The last couple years i have been ordering in six ready to lay hens and keeping my bird flock very small indeed. It was strange because for the other 17 years on the farm, i always have a mixed flock with breeding hens and roos.

The overall health issues of the past few years has made it better to just buy the ready to lay, and the breed i have chosen lays light blue eggs, its a crossbred and its small and barely eats anything all things considered. Called the Azure Blue by Frey’s, they have been proven to be just delightful to keep.

However with all the issues currently happening in terms of Bird Flu in general and that the farm is naturally on a spring and fall flight path and i fully expect we will have related issues. It was time to switch back to a lovely breed i have owned and loved before.

We will be bringing back to the farm the dual purpose Ivory chicken breed, i am bringing in a set amount of female/male chicks as this breed is able to be feather sexed as day olds

While nothing beats the White Rocks on terms of feed to meat and age rates, as a dual purpose the Ivory is a fine choice, with the hens laying on average light brown large eggs in the 275 range per year of heavy production and the males coming in at a lovely little 4 pound fryer at 12 weeks.

I have gotten them from Frey’s Hatchery before and that is where i am ordering them from again this time.  The hens have lovely small combs for our brutal winters an while the males do have larger, its not bad overall compared to other breeds. In keeping with lighting, they are mostly white or light body’s which helps in our deep winter.  Darker feathered birds need more light in winter compared to white or light colored. 

It is possible that i might also cross out a few of my best producing Azure Blue with a select Ivory roo for a lighter body weight laying hen, we will see

I feel the need to go back to having a dual purpose small flock so that i can if needed do a “closed flock” here on the farm for a couple years with the ability to raise my own meat chicks and replace layers.  

One of the perks of the Ivory is that on their second year of life, many of them will go broody and sit a fine clutch of chicks to raise, averaging here on the farm around 12 to 14 per clutch in the past. 

This year we also added in a small group of white rock meat birds to raise and 10 mini classic turkeys for a mix of fryer, rooster and canning and more.  

Have you ordered in your chicks yet? Are you looking to adjust things with the current state of the bird flu? Are you ordering in more layers as sales will be up for small farmers who do end of driveway sales?