homestead. The quick growth leads to health problems and deformities. The inbreeding necessary to maintain breeds exacerbates the health problems.

I choose to raise chicks via broody hens. Yes, it's messy, and hens are unpredictable. They seem more reliable than depending on the current supply chain. Chicks raised by a mother seem gentler, and smarter. They develop better relationships with the flock. They forage better. I really love landrace birds raised by mothers instead of machines.

To each their own.  I have 101 Freedom Rangers growing out right now.  I tried hatching my own dual purpose chickens and will likely never do that again.  I like the 10-12 week grow out on the FR's over the 7-8 weeks of CRX, and over the 20-30 weeks for what I hatched myself.  Plus, I have a neighbor that is psychotic about chicken noise, so keeping the cockerels that long was a problem, as was keeping roosters to produce fertile eggs.  The cockerels were scrawny, and tough too.  I bet my feed conversion was 3x worse than that of the FR's.  Better breeds would help I'm sure, but until that neighbor moves, or I do, I won't be doing that again.  Plus, fertilized eggs are a problem.  The yolks become very fragile, and especially in the summer if we don't collect the eggs twice a day they go bad very quickly.  And since we have the hens mostly for the eggs, that's a problem.

Regarding the hassle factor, there's a reason most commercial meat chicken farms, and even homesteaders, buy chicks. While less independent than raising your own, it lets you specialize in raising them for good meat characteristics, while someone else specializes in breeding a chicken that thrives in the sort of system you use.  

That's not to say you shouldn't breed your own, just that most don't.  

r ranson wrote:
My preference is Halal style.  This is a religious style of killing the animal traditionally used by Muslims.  The animal is first taken away from the flock so that the other animals cannot hear, see or smell the event.  When done properly the animal is calmed.  He sits with the animal and calm it down, this can take a minute, this can take two hours, but he doesn't do anything until the animal is calm.  The practical advantage of this is that the animal dies without all those stress chemicals pulsing through its system.  I find that the smell of the raw meat is a lot sweeter than any other way of slaughtering an animal, it also seems to make the meat far more tender than it should be.  

Second choice for me is shooting the animal.  This needs to be done right, so the person with the gun needs to know how the skull is shaped so they can shoot in the right spot.  Each kind of animal, and males and females have different skulls, so someone use to shooting goats would need to learn different method to kill a pig.  When done well, the consciousness of the animal is gone in less than a second.  We don't have a gun and aren't allowed to use one on our property, so the animal has to travel to it's final destination which causes them stress.

So, about a month ago I slaughtered one of my rams.  He volunteered for freezer camp by ramming and knocking me over.  Anyway, he had quite an impressive set of horns, with full curl.  They were tight to face too (not in danger of growing into his face, just right there next to it).  I knew it would be nearly impossible to make a halal style throat cut because of those horns.  So, while I normally prefer halal style, I opted to shoot him first.  I looked it up, and the recommended method I found was to aim for the back of the head such that the path of the bullet would go towards the nose of the animal.  I wanted to use a .22mag but had no ammo, so I used a .22lr instead.  Got the highest velocity solid (i.e. not hollowpoint) ammo I had on hand, and used a rifle.  If I'd had .22mag ammo I'd have used the 9.5" Ruger Single Six I had available, which would have been a bit easier.  When I fired the ram literally never even blinked.  He was happily standing there, and then the computer was instantly unplugged.  Soon as he was down I grabbed the knife and cut his throat to bleed him out.  I'd still prefer halal style, but for an animal that I can't make that cut fast and and humanely, shooting is an acceptable alternative.

matthew Rhoades wrote:It is common nowadays in big industry. I remember when chicken tasted like chicken nowadays most store bought chicken tastes kinda FOUL. What's that black layer next to the  bone. Taste kind of spoiled.

That black layer is cooked blood.  Industrial chickens are stunned usually by electric shock and then bled.  Often the stunning stops the heart, or weakens its pumping, so they don't bleed out nearly as thoroughly.

Would have been punnier if you'd said it tasted FOWL.

Some religions ban the eating of blood, or the meat from animals not properly exsanguinated.  Kosher and halal requirements state the animal cannot be stunned first for exactly this reason.  That way the heart is able to pump out the maximum amount of the blood.  To our modern western palates such meat (from poorly or not at all bled out animals) would taste inferior, but there are probably some cultures where that would be considered highly desirable, or at least not detrimental.

