Mr Farmer:

As always (sigh) I can't view pictures from my present location. But if it is those chickens with long neck, short combs, and stilt-like legs, then you have fighter breeds. The males are particularly vicious, and may even attack people. Females are less vicious, but still very aggressive.

Actually, if you do have a large enough population of chooks, you could selectively breed the good ones. "Good" in this instance does not just mean weight or egg-laying abilities, but also character. A gentle, docile, submissive and calm character is almost always at the top of of my animal breeding programs. Even roosters that hadn't been castrated were developed to be non-aggressive.

If you are intent on breeding chooks, and don't want to get pecked and scratched whenever you enter your farm, you could try Holland/Rhode Island Red. Males are a lot less aggressive, more submissive, but not necessarily more docile. Holland/Rhode Island Red females are extremely good egg layers (1 egg/bird each day), and very fecund. The females may be squabblish, but having a rooster present would help minimise such incidences. They love human presence, and if particularly fond of a person, will follow him/her everywhere. They grow a lot more slowly, takes about 2.5-3 months to reach full maturity and weight (~1.5-2kg), and have glorious, flavoursome reddish-yellow meat when cooked.

Free-ranging them would help develop the meat flavor more, but as they are a more active bird, the meat can become a little too firm for most people accustomed to factory-farmed chicken. They love soft grass and leafy vegetables)!), and will go after slugs and bugs with passion. The females will need a regular supply of calcium once they start egg laying. In the marketplace, this breed often fetches about RM15/kg or more when free ranged, and old hens also fetch good prices once they've stop laying eggs.

Ideally, you should have 1 male to every 8 females, but for a group of 50, you may only need 5 mature males to stimulate egg-laying; at most, 50% of the group should be males, otherwise fights could become serious. Or you could castrate the non-breeding males to produce capons.

Will be heading to Johor tomorrow with my Sifu and we will be visiting some farms that he consults and take lots of pictures and show you guys their rights & wrongs...

=======================

The latest edition which is the JULY 2012 Edition of the Newsletter is out.

http://www.mediafire.com/?gc6ln9z536bsvg5

Oh no, most of our chickens are what you've described. The cock is definitely, 4 (out of 7) of the hens are also. I don't think they'll attack humans (not yet anyway). They seems to response to "call" (we make the same sound during feeding). They always come to our shed especially during lunch break as they are always bits of food.
The Holland/Rhode Island are the broiler type of chicken? Maybe I can buy some chicks and mix them with the hopefully soon to come chicks. Wonder how the "Mum" shall take in the foster chicks. Let's see how they fare in the next couples of months.

Mr. Farmer:

Holland/Rhode Island Reds are dual purpose chickens. The males can grow very large, albeit slower than Cornish Game Hens (i.e. the white coloured lethargic chickens). Most of the males I've reared reached 3-3.5kg in about 2 months. They have excellent meat, good meat-to-bone ratio, and is sweet. The fat is buttery and a deep D24 durian flesh yellow, while the meat is orange-red, not white or pink; no fear about excessive fat, especially if they are allowed to free range. My family would cook herbal soup using these chickens, and even the bone marrow tastes sweet.

The females are very prolific egg-layers, laying on average 1 egg a day. Very young hens would be a little inconsistent, but once fully matured in a few weeks after the first eggs, they will be laying consistently. Also, old hens would also begin laying inconsistently towards the end of their "careers". My family kept only one of the old females, as a brooder. This was an exceptional cases, as Rhode Island Reds aren't always good brooders (i.e. they don't sit and "hatch" the eggs).

If you do intend to cross breed your chickens, do have a female bantam (serama) or silky (fluffy-wooly white feathered chicken with black face, legs, and skin) on hand. Silkies are particularly good brooders, and will gladly hatch any egg you give her. I used bantams and silkies to hatch all my poultry, including guinea fowl, quail, ducks, and of course other chickens.

Speaking about cross-breeding, crossing the Malay chicken with Rhode Island Reds isn't actually advisable. Nothing really wrong, except the offspring would be somewhat "downgraded" compared to the Rhode Island Red. Malay chickens are not prolific layers, don't develop a lot of meat on the bone, and this less desirable aspect does pass on to the offspring. Of course, if your intention is to improve the Malay chicken, then I suppose it is ok. Or if you want to develop a breed which you can pluck more easily (i.e. remove the feathers). But with a good breeding plan, I am confident you would be able to develop a good, large bird with acceptable egg-laying abilities.

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Added on July 11, 2012, 11:41 am
Anyway, after yet another all nighter, I was stressed beyond comprehension and needed a let out. So I decided to go durian hunting again. This time I targeted the cheaper varieties, as a comparison to the pricier ones:

Addition list and description of durians tasted so far:

Variety: D4
Location: Batu Kurau
Fruit: Oblique, near perfect. Moderately sized.
Smell: Smells faintly of raw gula melaka.
Aril: Whitish yellow, perfectly formed. Moderate-thin flesh. Many small seeds per locule (4-5), bullet shaped. Taste is horrendous, no sweetness, quite bland, but has soft notes of raw gula melaka. Unusual, but uninteresting.

