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[surreydodger]

Hi all,

Just got off the phone and we have 150 day old chicks arriving this Friday/Saturday.

Glee !!!

This really wasn't in our itinary just yet but it is something we had investigated last year. Indeed, it always was our intention to be predominantly poultry focused with a mix of duck and chickens laying free range eggs. That's proper free range as your grandma would have know.

About 18 months ago we were still tooing and froing over which breed to get. After a lot of research we had narrowed it down to a couple or so of varieties and favourite amongst them was the Black Rock. The Black Rock seemed to fit all our needs; they're hardy, good laying, diesease resistent and don't drop dead on the spot should the mildest of English showers smear their feathers.

After a bit of investigating, we tracked down the breeder of Black Rocks (it is basically a copyrighted strain/name) after running into many who claim to sell BR's but then it turns out they just use any old breeding stock rather than selective rearing. Alas, we seemed to have arrived to late as the chap who'd been breeding them for 40 yrs or more had basically gone into retirement. However, we were able to discover that another gentleman was taking over the breeding.

We finally tracked this man down (Eddie Lovett is his name) and were meet with the news that he wasn't ready to start selling stock, nor would he be for some unknown time yet. The previous breed owner had, it seemed, perhaps not retired quite soon enough and certain qualities regarding the BR was lacking.

That was a bit of downer really as we had both come to the conclusion that it really was probably the best bird for our needs and practice. Never mind, move on and find something else.

But it isn't it always the way that things have a way of coming around? Having been tied up in developing the farm for much longer than we anticipated and moving further forward with our sheep venture than we thought we would, the chooks kinda got left on the mantlepiece. Then, out of the blue this morning and not having spoken to each other for 12 months or so, Eddie rings me to say he has a cancelled order for a load of day old chicks and would I be interested (cut price of course ).

Well, never one to resist a bargain, I instantly said 'I'll talk to the boss and consider it'. Go on, admit you're impressed with my dynamically spontaneous decision making prowess. Mrs SD and I had a meeting to discuss the issue,,because that's what business partners do isn't it. We just couldn't see how we could take on 150 chicks and be in a position in a few months time to have all the required set up for egg production and sales. But then we hit on another though which is to take on this 150 and rear them to point of lay, approx 16 weeks at which point we would sell the vast majority with maybe just keeping back 20 or so birds for our own.

Marvellous idea Of course I say marvellous now but only time will tell. If it does work out then there is a good basis for a small additional business for us which may have an extra bonus attached to it to which I'd rather keep quiet on just for now.

So, the next couple of day are going to be busy as I will be having to shout louder at people to work faster and harder... sheesh, it's a tough job somedays