Trace Oswald wrote:I think many people that have chickens like the sounds they make.  If you don't like chicken noises, maybe just find someone local that you can buy eggs from.  There are other threads about this.  You will probably never recoup the costs for a chicken coop, feed, the chickens themselves, in the money you save on eggs.  People, myself included, usually raise chickens for other less tangible reasons.  One of the biggest is just plain liking chickens.  I find the noises they make soothing.  I love hearing my roosters crowing, love the contented noises chickens make when you give them a treat they like, I find it funny when they squawk their heads off when they lay an egg.  If you don't like those things, you may save yourself time, money, aggravation by just buying eggs from some local farmer.

Forgot to add, I don't believe there are quiet breeds.  Definitely some are quieter than others, but how noisy they are seems to be as much a difference between individuals as between breeds.

Lots of people would LOVE to have chickens but can't because of the noise factor.  They might personally be perfectly fine with whatever noises the birds make but sometimes neighbors are not, and/or there are local ordinances or HOA restrictions regarding noise even from hens.  I live in a neighborhood of multi-acre lots.  One of the neighbors goes crazy when a rooster, even 3+ lots away, is crowing.  If we were a more typical neighborhood with 20-50x the density of houses I can only imagine the conflicts that could happen.  We have 1 rooster left (given how many hens there are, when he dies it'll be with a smile) and he's collared 100% of the time.  I hate doing that, but my oldest doesn't want us to eat him, or rehome him.  Eventually she'll go to college and the rooster can slip and fall into a dutch oven with a bottle of red wine and some veg.  Anyway, even when outside I can barely hear other neighbor's roosters, but they will still complain.   When that neighbor was HOA president they tried to write into the bylaws (without proper votes) that crowing roosters weren't allowed.  The neighborhood is damn lucky we didn't get sued into oblivion.  That by-laws situation has been corrected (roosters are still allowed), but it just goes to show how passionate some people are about their dislike of rooster crowing.

I hardly notice the hens making their noises anymore.  But I would be more welcoming of roosters if they weren't any noisier than the hens.  I don't really like being woken up 2 hours before dawn by them crowing.  I know it doesn't bother some people, but it bothers enough that my prior statement about the wealth available to someone that develops a breed with quiet roosters stands.

If anyone can develop a chicken breed with consistently quiet roosters they'll be millionaires in short order.

Jordan Holland wrote:I'm just saying...if it can work for a whale, it can work for a cow.

"...the humor of the situation quickly gave way to a run for survival, as huge chunks of whale blubber fell everywhere..."

Now for any naysayers out there: I maintain the problem with the whale in 1970 was simply an issue of using too few explosives, which I wholeheartedly recommend avoiding if anyone ever needs to employ the method themselves. As a general rule, I would follow the old adage that there are only two times you do not need more explosives: when you are swimming, and when you are on fire. Carry on!

If you hadn't posted that, I was going to.

A chicken dispatched by a cut to the neck without prior stunning will bleed it out very thoroughly.  There is no need to hang a chicken to drain the blood after it's dead.

I have always plucked and gutted right away, but after that I like to leave my birds in the fridge for a few days at least.  1-1.5 days is needed to let rigor mortis relax.  The rest can be considered dry aging.  I've left them for 2 weeks and they've been totally fine.  The key is to keep them in circulating air, so don't cover them, especially in plastic.

If I ever step up to beef Dexters are high on my list for breeds.

My neighbor recently sold off their Highland cows.  Had they kept them I was going to try to buy a pair of calves.  They're similar size to Dexters.

If milk is the priority goats will be your best bet vs sheep or alpacas.  I'm sure there's people that milk alpacas, but I've never heard of that being done, so I'd assume they're probably a marginal dairy producer.  There are dairy breeds for sheep, but output is low relative to dairy goats.  I know you said you don't need a lot, but there's a difference between "a little" and "not a lot" and you may find goats to just be more reliable producers than sheep.

For fiber, it all depends on what type of fiber you want.  Each species has its own pros and cons in terms of fiber.  And with sheep (and probably goats too) breed makes a huge difference in type of fiber as well as quantity.  I don't think alpacas are as breed stratified as goats and sheep are so they may more of a "you get what you get" situation for that.

