Author: dheltzel

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4 different pullet chicks from a single breeding pen?

Taking care of a multitude of pens can really add to your workload. But, if you are serious about selling chicks, having a variety available will really increase sales. To help with that, you can combine some pens to create more than 1 kind of chick. This takes advantage of colors that are distinguishable at hatch, and also creating desirable hybrids.

Hybrids have some advantages both to the buyer (better overall productivity and vigor) and the seller (buyers need to come back for more, they cannot generally breed their own to the same effect). They can add some complexity to breeding, but once understood, they can reduce the number of breeding pens needed.

I am going to describe a single pen of autosexing breeders that can produce 4 distinct types of pullet chicks. These constitute 4 of my 6 best selling chicks.

  • Cockerels – Silver Welbars that are known to be heterozygous for gold. It can be tricky to determine this unless you know that parentage.
  • Welbar pullets – these can be silver or gold, that will have no effect on the colors of their daughters.
  • Legbar pullets – these can be Cream or Opal (Lavender), but there is no advantage to using Opals over Creams as the resulting chicks look identical.

If you use Gold Welbars and no Silvers as the pullets in this pen, then every Silver cockerel chick (easily identified at hatch) will be heterozygous for gold. For this reason, I usually hold back only gold pullet chicks for next years breeders. If you like silver hens, you can certainly keep them as well, but if you use them in this breeding pen, the cockerels from those hens will all be silver, but only half will be the desired heterozygous for gold. If you use a silver cockerel that is homozygous for silver, every resulting chick will be silver. You can still sex them easily, but you will not have gold chicks to sell from this cockerel. There is a genetic test for the number of copies of the silver gene that a cockerel has. I have not tried that, but it is an option if you do get into this situation.

The Legbars in this pen will lay blue eggs of course, and it is essential that you mark them if you have other blue egg layers, and that you hatch them separately from the Welbar eggs. The blue eggs will hatch into autosexing olive eggers, both silver and gold (assuming the Silver Welbar cockerel is het for gold). You will not be able to tell the olive egger and welbar chicks apart! so hatch and brood them separately. You can use tiny rubber bands, but I find they often fall off. I sell almost all the Olive Egger chicks within a few days, so this is a very temporary problem for me.

These are 4 colors/types of chicks you can hatch from this pen, all autosexing:

  • Gold Welbars (from the dark brown eggs)
  • Silver Welbars (from the dark brown eggs)
  • Gold Olive Eggers (from the blue eggs)
  • Silver Olive Eggers (from the blue eggs)

In the next post, I will explain how a second pen can produce 2 colors of Legbars, to finish out the “big 6” of chick demand.

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Shipping day old poultry

I have always had much better results sending and receiving day old poultry than eggs. I now think of buying shipped eggs as mostly flushing money down the toilet. Shipped chicks sometimes fails, I have had a few boxes that were complete losses, and a few with poor survival after delays in shipping, but well over 90% are what I would call “very successful”.

Materials needed:

  • Shipping boxes – unlike eggs, you must have post office approved boxes for day old poultry (really, for any live poultry). These are available from a number of sources
  • Pads/Liners – usually wood excelsior glued to paper or in mats, cut to the proper size for a 25 chick box. Sometimes these come with the boxes, but often not, so check that and see if you need to buy some
  • Grogel – the green stuff that is sold to give chicks a probiotic boost. They readily eat it and it is a good source of water
  • Cups for the Grogel
  • Hole punch for punching holes in the cups (if using tie wraps)
  • Way to attach the cups to the boxes – small tie wraps or hot glue work
  • Packing tape

Boxes are sized by the number of chicks they hold, 25, 50 or 100. Do not buy 100 chick boxes, it is cheaper to ship 2 boxes of 50 chicks each than a single box of 100. Don’t ask me why, the USPS is run by the government, so probably no one has a cogent answer for that. I use both 25’s and 50’s. It is not much more to buy and ship a 50 chick box, so if you ship a lot of chicks, start with those or get both. Here are some sources for shipping boxes. These also have the excelsior pads to use as liners.

