Hi from Allerton Brahmas

[Anonymous]

Nice to have stumbled onto this forum in it's infancy!!
I used to be member with the same user name on PP forum and am trying to re-register!

But for the here and now - I have been keeping chickens for 7 years, we lost all our Brahma breeding stock last May to a badger which got into our Gold's house overnight and in the panic that ensued as he realised he was stuck, all 20 beautiful birds were killed. Then two DAYS later all our darks were killed in a daytime vixen and cubs attack - another 20 birds!!
So, we are slowly and expensively rebuilding our stock. We have some baby Large breed Gold Brahmas which are looking the part and next year we will buy a good cockerel or two to go with the hens we will hopefully (everything x'd!!) get form the ones we have.
But to make money ( and have the beautiful eggs) for now we have a total mix of youngstock hatched to sell.
Orps, faverolles, wyandottes etc. We will sell them at POL to make some £ or prob p's!! for our future Brahma breeding.

We also have a pair of African Geese who are just 2. And we have a broody Cochin sitting on 12 guinea fowl eggs.
Lastly we are looking forward to the festive season and considering getting some turkey eggs to hatch and grow for the table as we are fed up of paying the £50 for our locally grass raised bird.

I have pretty much 'been there and done it' on the chickens and geese front, but if anyone has any advice on the G.F and the turkey, that'd be greatly appreciated.

 

[Tim]

Hi Allerton Brahmas,

Nice of you to say hello...and sorry to hear how you lost your birds. Yes, I'm always thinking of foxes as the number one predator but in some areas badgers can be a real problem with chickens.

We certainly are in our infancy (2 weeks old tonight) and there's still a little work to do here and there as we go along but with PB forum closing we launched rather earlier than planned.

Janice Houghton Wallace of Turkey Club UK wrote an interesting article on keeping turkeys on poultrykeeper if you're interested. She's also got an excellent book on Turkeys that I reviewed back in Feb on the site.

I'm still learning myself with Guinea Fowl - they are good fun, a little crazy at times (like last night when they suddenly decided to roost on the fence rather than inside the house??!) and can drive you mad with their noise sometimes although that said they are interesting and a good little alarm system when there's a predator about... always useful to have!

Tim