For meat, goats and sheep are close in terms of production and quality.  Obviously "meat" breeds will do better than dairy breeds with carcass quality, but if that's a side show vs dairy and fiber it might not matter too much.  It really just depends if you prefer the flavor of one over the other.  I have little doubt that alpacas are eaten in South America, but it's very uncommon here.  I wouldn't hesitate to slaughter one if I couldn't sell it, but I have no idea if the meat is going to fit with most American kitchens.  

As far as sheep vs goats in the pine forest, it depends a bit on the sheep vs goats that you can get.  Some sheep will thrive on brush as well as pasture, some won't.  The goats will possibly do better at clearing the underbrush than a wool sheep, but a hair sheep will be equal to the goats in that regard (but then obviously you lose the fibers).  

One other factor to keep in mind that most people find sheep easier to contain than goats.  No idea on alpacas, but given their size I wouldn't be surprised if they could jump pretty well.  Sheep generally like to go under fences, goats like to go over.  And goats can climb really well too.  But whatever you get for animals and fence material, I highly recommend something they can't fit their head through.  Otherwise you're asking for them to get stuck, especially if they have horns.

Trace Oswald wrote:

Andrew Mayflower wrote:But to avoid conflict with current or future neighbors it's usually best to put up a fence some distance inside your property line.  

I would be very careful with this.  If the neighbor uses the land up to the fence and "makes improvement", which can be very simple things like a path or a small structure or their own fence, you could end up losing that part of your land through adverse possession.

I hear this said whenever this kind of topic comes up, here or elsewhere, but I've never seen any evidence of it actually being a legitimate problem.  Consider too that especially if the fence is set several feet inside your property you will still have to maintain the side facing the neighbor (mow, prune trees, weed, clear brush, not to mention maintaining the fence itself) you can provide plenty of proof that it's still yours, and prevent them from "improving" that side and have a good defense if they ever tried to make such a claim.

Cécile Stelzer Johnson wrote:

Susan Boyce wrote:My neighbors had a huge fenced area to keep their chickens safe, and they tore it down. Now they come over to my property and have torn up 4 flower beds. It does no good to tell them to take care of the problem as they do not care where their chickens go or what damage they cause. I have resorted to using a hose and banging pots to chase them off multiple times a day.  Just yesterday I was painting my front porch and had left the gate open to my backyard. When I was finished I discovered all their birds in my garden. I got the hose on and proceeded to chase them when the neighbor appeared and asked if that was her chicken..I said They sure are and I'm sick and tired of this. She ran into the house and never returned. No I...'m sorry I'll get my birds..nothing. How do I scare these chickens off so they never return. I already spent a ton of money fencing off 1/2 of an acre and don't have the resources to build more.

Check the rules on erecting fences in your area. Usually, each neighbor has to pay for half of it., even if only one neighbor wants it.  Here, if you erect a fence, [against your neighbor's wishes] the nicer side has to be facing your neighbor.
I hope you are taking pictures as it looks like this will end up in a court of law.
Also, was the fence erected more than 7 years prior to it being torn down? [Often, when a neighbor has enjoyed to fruit of something granted by the neighbor [such as a path or a fence] you should be entitled to having the fence remain.
Depending on who originally erected the fence, the [willful?] destruction of the fence may be an act of vandalism, punishable by fines, imprisonment or both.
I'm so sorry you have such a rude neighbor. Please tell us how you solve this. A sneaky, and probably not quite legal thing to do is to trap and 'disappear' the chickens, one by one until there are none left or your neighbor becomes more amenable to re-erecting a fence.  If they lay eggs on your side of the fence, the eggs are yours, just like the apples on an overhanging apple tree. How about making some really comfy laying boxes on your side;-)
Another one might be to get a hunting bird dog. [If your neighbor can't come to heel about keeping chickens out of your yard, how could you be expected to keep your dog from going into their yard, right?
I'm a dark Scorpio. I guess it shows, doesn't it.

I don't think you can compel your neighbor to pay for half of a fence if they don't want one.  If the fence would actually straddle the property line that's when usually each pays half.  But that also is typically a cooperative endeavor.  But to avoid conflict with current or future neighbors it's usually best to put up a fence some distance inside your property line.  The distance needed varies by jurisdiction, so best to look that up.

I will agree with the others that once infection sets in salvaging the meat is no longer advisable.  If it were a survivable injury, and you could let the animal heal completely, that's different, but harvesting an animal that's gone (or about to go) septic would not be a good idea.