Grogel is manufactured by Dawes for commercial use with day old poultry. I use it for all my newly hatched chicks, as well as putting cups of it in the chick shipping boxes. It keeps well if kept in a dry place, and the larger packs are much cheaper per unit. Here are the sources I have used for Grogel:

Cups for the Grogel can be found at Walmart. Tie wraps or hot glue, and packing tape, are commonly available.

Packing

Get the boxes you need folded before the morning you plan to ship. It can be tricky figuring out how to fold them. You can setup the boxes, put in the pads and attach the cups that will hold the gro-gel. The morning you are shipping, mix up enough grogel to fill the cups. I use 2 of the cups in each section (holds 25 chicks). Now you are ready to move in the chicks. If you are using a double box, divide the chicks between the 2 sides. The numbers of chicks varies by their size, ambient temps (fewer chicks when it is hot) and the number purchased. After putting in the chicks, I usually take a pic of the chicks, then put on the top and use packing tape to attach the top. Add the label and write the customer phone number on the top – “Hold and Call XXX-XXX-XXXX”.

Mailing the chicks

This varies a lot between branches, and sometimes you have to train the postal employee how to mail them. I almost always use Priority, not Express. Express is rarely enough faster to justify the much higher costs. There is a $15 surcharge on Priority chick shipments starting in 2025.

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Selecting breeders from growouts

I am busy now sorting chickens and creating the breeding pens for 2026. I wanted to write down some thoughts about how I go about doing this.

Chickens have a relatively short productive lifespan. I have had some hens lay well for 5 years or longer, most notably my Cream Legbars, but most breeds see a significant drop in egg production much sooner than that. Cocks often have even shorter productive lives than the hens. This all means that you need to select replacement breeders fairly often.

What are your breeding goals?

The first consideration is to understand your goals in running a breeding program. Breeding goals can vary a lot, it is not always to breed toward the SOP. I have a clear goal (or goals) in mind for every breed I maintain. Here are some examples of breeding goals:

  • Showbird Standard of Perfection (SOP)
  • Darkest possible eggs
  • Definitive chick sexability
  • Genetic diversity for long term gene pool maintenance

Culling from the growout pool

So, you have a lot more chicks growing out than you need for the next breeding pen, when can you start culling the ones you want to sell or give away? Again, it depends. Some breeds and some goals require that you wait until they are close to breeding age. An example from my pens are the Welbars. I have been selecting against crooked toes that are obviously genetic (not found in other breeds). The problem is that the chicks do not show any crooked toes until they are at least 4 months old, so early selection is a bad idea. The counterpoint is selecting for the best crests in Legbars. Legbars show their best crests before their combs get large, so you can pick the best crests when the chicks are about 6 weeks old, allowing you to remove the poor examples early. Decide what traits are most important to select for and start looking for those traits early. You will learn about each of your lines as you raise more generations.

Genetic Testing

This is new and exciting! There are a number of companies offering genetic tests, you should familiarize yourself with the current state of these tests. The technology is advancing rapidly, so check for interesting gene tests often. I use sexing tests for geese, and will consider them in other cases as the prices drop. Even more useful are the tests for the blue egg gene. This test is more expensive, but well worth it as it can replace a lot of test breeding or just ambiguity.

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Silver gene and autosexing breeds

If you have not read my previous post called “Working with the gold / silver gene”, I recommend reading that first, as this post builds on the concepts of the sexlinked silver gene.

Is it possible to use 2 different sexlinked genes at the same time? Of course! There is no linkage between the silver gene (used for red sexlinks) and the barred gene (used for black sexlinks). This won’t use both genes for sexing, though it is possible to do that (more on that later).

In this example, we will be using autosexing chickens, specifically welbars. The genes needed to make a line of chickens autosexing are 1) wild type chick down (partridge, black breasted red) and 2) sexlinked barring. Some other genes can interfere with autosexing, but some genes are compatible with the autosexing combination. Silver is compatible. Most autosexing breeds are gold-based, for example Legbars and Bielefelders. Welbars are gold-based in their original form, but silver has been added to some lines (though it is still rare). I have heard of the existence of Silver Bielefelders, and I think it would be fairly easy to create a line of Silver Biels if you had a silver Welbar to cross into the Biels.

