Kintaline Breeding Programme for 2009

It is likely that we will have to curtail our breeding programme this year.
We will still have our flocks for you to visit, if a little reduced, and the farm, poultry park, shop and plant centre is open every day from 10 am - 7 days as usual.
We are very happy to help advise you on your new or expanding poultry and waterfowl project this year, what birds to look for, how to select a breeder, as well as our very carefully selected range of housing, fencing and equipment to provide the best for you and your birds.
Every first and third Thursdays you will find that we also are hosting a Producers Market so please come and join in, but if you want our time please come back another day, as we are seriously inundated then.
There are many good reasons for cutting back the hatching and raising of the pure breeds, all accepted reluctantly, but the head has to rule the heart. We will be still raising Black Rocks and commercial Khaki's, but again, they will be limited in supplies, so please book early.

One of our biggest problems are costs.
As everyone knows, feed prices rocketed last year, and we were no exception
Our location is absolutely stunning, but its become a serious burden when requiring to get anything shipped to us.
We do not consider that we are off any track, beaten or otherwise, but the distributor of the feeds is now applying a considerable surcharge on the delivery to us, per pallet, for every pallet delivered however much is on board, which is not levied on others who get similar quantities per week in other parts of the country.
There might be some cheaper foods on the market, but the range of feeds for different ages is far too limited, the quality is more variable and we strongly believe that you get out what you put in.
We are strong supporters of Dodson and Horrell feeds, they take a lot of trouble and care over that goes into all their feeds, and they have nutritionists who have done their homework on domestic poultry, not just putting out unnecessary fashion foods for the latest fad, which do the stock little benefit.

Connected to this is the weather.
We have been in this area for over 22 years and have really noticed the difference in the last few.
The summers have become more showery in each twenty-four hours, and more blustery.
Last summer was really quite good for daytime weather, better than most of the rest of the country, and the visiting tourists had a great time, but often overnight there would be some rain.
This has a profound effect on raising young birds free range as we do.
It is MUCH better to have chicks and ducklings outside as early as possible once they have good feathers, because this gives them lots of advantages -click here for more explanation

However, if the grass is wet most of the time, and there are showers too often, then it becomes much more time consuming and costly to raise them. The growers are still youngsters, their feathering and their homeostasis is immature.
In these conditions, all the housing has to be understocked by a great deal more. We work with our birds having lots of space to use the houses during the day, anyway, but if that is more and more often then the numbers we can raise is dramatically reduced.
We have found that we are spending an unsupportable amount of time simply cleaning away damp bedding which is not much soiled, but the young birds would chill and, more likely crowd and suffocate, if it were left. This huge cost in "wasted" bedding and the time to manage it cannot be recouped in increasing the prices of the birds, no-one would accept the difference.
It also has very detrimental effects on the time to manage the rest of the farm, the other parts of the business, the time we have for our customers, and park visitors, as well as future projects.

Hatching Eggs
We have had to stop sending eggs out as we can no longer get any 24 hour carrier from here. The post office is too hard on the packages, they go through too many hubs, and can also be flown into the centre of England. The disturbance they get can dramatically harm the hatching rates, and we do not want to spend hours working with the birds, and the packing, etc. only to have disappointed customers for something we cannot control.
We have never exported, as the correct procedures to do so, even to the EU, require significant testing which is extremely costly.

Old Utility Strains
We are bitterly disappointed, having worked SO hard on improving the strains to raise the productivity of both the table and the egg lines. There are SO few breeders who are bothering, the demand for birds is so high that no-one needs to bother about WHAT their birds actually do, they can flog them anyway. So many new poultry keepers are being fobbed off with whatever anyone wants to produce, with no selection, no recording, no improvement, simply because someone on the telly, or in a magazine, who has done no research, says that such and such breed are good.
Few breeders can ever tell you what their "breeding regime" is; what their selection criteria area; or the aims they have for their grandparent stocks. Most of them have bought eggs in and sold birds / eggs directly from the resulting hatchlings, so have absolutely no idea what the birds have in their background or are capable of.
There has been little selection for eggs or meat in any of the pure breeds for the last 30 or more years, a few folks were beginning to realise this and starting to work on collecting good stocks before they were lost in the last decade. There are no old large breeders who are raising thousands of birds to be able to draw on their work. The very recent fashion for domestic birds is great, but it has led to everyone "breeding" - or more accurately replicating birds, and the national utility flocks are parlously weak.

We were extremely fortunate to learn from some of the best of the last generations of stockmen before we started and while we got going. They are now lost to us, but we will be trying to make the time to start writing as much as we can to preserve some of their legacy, and, hopefully, inspire others to carry on their work, where we are unable at present.

A new information resource is being developed = CHICKIPEDIA
Its progress may be erratic but its very dear to our hearts so we will give it as much time as we can.

Tim and Jill Bowis
Kintaline Mill Farm, Benderloch, OBAN Argyll PA37 1QS Scotland
all images are copyright, do not use without express permission and links back to this site.
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