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In the spring, owners of private farmsteads begin to think about what kind of laying hens they should buy this year. Those who like highly productive egg crosses know that these chickens lay eggs well for up to a year and with long daylight hours, so in the spring they need to be replaced with new stock. If you buy an egg in February or chickens in March, then just in time for summer you can get young laying hens that will faithfully provide the owner with eggs all summer.
However, the author of the video claims that he broken browns they conscientiously provided him with eggs even in winter, although he prevented this in every possible way by placing them in a cold, dark barn.
The best breeds of laying hens
Loman brown
Egg cross bred in Germany. The task of the Lohmann company employees who bred this chicken was to create a laying hen with high productivity, easily adaptable to any conditions. They achieved their goal.Today, lomans can be found almost everywhere. Like any highly productive laying hen, Lomans have a low body weight.
A chicken weighs 2 kilograms and lays 320 large eggs weighing more than 60 g per year. Young chickens begin laying eggs at 3 months, but after a year their egg production decreases. However, for a homestead, a decrease in egg production is not critical. Even a dozen culled lomans after a year are still quite capable of giving their owner 8–9 eggs a day for another year or another during the season.
So the herd will have to be updated quite often.
They lay eggs almost until the last day, and most often die from a water bladder formed in the oviduct.
It is up to the owner to decide whether to bring it to this point, slaughter the laying hens earlier, or take them somewhere, for example, to a stable with the words “let them live with you.” Bred in a completely safe environment, living for generations in safe conditions, left to the mercy of fate, they will soon be destroyed by dogs or foxes.
Lomans are an autosex breed. Roosters are broken white. Chicks can be identified by sex from day one.
One-day-old hens are red-brown, and the cockerels are yellow.
For lomans to realize their full potential, they need a warm room in winter, long daylight hours and high-protein, high-quality feed. Domestic breeds of laying hens do not require such supervision at home.
Pushkin striped-motley breed of chickens
The breed, bred twenty years ago, was approved only in 2007, but during this time it managed to gain popularity among owners of private farmsteads.Of course, garden owners should have liked a very poorly flying and sedentary chicken, which would not spend all day racking its brains on how to get into the garden or house, and would be satisfied with food poured into a bowl.
The Pushkin Striped Pied was bred by crossing Australian egg Astrolorps and oviparous white leghorn. The result of crossing to increase body weight was infused with white and white blood. colored broilers.
This is not to say that the result was stunning. Broiler meat has better taste characteristics. Nevertheless, the Pushkin breed has good meat and a fairly high egg production (220 eggs per year). The eggs are smaller than those of egg crosses (58 g), but with high fertility (>90%). Like other universal breeds, the Pushkin breed begins laying eggs at 5.5 months. The survival rate of chicks is also above 90%. But when they are grown up, up to 12% of chickens die. Most likely, they die not from disease, but when trying to switch them from porridge and egg feed, which is traditionally used to feed small chickens to grain or mixed feed.
There are two lines in the Pushkin breed. It was bred at two breeding stations at once: in the city of Sergiev Posad and St. Petersburg. In Sergiev Posad, fewer rocks were added to the Pushkin line, which makes this line more stable. But the St. Petersburg one is heavier and more egg-bearing. However, over the course of twenty years, birds from different lines have been mixed several times, and now similar characteristics can be found in both lines.
Majority Pushkin chickens has a variegated coloration, although roosters are white. Combs, earrings and earlobes should not be red. The comb of Pushkin chickens is pink.Ear lobes can be not only pink, but also white or white-pink.
Chickens weigh a little - only a couple of kilograms, but roosters can grow up to 3.
The Pushkinskaya has another interesting feature, also inherited from the ancestors of industrial productive breeds: when you try to catch it, it presses itself to the ground, hoping to hide. This behavior is typical for broiler breeds and egg crosses that have no fear of humans.
Features of keeping and raising Pushkin breed of chickens
Thanks to the unpretentiousness of the two main parent breeds, the Pushkin Striped Pied is also undemanding in terms of maintenance.
When breeding the breed, the main emphasis was placed on frost resistance, thanks to which even chickens can walk outside. But in cold weather it is better to provide a warm room for adult livestock and young animals.
Chickens of this breed are unpretentious to feed. You don’t have to spend money on expensive specialized feed, giving the birds grain and simple feed (and don’t forget to remove the 12% of the young animals that died from “diseases”). You can feed adult chickens 2 times a day. If feeding is carried out more often, then the daily norm is divided into smaller portions.
The main problem when breeding the Pushkin breed remains the purchase of purebred birds. There is always a risk of buying crossbred Pushkin chickens.
Kuchinsky Jubilee breed of chickens
Also a relatively new breed, registered only in 1990. It was bred using meat-egg and egg-bearing foreign breeds, the almost extinct today Russian breed of Liven chickens and the Moscow White.From foreign breeds chicken Kuchinskaya took good egg production and rapid weight gain, high vitality of chickens, strong physique and autosex. From domestic ones she inherited unpretentiousness and frost resistance.
Work on the breed has been carried out since the 60s of the last century, but the original version did not suit the breeders with the predominance of meat characteristics, since the goal was not to obtain a meat breed, but a meat and egg breed. Therefore, the work was continued and as a result a modern version of the Kuchin Jubilee was obtained.
Productive characteristics
The modern version of the Kuchin layer gains weight 2.8 kg, laying up to 180 eggs per year. The average weight of one egg is 60 g. Adult roosters weigh 3.8 kg.