So, Welbars are well established as autosexing, and available in both silver and gold. They remain easily sexable no matter which silver/gold genes they possess. So you can use the examples in the previous post with Welbars to create a pen that produces both silver and gold chicks. This is great if you are selling chicks, as most customers want some of each color.

If you use a silver pullet and a gold cockerel, you will get red sexlinks, where all the pullet chicks are gold and all the cockerels are silver. This is a fun experiment to prove how sexlink genes work. It does not help if you want to produce more silver pullets, but the cockerels from this cross are heterozygous for gold, so if you cross the F1’s, you will get both gold and silver pullets and cockerels, that are still sexable at hatch (because they are autosexing). This is much better than you can get from the commercial red sexlinks, where the F2 is not sexable at all.

As you build a breeding pen of Welbars to produce both gold and silver pullet chicks, keep in mind that only the genetics of the cockerels matter in regard to the proportion of gold to silver pullet chicks.

  • Gold cock – all pullet chicks are gold
  • Silver cock that is homozygous for silver (no gold gene) – all pullet chicks are silver
  • Silver cock that is heterozygous for silver (1 gold gene) – pullet chicks are about half silver, the rest gold

Best pen for producing salable Welbars chicks

Gold pullet with a Silver cock that is heterozygous for silver. This is a self-sustaining group. When you want to raise replacement breeders, keep gold pullets and silver cockerels. All the silver cockerels from this mating will be heterozygous for gold. If you keep silver pullets in this pen, you might consider separating the best looking gold pullets for a time and raise cockerels only from their eggs. You don’t need many replacement cockerels, so this should be doable.

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Working with the gold / silver gene

In chickens, the gene for silver is dominant and sex-linked. Gold is the wild or normal version. This gene is the basis for creating the very popular red sexlinks. To create sexable chicks with this gene, you need a silver female and a gold male. Some white breeds are really silver (Rhode Island Whites, for example) and those will work, but most breeds we think of as white are based on either the dominant or recessive white, and will not work as the female side of the cross (unless the hen is recessive white and silver, but you can easily determine that from the appearance. If a white hen has a pattern, like silver laced) then it is almost always silver. This presents an interesting opportunity for small breeders to create sexable gold-laced breeds (polish, wyandottes, cochins, etc).

Apart from creating sexable chicks, this gene can also be used to produce both silver and gold chicks from a single pen. Doing this requires that you know the genotype of the cock, as his genes control the color of his daughters. If he is heterozygous for silver (looks silver, but has only 1 copy of the silver gene), then about half his daughters will be silver and the rest gold.

The colors of the male chicks is more complicated because the hen’s genes also come into play. If the hens are gold, half of the male chicks will be silver, but have a copy of the gold gene (from their mother), and the rest will be gold (gold gene from each parent). This creates a self-sustaining breeding group as long as you only keep gold pullets to replace their mothers and silver cockerels to replace their father.

If the hens are silver, then all the cockerels will be silver (remember the red sexlinks where all the male chicks are silver since their mother is silver). The pullet chicks will still be half gold (the mother’s genes do not come into play at all with her daughters when it comes to sex-linked genes). Half of the cockerels will carry a gene for gold and half will have 2 copies of silver – but you can’t tell by looking at them.

In this situation, where half the pullet chicks are gold and half silver, it is really most useful if you can also sex the chicks. You can’t use the silver gene to sex them, as you are using that to create the color ratio. Is there another way to color sex them? As it turns out, there is. More on that in the next post.

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How to outcross Opal Legbars

Since getting Opals from another breeder, I have been continuously improving them by outcrossing them to my line of Cream Legbars. The only consequential difference between the two is the gene called lavender. This gene is common in many breeds of poultry, resulting in color variants called Lavender, Self-blue, Isabel or Isabella. Isabel is the technical name for the Opal Legbars, and consists of the Lavender gene added to a wild-type pattern. This is most well known in the Isabel Leghorns, which were used to create Opal Legbars from a cross to Cream Legbars.