Variety: D187
Location: Segamat
Fruit: Heart shaped, brown-green thin rind. Sharp, moderately wide thorns.
Smell: Aromatic, not very pungent.
Aril: Light yellow arils, very creamy almost milky, dry; but quite thin. Sweet taste, contains many seeds per locule (3-4), some shrunken. Seeds are small, and ovoid shaped.

Variety: D8(?)
Location: KL (Sungai Buloh)
Fruit: Oblong shaped, full bearing locules all around. Tightly packed sharp thorn, which space out a little towards the bottom. Moderately large fruit.
Smell: Not very pungent smell.
Aril: White arils, very creamy, but thin. Sweet, creamy, milky texture. A lot of seeds per locule (5-6), but are small fully formed seeds. Seeds are somewhat trapezoid in shape.

Variety: D30 (?)
Location: Bentong, Pahang
Fruit: Heart shaped (like beef heart), densely packed thorns, recurved at the top.
Smell: Aroma not very pungent.
Aril: Yellow arils (flesh), very creamy, sweet but thin. Many seeds per locule (4-5), which are small-medium sized, ovoid shaped.


Special note about the first entry: It was such a turn-off that I got depressed. Fortunately the other durians were still acceptable (by me), so I wasn't sulking for long. It was also the fruit with the most yield (2 nasi bungkus boxes). I will be using these seeds as my "experimentation" materials, since they gave me so many seeds to work on.

This post has been edited by Michael J.: Jul 11 2012, 11:41 AM

Hi Para,

As promised, this is the musang king in my village. The D24 in my area also have not ripe issue. Therefore, the price is very cheap for D24.



This is one of my favor. Only available at my farm. Original tree is already dead.



I also try a mini project with durian seeds, later I will graft it with musang king.

The seed geminated after few days


1st week.

Hi Bros,

This is Buloh Kasap



Abiu ... Golden Fruit





This Musang King is good quality

Wow... buluh kasap. I always have an impression that this buluh kasap is originated from a town near segamat.

this type taste is very bitter(very good) when have it in the right session. Loving it.

As promised, These are my Musang King produced from my farm. Sorry for the poor picture quality as it was taken by my wife.








=============================================

Yes Buloh Kasap is a clone originated from somewhere in Segamat. The taste is quite good.

Hi All,

I have a question regard the bud grafting durian tree.

When bud grafting the durian tree, do we use the plastic tape to cover the whole bud grafting area? Should we cover all bud grafting area except the eye part? I can not recall this part. I used to see my mother doing it. But that is 20 years ago... really can not recall it already.

Kg Teratai:

Here's a link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ItTtshaBko

Hi MJ,

I have watched this link, it mention use the plastic tape to cover. But it does not really tell it cover all except the eye or cover all.

Kg Teratai:

Oh ok. You should not cover the bud with grafting tape. There is a logical reasoning to this, i.e. if you cover the bud, it rots.

The grafting tape should just cover the top and bottom of the bud, but not the bud itself
http://autonopedia.org/garden_and_farm/Pro...n/Grafting.html

The method he was using is more towards side veneer grafting, and normally used to replace low quality trees with higher quality materials. Bud grafting deals with seedlings around 4 months old.

The following is a document on various grafting techniques:

http://www.nt.gov.au/d/Content/File/p/Tech_Bull/TB194.pdf

What is missing are less common methods, such as inarching, tuft grafting etc.

Para:

The grafting method you had mentioned before, where three plants are combined into a single plant is a variant of inarching. The link below has one picture example of this method:

http://www.mspong.org/cyclopedia/horti_pics.html





A method I'm interested to try is cleft grafting. To me, this method appears to be a cleaner method as the entire top growing point of the rootstock is removed and replaced with the target growth of the cloned plant.

This post has been edited by Michael J.: Jul 19 2012, 04:15 PM

Hi MJ,

Thank you. I will try it out this weekend. I will share the picture once I have done.

Wow, speaking on right timing, am also looking at grafting.
From my research, certain type of grafting works better on certain plants and things like size of stock & scion, experience level & etc. Had not done any grating yet as my new plants are still too tender. Looking into grafting of
Avocado
Durian
Jack fruits
Rubber trees
at the moment. Looking forward to your pics



Having problem with one of my weakest Mas Solo Papaya. It was growing well until recently, the leafs start to wither. Have not figure out what wrong.

My parents were good at grafting durian, jackfruit, and rubber tree. Too bad that i never really have chance to learn from them, i was too young that time to see them doing these thing.

Hi Kg Teratai,
This may interest you.
Expert System For Oil Palm Disease Diagnosis
http://eprints.uthm.edu.my/1833/1/EXPERT_S...AZHAR_RAMLI.pdf

Hey People...

MAHA 2012 is Officially ON ...

23 November - 2 December 2012....

Thank you Para

https://www.facebook.com/mahaexpo2012

http://www.maha.gov.my/2012/home.html

But not cheap air fare from AirAsia

HI Farmer,

Thank you for the information.

Hi All,

My first trail for the budding. It is not easy. The knife will need to be very sharp. The selection of bud need to be very healthy.



How to get rid of the weed that grow on the tree?



The seeding of durian tree at 4th week.



This post has been edited by Kg Teratai: Jul 22 2012, 10:54 AM

Those are "GOLD COINS" haha...

normally i would hand-pick them off the tree branch.

i dont know there is any better method though