The Beach Street Farm
Rod Vilencia is the owner of Los Angeles-located Beach Street Farm! He has had a passion for raising chickens for 50 years, ever since visiting his aunt and uncle’s farm when he was five. Over this time, he has raised chickens as a hobby, showed them, created a micro hatchery, and now works on breeding projects with certain breeds.
Beach Street Farm never culls any of the chickens they hatch. All birds are either sold or donated to 4H and other community projects that allow the chickens to live a productive life. Rod wishes that others shared this vision of treating chickens humanely. If he could change something about the poultry industry, it would be to encourage hatcheries and other breeders to not waste chicken life as they currently do. He believes they should find ways to allow potentially unwanted chickens to live productive lives. They could work on sending these chickens to underdeveloped countries where they could help those people who don’t necessarily have a lot and this could help them live a better life. This would help decrease the waste created in the chicken industry!
Breed Specialties:
Serbian Sanjak
Lavender olive eggers (project bird)
Ameraucana: Lavender, Black, and Splash colored
Speckled Sussex
Cream Crested Legbars, (European egg import - sky blue eggs)
Swedish Flower Hens (some European, some from best breeder in the US, one of only so cal breeder)
Beach Street Easter Eggers
Favorite Chicken Breed: Rod is a Serbian American, so he has a special place in his heart for his Sanjaks. They are his favorite, and always will be! They have big personalities and are great to look at. They are stunning birds that have a vast variety of colors. They differ from other chickens with very distinct personalities. His Sanjaks are very nosy and will stand next to him and supervise everything that he is doing on the Farm. They are big beautiful chickens that have great personalities. The Sanjak is super rare with only a few breeders in the US and Rod only pure breeds them!
A Word of Advice:
When starting to raise chickens, think small and focus on a couple of breeds, and get really good at those breeds before you start to get crazy. It is hard to focus on quality birds when you are trying to do too much at one time. Things can derail easily and if you try to start that many breeds at once it is very difficult to do. Try to pick a good stock and have no mean roosters because nice roosters produce nice chicks that go into other people’s flocks and affect the group in the same way.
One thing Rod does every day for his chickens is that he varies their diet every day. It can be very easy to get lazy and throw them the same things, but he warns to not fall into this. Chickens are omnivorous and the closest living relative to the dinosaur, so they need some greens in their diet. He includes things like alfalfa, lettuce, vegetables, and freeze-dried mealworms in his chicken’s diets.
For Rod, his chicken business is not about money. It’s a passion and he really has always loved birds in general because they are fascinating. He has a biology degree and finds chickens interesting because they are the closest living relative to the dinosaur!
To learn more about Beach Street Farms, you can find them on…
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