Comments

Episode-2733- The Case for Bantam Chickens — 5 Comments

  1. Has “egg glassing” ever been covered on TSP? I searched and found nothing. I’m interested in glassing eggs for egg preservation but it seems strange. Does anyone have experience with egg glassing? Thank you.

    • Logan, check out TOWSENDS website – he has a whole and very nice vid on egg preservation as our ancestors did it. The best way may be limeing. “Glassing” usually refers to the use of sodium silicate solution, also referred to as “water glass”. The idea of the various methods is to give the shell extra protection from air and microbes. The egg shells are basically lime.

  2. Bantams are lots of fun and a lot less work in my opinion. And I never thought about them as escaping the attention of Screaming Karen. Good! You covered the topic very well. They are quite bright and clever. In certain situations they will hide their eggs. I went out one day to find a bantam hen with a string of little bumblebees scurrying behind her. What the heck? Where did they come from?

  3. 2 to 1 bantam eggs to standard eggs is very helpful.
    Unfortunately I haven’t ever found any specific information regarding eggs per year for any bantam breeds.

    I’m on board on all the other points, it’s just the total eggs per year per bird that has me about to buy sex link again for this next round of birds. (Yes the hatchery eggs/year can be optimistic to a fault, but at least it’s a starting point for running numbers)

    I even like the idea of bantams being “two is one” because of the predator arguments.

    But I am looking for a dozen standard eggs a day. (I eat six a day by myself so using a dozen a day is indeed realistic)

    If the bantams have the same average numbers as the full size, then I can just double the number of birds. But if they only average two thirds of the output of a full size sex link, then simply doubling the number of birds wouldn’t meet my needs.

    Thoughts?
    Is there a sex-link bantam?
    If sex links are rooster A with hen B and both breeds also come in bantam (or “miniature” if you want to differentiate between true bantams and miniatures), then there should be sex link bantams right?

    I have four acres so the size differences are less of an argument in either direction. Just a matter of eggs per year.

    Thanks always to Jack and the rest of the folks that make this community so great.

    Da Li

    • You are likely better off with standard birds. You are also going to need to cull frequently to keep production up that high. Any chicken is born with 1000 eggs, they can’t make any more. Every round fired is a round expired, no reloads.

      Production reds can produce 300+ in year one, that is 30% gone. Most commercial facilities cull them at 18 months because they tend to start making eggs that look a bit funny in the second production year, but they are fine to eat. They will give you another 250-300 in year two.

      Once you go over 50% of eggs laid, production will drop in half after the next molt so 150 and you can expect it to drop in half in year 4, 70ish.

      This is why I like ducks of regular breeds that do 160-200 a year. They start with 1500 ovum. They will in general hit 50% at about the 5th year. Yea there are ducks that are high producers 250-300 but they tend to flame out about the 4th year hard. They also do not look healthy by that time.