;-) du-duh, du-duh, du-duh, du-duh, DING!
The P & L DAILY CHAT THREAD #1 - Anything goes!!!
still hiding in the chicken coop, reading my book *gardening with guineas*
lol jordankittyjo......I bet the chicken fairy loves finding people in the chicken coop....real hand and all.... : ) better run just in case.....hee hee
Tf ....he has already ordered 10 pullets of each of the 5 breeds we are wanting so with the 90% sexing rate ( i hope) that will leave 1 roo chick in each group. I told him everything you said about inbreeding and the odds of it when coming the chicks are coming from a big hatchery and he had to agree, so he is ordering 5 roo chicks of each breed to go with our pullet order.....do you think it is possible to come up with a good breeding roo from 6 chicks? It is a small start for hatching our own purebred chicks, but it is a start and we have to start somewhere for sure.
Christy
well, i dont' see why not, of course it depends on the ones who bred them to begin with... 5 of each, guess these must be eating birds, he didn't do leghorns? they will be of eating size before you know if they are good reps of the breed... so far i am not htrilled with my up and coming buckeye roos. so glad i am getting a new batch soon... finally!
i hope he plans on a separate pen for all those roos LOL
hey ktty! can i borrow the book when you are done?
tf
He did try to do Brown Leghorns but they were sold out so he got another one he wanted.... White Rock. I hope we get lucky with having so few....of course I guess if it is a bad hatch for some reason you could order 50 or more and not find one you are happy with right? That's too bad about your up and coming roos.....its almost a roll of the dice sometimes, huh? I sure hope your new batch are much better!
I'm not sure what he will do with the roos when they get a little older. I have noticed that if they are out in the open roaming around, they tend to fight more. We had almost 90 PBR roos in a closed in 'finishing' pen and they never fought. We still have about 50 and still no problems. I guess if there is one, we will put them all in a closed in pen and see what happens. Ones that don't get it figured out will go into their own timeout pen....in the enclose pen....so they can see all the other roosters having a good time and think about his naughty ways.....LOL!
Don't you have that book already tf? lol......better not be reading it in the chicken coop though....sounds like the cf has been finding you a lot already! hee hee
Christy
tf, yes you can. will send it next week
My bantams, them sneaky lil things, I thought I had the side of their pen built up that butts up the the crested pen. NOPE they have managed to dig down and cross over to the bigger bird brooder. I was like where the heck did that little one and that little one and what the heck!!!!! looked over and low and behold i see a head sticking thru. Oh well they can get back over if they want to, but the bigger birds cant go to the other side YET.
LOL sneaky little things... well i am off to Amarillo, to pick up that order i agreed to take a week early, SIGH.... where can i hide? somebody hide me.... please...
Dear Anything Goes: I have a lovely bantam yard, within the bounds of my side yard, very near my house. I've had chickens for 5 or 6 years, could be 7. I have 9 hens & two roos, one a silkie and the other a bantam. The silkie has never 'sired' a baby, everyone in the chicken yard beats up on him but he survives, he's fast, poor guy.
Last year, the bantam roo (we bred him) had any nunber of babies, lots of eggs all year round, even in the winter. This year, we have few eggs, like 4 a week. We have never had such low egg numbers. We have three hens that want to sit but there are too few eggs to share. The chickens are fat, slick and obviously healthy. Is it possible that Mr. Ed (named by a 4 year old), is sterile? Why aren't they laying. Is there something obvious that we are overlooking?? Please forgive if this question has been asked and answered, and direct me to the thread, please, we do not know what to do!! Thanks!!!
Im going to jump in here and answer by what i have learned here. your hens are wanting to set the eggs so they wont lay if they are broody. What about molting. Could they be starting or getting over it.
Edit to say oops forgot welcome to our chicken chatty group ask away and come back for more.
This message was edited Jul 17, 2008 4:44 PM
Thank you, lovs! Nope, healthy as horses, beautiful appearances, the roo is so handsome and a sweet boy, except to Mop Head, the silky roo. I will tell you this in all honesty - in all these years with chickens, ours never seem to molt, so I'm really not sure what to expect. They are obviously healthy in appearance, and we are scratching hour heads over this odd turn of events. I was hoping that there is something obvious that I'm overlooking...
ok how old are they?
PS - not all our hens sit at the same time, some don't 'take' - is that 'time out' molting - the hens never lose their feathers, which is what I thought birds/poultry do when the molt...we've had babies every year and even hatched and raised 5 wild turkeys last year...
now that is getting beyond my knowledge there, I thought they lost feathers in molt. Is it possible a critter might be getting the eggs? to check put in some easter eggs or gold balls or ping pong balls.
lovs, they are all different ages, the oldest are 5 or so years, that's Little Hen, the queen, who is a wild bantam. She is the mother of a couple of the hens and Ed, the bantam, who is beautiful. Then the others are younger, with three hens that are a full year and several months old, 15 or 18 months. Way early in the spring, those three laid those tiny eggs, but have been laying full sized eggs for about three months, I could be off but not by much.
hmmmmm maybe a critter problem is all i could think of and I am just new to this. I am guessing. By what others have asked or said here. And my mom had and is having the same problem, a snake in the coop.