Had you made the decision to put the goat down shortly after the attack when it was obvious that the veterinary treatment was not going to be sought you could have salvaged any meat not in the immediate damage zone.  In that case I would discard/compost all visibly damaged meat and also anything a couple inches at least out from the edge of the wound zone.  Whether the rest of the animal became dog food or human food is a matter of personal discretion on a case by case basis.

If those other suggestions don't work, and when you try to reintegrate her to the flock they go right back to picking on her you'll want to find a new home for either the picked on or the rest of the flock.  If it's just one or two that won't leave her along you could consider culling them, but if it's the whole flock it's a matter of picking a side to keep and rehoming or culling the other side.  

I'm a big advocate of breed (or keep around) the best and eat (or rehome) the rest.  However, "best" is a subjective criteria you can decide upon for yourself.  Since you're not breeding or otherwise keeping for commercial purposes what is "best" for you might be "worst" for someone more production minded.  

Cécile Stelzer Johnson wrote:
Unrelated, I would add that if you choose Cornish Cross, and a lot of them, you should line up a butchering facility and an appointment before you buy the chooks. Here again, ask me how I know: I just finished butchering 24 very large Cornish X with the help of my sister in law and her daughter. I timed my raising meat birds so that I would not have to clear a path, sled water, insulate in winter but I neglected this one detail.
I'm paying with my health now. Good luck to you. Lets us know how you are faring.

If you've done it plenty of times before, butchering a couple dozen (or even 100) broilers isn't too bad of a DIY project.  If this was your first time (or if you're not still under 60) I can see how this would be a daunting job.  For 100+ I'd definitely want a plucking machine to speed up the process, but this past Sunday my wife and I butchered 21 cockerels (egg layer breeds) and a BBW turkey and plucked them all by hand.  Got them done in about 4 hours of actual working time (had to take a break with 3 or 4 chickens and the turkey still to go so we could feed the kiddos).  And that was just the 2 of us, and included catching them, and heating the scalding water.  If the teens had been available to help it would have gone a lot faster.  It wasn't worth the time to pick up and return plus the effort of cleaning to rent the plucker I usually get for 100 bird processing days.

The one big issue (outside of just keeping them alive until desired slaughter day) is that in winter a lot more of the energy from their feed will go to keeping them warm rather than growing meat.  So for the same time you'll get a smaller carcass, or for the same size carcass you'll need a longer grow out.  

As mentioned by others already, I second the motion for not-CRX for this application.  Honestly I recommend not-CRX anyway, but especially for this.  They just don't have the feather coverage of other broiler breeds. I've always preferred Freedom Rangers.  They (or red rangers) should develop the down and feather coverage needed to stay warm enough.

I also suggest looking into fence in/out laws for your location.  Are you in an HOA?  If so is there anything in the bylaws to compel them to either dispose of the chickens or adequately contain them?  If they start getting threats of large fines from the HOA their tune will likely change quickly.

Do these neighbors rent or own?  If they rent maybe contact the landlord and see if they can do anything to force a correction.

If there's no HOA, but it turns out there are fence-in laws where you're at, then tell the neighbors that they are legally required to fence the chickens in.  If they still refuse, lure them into a trap, and then either take them to animal control or feed them to your dogs, or offer them to a friend that raw feeds and have them take the chickens.  

While it would be satisfying to make them pay for the damages to your garden, it's more trouble than it's worth to sue them over it, once the chickens are disposed of.  Most likely legal expenses would be far more than any amount you'd recover.

Scott Obar wrote:

Andrew Mayflower wrote:Those sheep might work well.  You can't trust them to leave saplings alone, so some means of protecting them will be necessary until the trees grow tall enough to not be vulnerable to the browsing.  

Sheep (generally) like to go under fencing, goats like to go over fencing.  With adequate fencing height (4' is usually plenty, some breeds might be OK with 3'), and any places they might try to go under blocked off sheep aren't terribly hard to contain.  They do need to be trained to electric fencing though.  Don't trust them to respect it automatically.  Set them up in a hard fenced area with the electric fencing inside the hard fence.  They'll learn quickly.

