John Bowen

To Trace, I understand and fully support your decision not to trim combs or wattles. It IS however common practice whether you agree with it or not. I am not here to argue comfort or ethics or anything else. I did trim my birds because it was much easier on them during the two and 3 week -35 or worse weather we had at that time. I just made more sense to keep them from the pain and long recovery of frost bite. I have personally had frost bit and I can tell you from experience it is one of the most painful things I ever endured. Selective breeding is a practice that has been going on all over the world for eons with every kind of domestic animal you care to name. There are harsh realities that have to be faced regardless if whether you wish to be a hobby breeder or like some here actually develop better genetics for your own personal requirements. Whether that be for show, production, food or what ever the case may be. I offered a suggestion that I was aware of and meant no offense to anyone in doing so. If you don't consider trimming an option I congratulate you on your decision. Others here may think as I did that it is better for the bird to suffer the few seconds of trimming than the weeks of pain and recovery of healing from frost bite and sometimes, they simply do not survive the stress. Just a harsh reality of nature. I hope some of what I have said here can help others in their adventures with their flocks. I shared knowledge I myself used for my own and each and every one of us has an individual opinion and that is how it is SUPPOSED to be! You can take what parts of my suggestions suit your needs and leave the rest on the table for someone else to use if they should wish to do so. As I said. Once I started using the heated pipe tape on my roost bars none of my birds ever lost a toe to frost bit again. Yes, it did cost power to keep them on for months at a time but I did not want my birds to suffer and the cost was something I could easily absorb so that is what I did for the betterment of my flock. MY personal choice. I fully expect you to make your own choices and thank you for the reply! I appreciate your honest response. Not many these days willing to do that unfortunately. Props to you! Ya'll take care now, hear!!

Do yourself a favor and go to horizontalhives.com and take a look there. The gentleman that runs that site is a Russian Immigrant and he will blow your mind with the knowledge he shares. I love his books and when I finally figure out where my next house will be I plan on practicing what he teaches and start keeping a hive or two for honey purposes. You know you can probably trap all the hives you need in the wild I hope and he will teach you how to do that also. He has many youtube video's and is a treasure for those keeping bees. I hope your hive survives. Ya'll take care now, hear!

I'm calling Hen on this one. I see no evidence of saddle feathers and there are definitely not any hackle feathers coming in on the neck. The only breed of chicken I know of that you have to wait until crowing age to tell apart is the Brown Henny. So named because you can't tell the males from the females until they start crowing. What fun they were to raise! If she was going to have a saddle it would have been grown in by now. So would the hackle feathers (the very colorful ones that come in around the head and neck). I see nothing to indicate this is a male. Normally, hens don't begin to lay until about 10 months of age and you will usually get one or two pullet eggs before you get a full sized actual egg from them. Remember, if you do not have a Rooster on the property the hens will act like one anyway. One hen will step the other and visa versa. I had a friend here in Arizona that wanted to keep chickens but he only raised rare breeds and actually went to the expense of having surgery done on several of his Roosters so they could not crow loud enough for anyone to hear it. I know, that's going a bit far for me too. Anyway, I think you have a very nice Hen to add to your flock. Remember, for heavier bodied breeds your nesting boxes need to be positioned so they can easily reach them or they will just lay their eggs wherever and you will end up with an egg eating problem. I had wooden eggs that I kept in all my nesting boxes so I didn't have much of a problem that way. Usually if I caught a hen eating another hens eggs she went to the butcher pen and that was the end of the problem. Ya'll take care now, hear!

Hi Ladies, Hey, my Mom canned like a mad man the whole time I was growing up and she had great success at canning fish and meat. I was an avid hunter and Dad and I both avid fishermen so she always had something to do besides the garden stuff and fruit she would do seasonally. She told me once and I have no clue why it stuck with me all these years, but she said the secret to canning any kind of meat or meat product was to leave the jars IN the pressure cooker to cool. I know, takes FOREVER but that was how she did it and I do not remember her ever having a jar that did not seal. She had 3 canners too though so who knows. I might be nuts here. LOL Ya'll take care now hear!