Thanks, luv!! We are open to any and all solutions and advice!! There are no snakes or critters, we've had opossums in the past but that was remedied by the bantum pen being enclosed in our side yard, with access to our dogs, Blueray and French, whose duty it is to pee on the fence, which apparently keeps opossums, etc, away. We first thought of a chicken snake, or others, but have found no signs of snakes or other critters. We always check the chickens all day, as our garden, yard are in the same area. Nothing amiss, except almost a standstill in egg production. Might they be missing something in their diet, and, if so, wouldn't that show in their appearance?? Maybe the heat?? It was much hotter, dryer last year. Shoot. I dunno.
So are they going broody too soon without laying? I have a few hens doing this right now.
how soon is too soon
DUSTYDS, we need a new thread, this is slow loading i am on broadband...
Too soon is before they lay any eggs. That would be pretty frustrating.
I had 2 broody's I had to break without letting them sit on eggs. One of them was a pullet. I broke both of them from being broody, but they are still not laying eggs. I'm kind of tapping my fingers wondering....ok, now how long before you start laying eggs?
Christy
they just need to kick start there reproductive system i dont know how long it takes for them to start laying when u break there broodiness but when i leave mine and they hatch chicks they start about 2-3 weeks after abandaning the chicks
When do yours abandon their chicks? I had read somewhere that a hen will go back to laying when the chicks are 6 weeks old....but I have no idea if that is true. If it is, I have been wondering if they are not raising chicks if they will go back to laying any sooner. The wait really seems like forever!
Christy
mine ditch them at about 6-7 weeks sum havent done till10 weeks but i have only get lik 2 broodys a yaer for about 3 years so its not lik i have experience we only ever had female hens when i moved out to the country(i was lik 10 or sumthin i forget) but only in the last 3 years have i been seriously gettin in to chickens
I think I will be getting me some cross brown egg layers this week locally for a buck a piece. I have some of the crested roo's (once we can determine which are roo's) sold. or to trade for jersey giants. That should be in about 3 more weeks.
cool post pics when u get them
oh for sure
how intrested are you in jersey giants
very, they are exactly what I want... meat, eggs and broody.
plus I think the ones I will get from her will be either laying or close to it.
do they go broody
hendersons chicken breed chart says they do.
oh i didnt know that
i am gonna go to bed now im tired night or mornin or wat ever it is over there cya anyway
Oh goodness....I am wondering if it takes them 6-9 weeks to start laying again, whether or not they hatched chicks. That's about a 4 doz egg loss for the ones that didn't sit eggs and about 5 1/2 doz for the ones that did. Taking into account the chicks that were hatched out and what they would cost to get from the hatchery, on the money end of things it doesn't look so good on paper in most cases. I imagine over time if we continue having a bunch of broody's we will get it all down pat as to make it as productive as we can. After all, unless we only going to have hens that don't have a tendency to go broody, there is no way to stop it so we'll have to work with it. (of course we even had a Brown Leghorn go broody)
Cool Tia.......are you getting chicks or grown hens for $1? Either way sounds like a good deal. I am so glad you are able to sell some of your chicks!......hope you are able to find all the buyer you want!!
Christy : )
the 1 dollar ones will be chicks from 1 day to 1 week old. I am planning on, now mind you this is my plan and i have not let the hens in on this plan yet, Is to have the broody's off by themselves and then have the ones that are not broody to be my layers no rooster with them that is why I am getting so many hens. So I wont lose the egg production. i may also have the hens i want to reproduce but not brood and put their eggs with the broody ones. Now I just have to 1) get the hens to age and then 2) talk them into my way of thinking.
Just wondering if anyone has come up with a alternative feed source?
It is hard to find organic feed around here. We are going to experiment with raising Biogrubs (Black Soldier Fly larvea) as they say that chickens love them, and at 45% protein, 35% fat and very high in calcium, they would make a great feed supplement for chickens and fish . My son has put up a web page about the BSF larvea at growgrubs.com He tells me that these Biogrubs can be raised on household food scraps, so I will see how that works out, and post more about it later.
Tf are you listening? More maggots!
L2G--I don't see why your plans shouldn't work--with tweaking. Everything with chickens needs tweaking, lots and lots of tweaking! You never know how much or when til you start:0)
If that is not the truth there Cat. Best laid out plans always have their quarks.
roadhawg, welcome to Dave's, i will check out that grub site later, very interesting
i lost some chicks nad chickens today to three large pup/dogs on a rampage. shot two of them in the rear just as they were leaving [shot TOWARDS my property]. the neighbor who saw had another neighbor call the law on me... all should settle down soon...
meanwhile, i have new chicks, as you know that chicken fairy has my phone number and credit card, time to change BOTH!
nice laying pullets, 13 ameracaunas, 11 brown leghorns, 11 black australorps, 9 buff orps and 5 RIR [or vice versa, can some help with id on those?]
then about 33 cute little bantams... still working on their new pen, they came a little eearly, and the killer dogs came without notice or invite...
L2G2, did you know i RAISE JERSEY GIANTS??? I have more of those than i do Buckeyes and Leghorns combined...
tf