There are several additional genes at play with the Opals in addition to the Isabel color:

  • Blue egg gene (O) – single gene dominant, autosomal
    • Crested gene – single gene, partially dominant, autosomal
    • Sexlinked Barring – single gene, partially dominant, sexlinked (responsible for autosexing)
    • Cream – single gene, partially dominant, autosomal (hard to detect when combined with lavender)

All these genes make for a rather complex process to create the Opals. All of these are correctly homozygous in a good line of Cream Legbars. There is some debate about the usefulness of the cream gene when combined with lavender. I tend to ignore the cream gene, but assume that my line is probably homozygous for cream or heading in that direction. Outcrossing to this good line of creams, will bring the Opals closer to the proper homozygous state for all the genes. It is useful that most of the genes are partially dominant, so you can tell if an individual is heterozygous or homozygous. With the blue egg gene is much harder to detect the genotype, but there is a genetic test for this that is readily available (IQ Genetics in Miami, FL).

Outcross Options

  • Opal male x Cream females – This is the pairing I use because it is so simple to add some Cream pullets to the Opal breeding pen. All chicks that hatch as not Opals (normal color for legbar chicks) are the chicks from the Cream pullets. They are kept as F1’s of the outcross.
  • Cream male x Opal females – You can use this pairing, but do not keep any cream females in this pen or you will not be able to differentiate between the F1’s and pure Creams.

F1 pairings

  • F1 x F1 – Sibling pairing of the F1’s results in F2 chicks that are 50% genes from the Cream Legbar parent. Do not be concerned about this as inbreeding, these are very far from being inbred. You can inbreed these for many generations before you see any inbreeding depression. These F2 chicks will be about 25% Isabel and 75% Cream phenotypes. The creams are not reliably heterozygous for the lavender gene, but are excellent layers, so typically easy to sell if they are female. You can tell both the sex and the chicks that are homozygous for the lavender gene at hatch. This is a great help in knowing which chicks you should keep.
  • F1 x Opal – Pairing the F1’s to a pure Opal will result in F2 chicks that are only 25% Cream Legbar genes, but you should get about twice as many of the Opal chicks. About half are true Opals, the other half are more heterozygotes (like the F1 chicks).

My process for outcrossing Opal Legbars

  • 2023 – Tested Opals for the blue egg gene, selected only O/O breeders
  • 2023 – Added pure Cream Legbar pullets to the O/O breeder pen
  • 2024 – F1 x F1 of chicks hatched from those Cream Legbar pullets, kept only Opal chicks
  • 2025 – Opals (now 50% CL genes) as breeding flock. Added pure CL pullets. Keeping heterozygous chicks as breeders.
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Dealing with aggression in geese

Much of what was previously posted about aggression in chickens applies to geese, but there are a few differences I want to talk about.

Ganders instinctively guard their family, with the intent of raising young. A rooster’s caring often stops after the mating, though some show their hens where a good laying spot is, and some will guard and even care for chicks. With geese, the family oriented behaviors are the norm, not exceptional at all.

Geese are smarter and have better memories than chickens. They may be the smartest of all the commonly kept poultry. This has advantages and disadvantages. They remember encounters with you, and seem to consider how to change your behavior as you are trying to change theirs. Maintaining eye contact with an aggressive gander is the first step. If you ever act afraid, they will not forget that episode and work to repeat it. But there is no reason to be afraid, even the largest gander is not capable of inflicting actual harm beyond bruising your skin and ego. So, when you enter the space with an aggressive goose, march straight towards him, keeping eye contact and forcing him to decide whether he can stand his ground or if you are maybe going to catch him. In my experience, they always turn and run away if you move toward them quickly and decisively.

Now that you’ve established that you are bigger and faster, and not the least bit afraid of him, the gander will always be on the lookout for you and issue a warning to the others whenever you appear. He may still look for an opportunity to bite you in the hopes of eliciting a fear response, so always be aware of his location, otherwise you might get “goosed”.

If your gander was tamed as a gosling and knows you well, his familiarity with you may make him more emboldened. My young ganders would nibble on my fingers as goslings, but as adults, their nibbling is no longer sweet, but motivated by hostility. It makes them harder to deal with as they will come right up to me with little fear. They want to dominate me and make me run from them. I never run or act afraid, in fact I lower myself to be less of a threat and use goose fighting techniques to establish dominance. I treat this as a game and try to play it frequently. In the game, I am going to pat the goose on top of their head. This is how dominant ganders bring others into submission, but putting their head over the others and establishing that he is bigger and taller. So that is what I do with the game I call “Pat You on the Head”. They hate this game because they are always too slow to win, and soon move away and acknowledge my dominance to the other geese. My first experience doing this was with 3 yearling Pilgrim ganders. I played the game with the head gander only once, and he and his brothers learned it well. A year later, his brother was my main gander in a breeding flock and still remembered the game, even though he never played it with me even once.