Are turkeys eaten in your area?  They can mow surprisingly effectively, and don't scratch to anything like the extent chickens do.  Electric netting will contain them, if you clip wings.  Heritage turkeys can easily fly 30' up into trees unless clipped.  Broad breasted will only fly until they get past a certain size, but at that juvenile stage they can still get over fencing unless clipped.  

Yeah turkeys are eaten here. Pretty much only for Christmas though. It's one bird I've considered adding. How would they get along with geese and others? I've heard turkeys are very good at catching grass hoppers. Do they have a homing instinct? We have all our birds (Chickens, guineas, muscovies and geese) trained to come back to the tractors at night for dinner and to go to bed. I don't care about flying. Some of our female muscovies do laps around our hills. I'd rather they be able to fly because we have opposums here, and rarely some other wild animals.

Thanks for the tip about sheep tending to go under fencing.

To train sheep to the electric fencing using a hard fence along the outside of the electric fencing, how long would you have to leave them in that training corral? Reason I ask is because I'd be worried about the parasites accumulating in a small corral in a short period of time.

My turkeys get along well with chickens.  No idea if they’d be ok with geese and other fowl but it seems like they should be ok if raised around them from the start.

Haven’t noticed an especially strong homing instinct, but if you handle them a lot as poults and until they’re 2-3 months old they’ll imprint on you and they’ll want to follow you everywhere.  

Time needed to train to electric fence will depend on the individual sheep.  But I’d give them at least a few days, maybe a week or longer if they seem stubborn.  

Second the motion to feed 2-3 smaller meals per day rather than 1 large one (if that's what you are doing now).  Is she getting enough organ meat?  

Also, the idea to grind her food has merit if she's struggling with chewing the bones.  Though chicken wings shouldn't be a struggle unless she's losing teeth.

Those sheep might work well.  You can't trust them to leave saplings alone, so some means of protecting them will be necessary until the trees grow tall enough to not be vulnerable to the browsing.  

Sheep (generally) like to go under fencing, goats like to go over fencing.  With adequate fencing height (4' is usually plenty, some breeds might be OK with 3'), and any places they might try to go under blocked off sheep aren't terribly hard to contain.  They do need to be trained to electric fencing though.  Don't trust them to respect it automatically.  Set them up in a hard fenced area with the electric fencing inside the hard fence.  They'll learn quickly.

Are turkeys eaten in your area?  They can mow surprisingly effectively, and don't scratch to anything like the extent chickens do.  Electric netting will contain them, if you clip wings.  Heritage turkeys can easily fly 30' up into trees unless clipped.  Broad breasted will only fly until they get past a certain size, but at that juvenile stage they can still get over fencing unless clipped.  

Starting to think ahead a little.  I have 7 Soay sheep at the moment, a ram plus 4 ewes and 2 lambs.  Intending to keep the ewe lamb in hopes of additional lambs in the future.  Ramling is possibly going to be sold as I don't want to butcher him this fall (nothing against butchering, I've done it before and will probably buy a butcher quality sheep or goat with the proceeds from the sale), but also don't want to mess with keeping him separate from the ram during rut.  Especially since I don't have a wether to keep with him, and buying one just for that isn't feasible right now.  

Anyway, the ram is 3 years old, so rush to replace him.  He's probably got 8+ years of good service left.  But, at the same time, crossing the ewes with a larger breed might be nice in order to get larger lambs for butchering and to take advantage of hybrid vigor.  One idea I have is to get that larger breed ram and put the ewes that produced from the Soay ram with that other one during rut, and leave the unrelated Soay ewes with the Soay ram.  Eventually I'd need a different Soay ram if I wanted to maintain that herd long term but it would be easy-ish to just shift around the ewes depending on how I wanted to get replacement ewes.

Soay have a wider pelvis relative to overall body size than most other sheep, and combined with the lambs being smaller at birth means usually super easy lambing.  Which I like, a lot.  Soay lambs also grow super fast and usually proportionally more than enough to catch up to other breeds, they just stop at a smaller overall stature.  So I think I want to maintain a pure Soay ewe flock for now.  Any non-Soay ram I might get I'd treat as a terminal sire and either butcher myself or sell to others that want to butcher them.

What would be some good non-Soay breeds to consider for this project?  Obviously I want them to be larger, but not tooooo much larger as I don't want to cause lambing difficulty.  Lower maintenance is highly desirable.  So something with at least decent parasite resistance, and if there's a hair (so naturally shedding) breed that would meet the other requirements that would be great.