the PBRs doing the chicken dance around the waterer...
My Chick's pics...
Chuck and her "chicks" in the new outside pen...
sorry photo missing...
This message was edited Apr 26, 2008 12:32 AM
the guinea being a HOG, my rooster BestBuckeye is on the right...
also missing photo..... hmmmm....
This message was edited Apr 26, 2008 12:32 AM
a shot of our newest self blue from Welp...
so here again is Chuck and her "chicks"
and the piggish guineafowl...
finishing off [for now] with our newest addition, a gosling hatched out toady, Friday. i heard a ruckus this afternoon and found an upset mother goose staying on her nest and frantic about the gosling. we found no traces, except a satisfied striped cat who found a new home at a farm with peacocks, turkeys and emus...and llamas...
hopefully the goose will have success with her other eggs. we are very saddened by our newest addition becoming our latest loss...
not even named.......
here is a series of Peter and his "Buckhorn" red sex link pullet... named Chuck
Chuck, king of the pumpkin, grew up in the house over the winter. Actually hatched in January, but we still had our artistic pumpkin LOL. It kept well....
notice pirmarily Buckeye coloring with partridge feathers coming in...
Chuck's mamahen... a very friendly motherly type leghorn...
and PapaRoo, a blurry picture, but you see the coloring...
Here is Chuck on Peter's lap with more partridge feathers coming in. I was glad to see the brownish-red ear lobe to know what color eggs she would lay. Her feet are also smaller than most Buckeye's, and a more refined head like the Leghorn. Then i read that the gene for pigment in the eggshell comes from the roo...
In Feb, by 5 weeks of age, she was completely feathered in almost changed completely to brown/partridge. Her wings seemed to big for her body. What's a lady to do with such large appendages?
... well, how about brood some chicks? We could not KEEP her away from the chicks we brought home from the feed store, so we let her brood them! She took to it like that is what she was born to do. Most sex-link breeds are very good mothers!
pardon the red light, but this is a sweet picture. For those who don't know, i drove round trip 84 miles to pick up 10 Black Australorp pullets for my newly acquired Black Jersey Giant roo. I got there to find them offered straight run! So i came home with twenty chicks who, to me, didn't resemble BAs. So after some internet research i concluded i had picked up sex-links. The hatchery [Privett] would not give out any information since i didn't purchase directly from them. By the time i had opportunity to drive back and return them, Chuck was attached, and frankly it was uplifting to have the sounds of chicks in the house, so we kept them.
This message was edited Apr 27, 2008 5:47 PM
20 chicks is a lot for a teenage chicken to handle, but Chuck took right to the task! Not long after, she took on 6 more [asst bantams] followed by 8 more, for a total of 34 chicks to look after!
i think she was relieved when the sex-links, [as we called them, but they turned out to be Plymouth Barred Rocks!] went out to the henhouse brooder!
And when she would try to take a break from the bantam chicks, one or two would always fly up to the roost to pester her... nobody promised her motherhood would be easy, and maybe she really was too young to handle all of the pressures...
little does she suspect, that outside in the real chicken world, her future mate awaits! Apricot is a gentle fellow, pure Buckeye, and in need of companionship. The 2 yr old hens are just too bossy for his taste...
life is getting rough on her with 16 young birds. we tossed her outside on numerous occasions, but she always wanted back in! and when the first peeps came from the incubator in March, Chuck became my alarm clock!
Peter wants to say: "My Buckhorn pullet is a great chicken, and she likes me, but she doesn't like to be catched. She is a beautiful chicken but i wont' get to show her at the fair. It's so nice to see her almost full grown, so i decided, hey-hey, i need to get rid of some babies so Chuck won't have that much to take care of. That's it."
I love kids and their names, and how they view the
world! I think Annie and Alvin are beautiful. Looks
like you enjoy photo opps, and creating backdrops
as much as I do, TF.
Teenagers just want to grow up too soon...you tell that
Chuck she has to finish school first!
LOL, Chuck still has a lot to learn!
a Jersey Giant is pipping that isn't due till tomorrow!!! Last time i had one a day early was Feckly, and he was very healthy. But i had researched and found that most JGs can take an extra day! too weird. mine aren't from SQ stock, but i am getting some good looking birds from this as well as some nice crosses.
this whole hatching and raising chicks has been an interesting, albeit costly, experience. [time, money & tears] we have learned a lot about life and living from all these experiences, just when we think we have learned enough life lessons LOL
after a couple of days out, chuck is back in with her bantams that are nearly her size. she just can't seem to fit in with the other chickens...
in a few days we should have pics of our new chicks. meanwhile still getting ready for that goat!
hugs to everyone!
♥tf
((((TF))))
just adding a few more.... Pansy and Apple have 16 chicks!!!
it's a handful, but they are doing a magnificent job for first time Mamachickens!!!
they didnt' need that heat lamp, so i shut it off...
talk about a hen house full, i dunno ho wthey do it! those little things are zipping everywhere!
soory, wrong photo, don't know how to take it out!
This message was edited Jun 6, 2008 6:02 PM
they were pretty zippy in the incubator too! i thought i was just wonderful how my Buckeyes accepted these Jersy Giant and cross chicks, when the one they hatched looks so different!
Here is Buck, the little Buckeye/Brown Leghorn cross they hatched out themselves... he is a week older than the black chicks from the incubator. but i bet he was glad to have some company!
at first, he was the only little guy in the henhouse. here he is near our Blue Wheaten OEG hen and the hatch from 3-26.... SO TINY!
Now he has company, and shares Pansy & Apple's warm feathers with fifteen siblings!
Chuck is getting ancy around all these chicks, want back in with her grown bantams LOL
we have 11 new chicks in the house which will go out soon. Pokey finally finished poking his way out this AM, he was due 5/24.
the OEGs have twelve eggs, but haven't laid in a few days and don't seem broody. i opened up the hen haven to welcome chick or whoever wanted to set them. some leghorn added her egg to it, which look real funny, it was even standing on END!
will load pics later, stilll lots of work to do!
tf
and here is Freckle, temporarily in the Coop-de-Ville #5 with his hatch mates, almost seven weeks old!
today they went out to mingle with the rest, who they already knew, and who knew them, from their time in the hen house brooder. so all are together at last in the hen house...
still not sure of this breed? any guessers? they came from Welp in the asstd bantams bunch. blue legs, smaller than seabrights... when little they were just creamy and fluffy!
here she is with a golden seabright of the same age. she is smaller and finer, and doesn't have lacing like you would expect of a buff seabright... of course, she is the only hen, the other two buffs are males!
tf
here are the buff ?s, and the seabrights. since coop-d-villes 3 through 5 were finished, they have mor espace to themselves... and their own inside haven...
the other bantams get free access to all the new pens. we [read tf] decided to NOT put in the dividers, so they could jump and fly and try out all the pens, to see where they want to live and who with... fun to watch!
on the right is a self blu OEG, in the middle front the two buff roo cochins, and two whit ecochins, the partridge cochin at the back, and the other two are dark brahmas...
blurry photo, but Sid [DH's polish] is about to fly over to the other pen. i think the polish love the freedom the most. seems the others are always looking up as if to ask "where did they go now?"
here is Snowy enjoying the loose dirt. she stays so white and clean with her soft little dust baths! i hope ONE of those younger white cochins is a male, and is as pretty as she is!