Maximum egg production rates are observed in the first year, then the rates decrease. But the advantage of the breed is that they lay eggs all year round, stopping egg laying only during periods of intense molting.
The Kuchin Jubilee breed of chickens is distinguished by high rates of fertilization and hatchability of chickens. Up to 95% of chickens hatch from eggs laid for incubation. By the age of 5 months, roosters should weigh 2.4 kg, hens 2 kg. 5 months is the slaughter age for chickens of this breed.
Features of the Kuchin Jubilee chicken standard
Considering that many owners keep chickens of different breeds together, if you want to buy a purebred bird, you have to beware of “counterfeits,” that is, chickens that have other breeds in their family. This can often be seen by color. Although, a sign of unclean breeding may not appear immediately, but only after molting. Kuchin Jubilees should not have white feathers in their color.
If a rooster is needed simply for “crowing in the morning”, and a hen for food eggs, then the problem of unclean breeding is negligible. If the livestock was purchased with the intent of breeding and selling purebred birds, non-purebred chickens must be culled.
After one mating of a rooster, hens are able to carry eggs fertilized by this rooster for three weeks. Which, by the way, is often mistaken for a manifestation of mythical telegony.
Two color options for Kuchin Jubilee chickens
The breed standard provides only two color options: double outlined and edged.
Double outlined
In chickens, each feather has a double edge, which creates a black coating effect.
The chicken in the lower left corner has double outlined coloring.
Bordered
Kuchin anniversary
Serious disadvantages of the Kuchin Jubilee breed include their increased aggressiveness. It is better to keep Kuchin chickens separately from other animals and not add other chickens to them. Although sometimes an aggressive rooster guarding its territory is a good substitute for a dog.
Feeding Kuchin Jubilees
Kuchinskie are perfectly adapted to Russian realities, so they do not require special food. You can feed adult chickens and raise young chickens using traditional methods, giving adult chickens grain and table scraps, and giving young chickens boiled eggs, semolina and greens, or you can feed them with industrial feed.
Poltava clay breed of chickens
The breed was bred in the forest-steppe zone of Ukraine using the method of folk selection. Easily acclimatizes to different areas.The breed has been known since the end of the 19th century, and in the first third of the 20th it was considered one of the most egg-bearing, producing 100 eggs per year. The color of the chicken of that time was only clay.
As a result of the development of industrial egg production and the breeding of egg-laying crosses, it faded into the background and its numbers began to decline.
In order to preserve native breeds, measures were taken to increase the productivity of native breeds of chickens at the Borki farm in the Poltava region. As a result of these measures, the Poltava clay hen not only gained a couple of colors: black and frizzy, but also significantly increased egg production. Today, the Poltava clay hen lays up to 217 eggs per year.
The improvement of the Poltava clay chicken breed continued until the collapse of the Union. During the devastation, a significant amount of valuable breeding stock was lost, which affected the current state of the breed. While there was such an opportunity, Poltava clay chickens were selected not only for egg production, but also for body weight. As a result, in 2007, the Poltava clay chicken was registered as a meat and egg breed.
In addition to fairly high egg production, chickens of this breed weigh 2 kg, roosters more than 3 kg. The eggs of the Poltava clay breed are medium in size and weigh 55-58 g. Due to the presence in the genotype of the golden gene, which determines the color of these chickens, the shells of the eggs are brown on top.
Colors of Poltava clay chickens
Unfortunately, today the black and zozuly (from the Ukrainian “zozulya” - cuckoo) colors are practically lost, although work is underway to restore them.
Therefore, today, as in the 19th century, the main color of these chickens is clay in different variations of shades.
Poltava clay chickens can be either light yellow or dark yellow, almost red.
The Poltava clay rooster has darker wings compared to the body, a pink-shaped comb, red feathers on the neck, a black tail and an insolent appearance.
Features of keeping and breeding Poltava clay chickens
In general, chickens are unpretentious and easily adapt to various conditions, but chickens must be protected from the cold. This breed of chickens has good vitality; Poltava clayey embryos are more resistant to the Rous sarcoma virus than embryos of other chicken breeds.
Poltava clay chickens can be kept on the floor or in cages. When kept on the floor, they need bedding made of straw, sawdust or peat.
Poltava clay chickens are fed with whole grain or mixed feed. They are equally capable of absorbing both. They are especially fond of corn and waste from its processing. Since corn is a high-calorie food, chickens can become fat.
At chicken breeding per breed, the hen:rooster ratio should be 8:1. Chickens of this breed today can only be found in collections that preserve the gene pool, and on private plots. There are no poultry farms breeding this breed.
At the same time, the breed is quite valuable specifically for private home poultry farming, as it has properties that are important primarily for private owners: disease resistance, vitality, high egg production, good taste of meat.
Conclusion
Today there are a huge variety of breeds of laying hens. It is very difficult to cover all breeds in one article.On the Internet you can find references to very interesting, highly productive laying hens like “Shaverovsky cross 759” or “Tetra”, but information about them is most often contained in “a few words”. This means that it is unlikely that anyone could share their experience in purchasing and keeping these breeds of chickens. You can try to find these breeds and become a pioneer. If the main task is to obtain products, then it is better to focus on the already proven egg crosses “Loman Brown” and “Hisex”. And for obtaining both meat and eggs, domestic breeds of chickens that are capable of gaining good weight in the Russian climate are better suited.