I can say I have never been bitten by any of my ganders. I have been bitten by broody hens, and that can hurt quite a bit, so either wear gloves or pull her off the nest before stealing her eggs. I can’t get mad at her for defending her nest of course.

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Dealing with aggression in chickens

I have had a few rounds with aggressive poultry over the years. Really makes for some funny stories because the outcomes are always a bit one-sided. There are theories about why some become aggressive when a brother or son is sweet as can be. I do believe there is a genetic component, and that the tendency to be aggressive can be mostly bred out of a line of birds. But there is also very clearly a husbandry component as well. You can’t very well change the genetics of a bird in your care, but you can change how you interact, and that is what I want to talk about.

Males of most types of poultry have a role as protectors of their female(s). In many cases they must demonstrate their prowess in order to keep their family together. But they are also prey animals, and any prey animal that is too bold in the face of danger will not survive to pass his genes to the next generation. They must balance these 2 factors and the intersection of these is the place in the social network that humans occupy. Any birds that view you strictly as a predator will never act aggressively, they will seek to flee. But that is not fun for us or them, so we try to maintain a friendlier relationship. This is where familiarity can breed contempt. If a male does not fear you, perhaps because you raised him as a pet, or have always acted gently toward him, he can see you more as a rival. This is the principle source of aggression from male birds.

Chickens have a group social order. When allowed to roam and form their own flocks, they tend to be small and dominated by a single male. Sometimes a second or third male will join the group, but they must give way to the primary male at all times. They can gain the protection and socialization of the flock, and also provide additional guard duty. I think of them as a “wing man” for the primary male. This is not the place for a human, you cannot act submissive to the primary male, that is where he wants you, but only increased aggression from him will result. You must assume the role of primary male whenever you are in contact with a flock that contains a rooster. Most roosters are aware that this can work for them and will readily allow it, as you are soon gone and they are back in charge. And you do provide some benefits for the flock (food, water, treats, etc). But if they refuse to relinquish their position, you have 2 choices – allow yourself to become lower than the rooster, or dominate him by force to establish who is in charge when you are present. Choose the later always.

When roosters fight, they seek to push the other down or chase them from the flock. Your path is to force him low. Grab him and push him to the ground, then pin his neck all the way to the ground and hold it there. Don’t be angry (I think they can tell) and don’t hurt him, you are just demonstrating your superior speed, strength and height advantage. Make sure his hens can see you do this. I usually talk to him and the hens when doing this, in a loud but gentle voice. I want them to realize I can do this anytime, not only when I am upset. After a minute or so, I release the rooster and stare at him. Few roosters with come back at you, most will run away, back to their flock. If you get a mean one that just keeps coming, he may just be incorrigible and will need to be removed.

I maintain the stare for a bit and make sure to have eye contact with the now subservient rooster. The smart ones remember this encounter for weeks and will not challenge you for a long time, all you need to do is make eye contact with him each time you enter his space, essentially telling him – I’m in charge for now and I can see you clearly over there.

This will not always work, but it often does. I try to avoid breeding from any rooster with aggressive tendencies, but as flock protectors, there is something to be said for a rooster that is a bit “cocky”.

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What affects egg size? What about double yolks?

I was asked about this in a text today, and rather than write back a long text, I decided to answer here. This could also be in the FAQ, but I will just link to this post.

Eggs come in all sizes and there are many factors that come into play. The genetics of the breed comes first to mind. A goose’s first “pullet” eggs will still be extra, extra large on the chicken scale. They are big birds and put a lot into each egg, so it needs to be large. Some chicken breeds are known for laying extra large eggs. And some for laying small eggs.