Okay Ladies and Gents. Here's some basics for breeding your back yard flocks. If you plan to keep them for many years you need to keep very accurate records and the hens you intend to breed need to be single mated so you know EXACTLY what you have when they hatch. You can breed 3 generations deep and no more with related birds. You can go past that if you wish but you will start to find every genetic flaw there may be by the 4th and 5th generation. Unrelated Rooster and unrelated hen give you the opportunity to set 4 different lines of the same crossing. Breed first mating Rooster to Hen. Keep the pullets if you are after egg production and ONE stag or young rooster from that crossing. Next breeding, pullet to rooster, Hen to stag. That is your second line. If you keep the best of the rooster/ pullet and the best of the hen/stag and breed those back to the hen and rooster again, you now have your third line but do not stay within those genetics because if you do you will start to get throw backs that look and act nothing like your original mating. No if you do the same with those three lines you can breed for 30 years and always have a fresh crossing you can go back to at any time. I kept one line of a rare breed of Game Cock for nearly 35 years and never had any that needed to be culled. No egg foot or any other maladies to deal with. BUT I kept meticulous records. All my birds were wing banded and tattooed and those numbers were always recorded each time I bred and all the chicks from that crossing were banded and tattooed also. I did not have ANY birds on my property that I couldn't pick them up and tell you within 5 minutes who the Rooster and Hen were and show them to you if they were still alive. I had roughly 200 birds at any given time. Once the chicks hatched I would turn the hen out to free range and let them run. Trust me, mother nature will thin them very quickly. Only the strong and the smart survive. Even with single mating what you call Pure blood birds you are going to get the odd one now and again because no matter what breed you choose there are genetics from the Rooster and Hen of the original crosses that set that line that will just pop up occasionally and there is nothing you can do about it. My line was Raven Black by color but about every 3rd brood I would end up with either a bright red, pure white or a spangled bird out of those black chickens. Just a throw back to something in the background of the original crossing that showed up. If you want to keep conformation and color consistent choose only those that are consistent with what you want to breed. If you start using the odd ones in your breeding program it will change the pattern and color of the feathering very quickly. Up to you how to handle that. I culled the odd ones. They either went in the broiler or were disposed of as chicks. Sorry for those that think it was cruel but you HAVE to be selective if you want to sustain your line. Just a harsh reality of raising them. We used them for both, eggs and meat so I needed to be selective for what we wanted. For colored egg production, we always used something out of the Araucana family. Pure Araucana's are hard to find now days and we found that the Americana were much hardier anyway. They are funny birds as far as temperament and my Daughter had several of them and would follow her around like a puppy and she had even trained them to sit on command. ROFL She spent hour upon hour playing with those birds. They are not very cold weather hardy though so keep that in mind if you live in a challenged climate. The breed originated in Chile so there you have it. If you have any questions you can message me or you can contact me at  jgbowen1@gmail.com also. Ya'll take care now, hear!

By trim I mean just that. A pair of scissors works just fine. Yes, there will be blood and no it can not be comfortable for the chicken. However, if you have ever felt frostbite yourself, it is far better in my opinion to let them suffer a few seconds of pain rather than weeks of pain trying to heal frost bite. I took pipe warming tape and wrapped it around my roost poles to keep them from losing toes in the winter time. In Montana we would get two to three weeks of below zero temperatures every winter so their feet suffered greatly till I used the pipe heating tape on the roost bars. Just a suggestion. The only problem was they all fought over who got to sit in the middle of the roost after that. LOL

You are aware that you can trim the combs and wattles of both the hens and the roosters right? When I raised chickens in Montana that was one of the fall rituals was making sure their combs were trimmed to prevent frost bite and make it easier for them to keep warm. The comb loses an incredible amount of heat in the wintertime. Look at the ring neck pheasant or any other cold weather surviving fowl. No combs to speak of on any of them. Remember, all domesticated chickens were bred and developed from Jungle Fowl where the comb was critical to help cool off the bird. Not keep it warm.

Hello to those that have welcomed me and thank you so much for the response! Seems like an amazing group we have here. I have lived all over the USA because my Father was in the Military and we moved sometimes twice a year to his posts of duty. Not a fun life for a kid but you learn things others never do in a life time. Okay here goes, Yes, I do like to garden, yes, I do know how to live off the land successfully year round in both cold and warm climates. My Father was Special Forces and he taught us things that very few people would approve of about surviving and being able to protect and defend. He was a rare man and I miss him every day. I was taught how to build any house from the ground up including electrical, plumbing, heating, cooling and all things in between. My Dad, no matter where we went, ALWAYS made us grow a garden. Not just a small little patch either. He had to have a Huge garden or he was not happy. lol As kids we hated it but the knowledge that I now have I owe to him! He showed us wild "weeds" that will actually sustain you and even how to harvest wild grains to make porridge or to grind the seeds to flour using two rocks. So yes, I am well versed in the art of homesteading. I helped build log cabins as a young man and have done countless hours of masonry work along with straw bale building, earth coil building, adobe and many others. Some conventional and others not so much. lol Made some pretty creative shelters for a friend living outside of Deming, New Mexico. I can do pretty much anything I need to do to survive from growing my own food to harvesting what needs to be harvested be it by trap, snare, hunting, fishing what ever the requirement I understand the need and have the knowledge to do so. I am 62, retired, have 5 grown children, no, I am not involved with anyone and yes I would consider a homestead with the right person. First and foremost, here are a few tips you should keep in mind if you are planning to continue in this lifestyle. 1. Water is the single most important thing you should consider. 2. Climate is the second most important consideration. What can you grow, how long can you grow it how much time do you have to do so. 3. Terrain is critical. Hard to grow anything on a cliff face. There are many acres of land for sale at a very inexpensive price that are that ways because they are nearly vertical. Look before you buy! 4. What ever time you think things are going to take, TRIPLE it!! Day to day living has a way of changing what you thought you were going to do when you got up in the morning. 5. TAKE CARE OF YOURSELF!! If you are not healthy and are not prepared to do what is needed how do you plan on doing what you intend? No one plans to fail, they fail to plan. Just a little more about me. Hope this answered all the questions I got from you. Ya'll take care now, hear!! John

Hello everyone. I'm John currently living in Tempe, AZ. I'm 62, in relatively good shape looking for companionship and friends. I love the outdoors, enjoy fishing, don't hunt anymore but if it came to needing to eat that would not be an issue for me. Hope all are enjoying their lives in this covid mess as best they can. Hope to meet some of you and see where this ride takes us.