Rural Gardening: The new crew , 1 by Light_for_Jesus

Light_for_Jesus wrote:
These are five of my new chickens I bought near Fort Worth, Texas this week.

These blacks were the last four out of fifteen, so, I bought the leftovers and was too tired and stressed out to realize it at the time. I'll just have to be grateful for the trip and the birds and let it go at that. Maybe they will get better looking as they mature. None of them have much of a cushion, and to me the cushion and crest really make up the silkie, without those they aren't that great to look at.

The best one has a spinal or brain injury according to the vet. She may or may not get well, but she is eating chicken scratch on her own, and I think that is a good sign. She cannot stand and just sits with her legs sticking straight out in front of her. I bought her knowing she might be hurt. The next day she went down and so far is still down. The vet gave me four syringes full of steriods that I must inject into the breast muscle each day. Today was the first one, and she took it so well. So far, no problem. Now it is just wait and see. If anyone has suggestions on other things that might help her, I'm all ears.

My first showgirl!!! Isn't she something? She doesn't have a lot of feathers on the top, but she is the cutest thing, and seems very bright. I just hope she is still laying and I can breed her to a white rooster. Can you imagine baby showgirls? Of course, I have yet to successfully breed any chicken.

The lady has a great setup, probably worth the money I spent just to see it. She has these chain link dog kennels in her barn, and each one has a group of hens and a rooster, I'm guessing about twelve in each group. She must have five different pens. They are full of wood shavings I suppose, it is the light colored fluffy stuff. These pens are also covered in chicken wire and at the bottom a strip of hardware cloth, because predators have been in the barn and killed off an entire group before. In another room she has probably ten or more of the smaller cages, sort of like rabbit hutches. Many of them are full of babies. The woman has it going on. She has two large incubators, which I did not get to see. She picks up the eggs, marks them with a pencil as to which pen they came out of, and sets them on a table. It appears that she keeps the chicks she wants and sells the rest off.

I really enjoyed seeing it. :)