A large part of my life is preparation and contingency planning. When one has a lot of kids to look after, one prepares to roll with the punches and change plans on the fly.

Since meat prices are going up, what was a long term goal is now a practical necessity, because when push comes to shove, those who have been living self-sufficiently are the ones who are best positioned to deal with adversity.

That being said, we have a great mix of dual purpose hertage breeds (see end of the post for our breeds and which ones we . They give us a rainbow of egg colors, for which I am truly grateful. But what has me really excited is the new additions to our homestead: a secondary flock of dual purpose breeds that we’ll grow out and use exclusively for meat.

We now have around fifty chickens, half of which are heading out of their prime laying years, the other half which are just coming into laying.

I feel the extra chickens (clearly producing more eggs than we need) provide us with an extra layer of self-sufficiency, one which has me looking forward to pastured chicken. ::yum::

What has always concerned me about homesteading is the cost of feed, but fortunately, I discovered that #smallscalesilage is possible and that my experimental A&M grass is perfect for it.

Ten weeks ago, I chopped it at 1″ thick with my weed whacker and a brush attachment and ran it through my electric wood chipper. A gas chopper would do a more robust job, but we can’t afford one at the moment. The electric is a tad time consuming, but it works.

In the pic below, our homestead chickens go to town on the silage.

We started our first batch of chicks to hatch, choosing the largest eggs in the hopes that they produce some hefty grow outs.

Homestead meal for the win: slow and low roasted marinated lapin, roasted green papaya, and collards with cheese. Everything except the cheese was grown and harvested by us. It’s amazing how much more one appreciates what it takes to grow food when one grows it one self.

List of Breeds

Australorps: Handle the heat tolerably well, but require shade in the hottest part of the day. Lay many large brown eggs. Some birds get very large, but laying will slow with extreme heat.

Barred Rock: Solid homestead bird for Central FL, consistent layer, not huge meat birds but solid. Handle the heat without issues.

Buff Orpington: Best heat tolerance, egg laying, and meat production. Lovely temperaments, and consistent layers.

Easter Egger: Purchased for color variation, but large blue eggs from a few. Not great on the meat front. Tolerant of heat, but don’t thrive.

Olive Egger: these are ymy nautiest birds, escaping whenever possible, but lay gorgeous green egg, not very heavy for meat, but solid, regular layers.

Sussex – definite keepers for a homestead, they are a nice heavy size and lay a good amount of eggs, so far decently heat tolerant provided sufficient shade and water

Americauna and Easter Egger – lovely blue eggs, regular layers, so so on meat production so I won’t be hatching these for meat grow outs.

Big Red – only two of these survived and I dont know how they’ll do this summer, but I love these birds as meat grow outs. They grow to meat size fast and are able to forage. They are beefy birds, easily eight pounds or more. Egg laying is moderate, but nice size eggs.