Pullet eggs are those smaller than normal eggs that many hens start with. Especially the early laying breeds and hybrids, some skip this and wait a few more weeks before starting to lay, but start with large eggs. This is also genetic and breed correlated, but some individual pullets will start laying earlier or later than the norm for their breed.

Sometimes a hen (or more often a pullet) will lay an extra large egg that contains 2 yolks. Usually referred to as a “double yolker”, these are essentially mistakes in the bird’s reproductive tract. They usually skip a day before laying one, so you aren’t really getting more yolks, just 2 in 1. Breeders never select for a propensity to lay double yolk eggs because they rarely hatch (there are exceptions – seems like every one is documented on YouTube). Because you are not really getting more egg (due to the skipped day), they are not the bonus they might seem to be. It also seems like it would be hard on the hen to lay the larger than normal eggs.

If you want the largest eggs, be sure to select breeds or hybrids known for laying large to jumbo eggs. Commercial hens are bred to lay a consistent size large, as any other size does not make as much money per pound of feed consumed. The larger heritage breeds are your best bet for the largest possible eggs, or hybrids of those large egg breeds.

Hybrid vigor can also play a role. The largest chicken eggs on my farm right now are from some Olive Egger project hens that are retired from breeding, but still laying and some of them are laying enormous eggs. The really large eggs from these hens no longer hatch well, but they sure bulk up a carton of eating eggs.

As far as I know, breeding for exceptionally large eggs is likely to produce poor hatches and possibly limit the lifespan of the hens, neither are choices I am prepared to make as a breeder.

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Blue Egg Genetics in Legbars

It is not a secret that most of the breeders of Opal Legbars are struggling to have all blue eggs. This is especially problematic because the gene for white eggs in recessive, so it hides easily in a flock. It does not help that the roosters never lay any eggs, blue or white. The only way to ensure you have eliminated the white egg gene is to have the bird genetically tested. That gets expensive, fast. My flock coming into 2023 was all sired by a male that was known to have no white egg genes, but the mothers could have 1 or 2 copies and still lay blue eggs. Statistically, at least half will test as having 2 copies.

I started by testing the 5 cockerels, 3 were found to be heterozygous and were removed. The remaining 2 have sired all the Opal chicks since 2/15. The pullets are all laying blue eggs, but could have just 1 copy, so at least half should have 2 copies of the blue egg gene. That means up to half could have 1 white egg gene. For a breeder to buy and test these chicks is costly. Tests are $20 to $25 each and you will likely find half the results are not the genetics you are looking for, making each “good bird” you find cost about $50 in testing alone. That is the financial basis for charging $50 per pair for the chicks from the “tested as true blue” flock.

But there is a cheaper alternative for breeders to be able to offer Opal chicks in spring 2024 (and beyond) that they know will lay blue eggs. This describes how to do this as economically as possible.

  • Purchase the desired number of Opal pullets for $10 each. These will have 1 or 2 copies of blue egg gene, but it does not matter, as you will get that from the cockerels.
  • For every 8 to 12 pullets, purchase a “true blue” Opal cockerel for $25. These are the key to making sure all the chicks you sell will lay blue eggs. One cockerel can father dozens, even hundreds, of chicks over the season, making this very economical.
  • If you want to also offer non-opal legbars, purchase some Cream legbar pullets as well. They will live with your flock of Opals and be mated to the same Opal cockerels. You will not be able to tell their eggs apart, but the chicks are easily differentiated, so you can sell both colors from a single pen.
  • To plan your replacement flock (producing chicks in 2025), keep some of the non-opal chicks from the Creams you added, male and female. These are true blue as their cream mothers also had 2 copies of the blue egg gene. When you breed the F2 generation from these, all chicks are true blue and always will be in future generations.
  • Only about 25% of the F2 generation will be Opals, so save some of them and build your future flock of Opals from the F2’s. You can also save some of the non-Opal siblings so in 2026 and onward you can still produce both colors from a single pen, all homozygous for the blue egg gene.

This plan will allow you to build your own flock of true breeding Opals, while producing salable chicks each year to pay for the feed. The alternative is to wait and buy true blue chicks in 2024. They will be much cheaper then because my entire flock of Opals will be producing them. But you will miss the entire spring 2024 sales season, which will more than pay for the costs of buying some pricier cockerels in 2023.