Poultry IrelandYour poultry community and information source

Ever hear the saying, “As rare as hen’s teeth”? The fact that chicken’s are lacking in the dental department means they need an alternative way to break up their food. So how do they do it? This is were grit comes in.

Grit can consist of a range of substances from tiny stones to oyster shell, but they all have the same purpose of helping the bird digest their food. A chicken’s anatomy is such that after the food has been stored in the crop it then passes further down the digestive tract into the gizzard. Here the pieces of grit taken in by the birds act as small stones, grinding the food down into tiny digestable particles, and makes nutrient absorption more efficient. The gizzard is a muscular structure which is lined with a hard layer of the protein, keratin which acts as protection to the muscle layer during the grinding process.

You should provide your poultry a source of grit in a container beside their feeder. If your poultry are free ranging they should pick up enough grit but it’s advisable to put a container of grit in too just to keep a continous supply.

The best grit is a hard flint mix which can be found in various amounts and sizes for birds of all ages, Oyster shell grit is ideal for laying hens due to it’s additional calcium content.“Reference to: Fancy Fowl”

A new RTÉ series, called Higher Ground, follows the progress of eight budding entrepreneurs from all over Ireland. They possess innovative ideas and will attempt to diversify their business to beat the rapidly growing recession. Mentored by Peter Young and Paul McCarthy, who are experts in the field of farm business, they will be guided and advised on how to give their new ventures the best possible chance of succeeding.

The series is designed to motivate rural entrepreneurs to take an inventive approach to a new business and help them to turn their original ideas into reality. In this time of economic uncertainty many people are being forced to look at the resources they have around them and to come up with new ways of making money and building towards the future.

The mentors will provide the eight businesspeople selected with an intensive, tailored service which could give their business the best possible chance of succeeding. They will guide them through creating a business plan, set out action plans with strict deadlines, help prepare a marketing and distribution plan, advise them on legal, accounting and taxation issues and help them prepare for key meetings when seeking funding or meeting potential customers. They will arrange for the entrepreneur to visit a similar business or maybe even get hands on work experience. With the entrepreneurs novel ideas ranging from duck eggs to cake toppers, Peter and Paul will do everything in their power to guide the new ventures towards victory!

The first episode takes a look at Brian Phelan, a 25-year-old based in Monaghan who has a passion for duck eggs! He noticed a gap in the egg market over the last number of years. He believes there is a healthy demand for duck eggs, but they are too hard to track down. He originally purchased 20 ducks, but bought in 650 day old ducklings from England to build up a huge flock. You can visit their website at www.glenfinfarm.ie.

The first episode starts on Wednesday 29 July, RTÉ One, 8.30pm, and will continue for 7 weeks.

Source: www.rte.ie.

Update: All birds shown in this post our now sold to good homes!

We have young runner ducklings, muscovy ducklings, and call ducklings for sale. Also young Daisy Belles, and Bluebells, both hybrid layers.

Here is some information on the the Breeds:

Muscovy Ducks

Originating from Brazil, Muscovies are the only domestic ducks that is not derived from mallard stock. Wild muscovies coloration is black and white, but domestication has produced many different colors. These colors are; blue, blue and white, chocolate, chocolate and white, white, black, black and white, lavender, and calical. The males can grow to be quite large, weighing 10-15 lbs. Most of the females are 5-7 pounds but can reach up to 9 and sometimes 10 lbs. Their feet are equipt with strong sharp claws for grabbing tree branches and roosting. Muscovys are unique because of their bright red crest around their eyes and above the beak. They do not swim much because their oil glands are under developed compared to most ducks. Muscovy hens can set three times a year, and the egg clutches can vary from 8 to 21 eggs. The egg are incubated for 35 days.

Indian Runner Ducks

Indian Runner ducks have a distinctive type, the long, flat, straight head and long, slender neck forming, in shape, and umbrella handle and stem, the back should be long, straight and carried upright, and with the body should take on almost horizontal bearing. At present the colour range is still expanding with the Black Chocolate and Blue often losing colour especially in females with age and the males succeptible to throwing odd white feathers after injuries / fights with other drakes.

Call Ducks

The Call Duck is an energetic and active duck. It is small, weighing around 0.68 kg (1.5 lb) with a plump bowl-shaped body; a wide, rounded head; tiny, broad bill and short legs. It is vocal with a high pitched call. The Call Duck comes in a variety of standard colours including White, Gray, Blue, Buff, Pastel, Khaki, Butterscotch, Chocolate, Snowy, Spot and Black & White Magpie. Nonstandard colours include Blue Fawn, Nutmeg, Self Black, Cinnamon and Crested. It produces 25–75 eggs a year.

Daisy Belles

Daisy Belles are a newly developed hybrid with a high laying capacity.

Bluebell

Another Rhode X . This is a beautiful looking bird, laying brown eggs and a typical hybrid with great production. Very scarce and a great seller.

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All these birds are growers and were growers at the time of the photo and will continue to grow into lovely birds. If you are interested in any of these growers contact us by email or phone (check out the contact page for details).

Today we launch the new and hopefully improved poultry.ie and we welcome you to explore it! This new design will enable us to provide better, and more features for you, our community, to enjoy. Here are is the low down of the new website:

Design – Well as you have probably have noticed we look a bit different than before. We think the colours work well together and overall the navigation is more user friendly.

The Community Forum – Our forum has been upgraded to a better system which has a blast of features for us to use. We wanted to show our appreciation to everyone who used our old forum and helped build a community there so we introduced a badge only available to anyone who registered on our old forum.

We call it the ‘Poultry Ireland Veteran’ rank. It will appear under your username in the forum. It is one of the three ranks we have. When you sign up for the new forum please use the same email address and username you used to sign up on the old forum, this way I will know which users to give the rank to.

One of the other ranks we provide is the ‘Poultry Ireland Supporter’ rank. This rank will enable you to use other features not available to normal registered users, eg. Avatars, have a signature etc. You can achieve this rank by giving a minimun donation to Poultry Ireland to help pay for hosting and system updates. This is not available yet, but should be within the next few days.

For more information about Ranks please check out the Forum here.

Marketplace - Yes, the day is coming when we will finally open the Marketplace where people can buy and sell poultry. Though we need to test it out on this domain before we can release it. Bear with us!

These are just a few of the changes that we have done, if you have any comments or feedback on the new look please leave a comment below!

We’re happy to say that our Muscovy duck who has been sitting for five weeks has hatched out sixteen young moscovy ducklings recently. We thought we would upload some photos for our poultry enthusiasts!
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