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Chicken Dilemma

Of late I've been plagued by a dilemma. I'm torn between keeping improved chickens and pure kienyeji chickens. 

Kienyeji's are slow growing. They are ready to butcher in six months, but they also hatch their own eggs and brood them. So they are self propagating. You don't have to buy new stock. 

The improved kienyeji are fast growing but they do not hatch their own chicks or brood them. So you have to keep buying new stock. 

I now have a barnyard mix of one kienyeji hen, two improved hens, and one improved rooster. I thought this would be an ideal solution because the two improved hens supply us with eggs continuously and the kienyeji one can be the mother. 

The problem is that the improved jogoo gets too big for the kienyeji hen. She has no feathers on her back from the big rooster stepping on her constantly. The last rooster I had grew all the way to 3.2kg and I butchered it because it was too big and still growing. 

Since I got rid of the offending rooster, I was left with another rooster, a grey one. The new rooster has has grown huge within no time. 


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Location: Kenya

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