Recent content by Sidhe13

Welding up the frame for the extensions. It will have a mesh roof now and I have collected old shade cloth from junkyards to use too. And a hole has been dug for a duck pond which will drain into the dedicated poultry forage garden. The outside of the fence will have a wire skirt weighed down...

I have a duckling that was acting a little off this morning. In 10hrs s/he has confirmed that s/he is unwell. Symptoms are: lack of appetite, neck spasms pulling to the left side, sleepy and inactive. Makes a "chewing" motion before and after the spasm. Sometimes after a particularly bad spasm...

Agreed! We live very rural and near grain storage and overgrown yards... snake heaven. One of my cats caught a baby brown snake and was bit. She survived but has never been the same. I have no problems with snakes out and about and if they are just passing through...all good. But if they come in...

I reckon it is fantastic! They eat nearly half as much feed, they are certainly healthier, and the powdery stuff in the bags gets mixed in too and doesn't waft away on the breeze or get scattered around.

Bloody lice!! And a rooster who is attacking people!! Baby ducks and chicks and fertile eggs coming on Saturday...so excited!!

Just stir it in.

My FF is absolutely full of maggots! Still ok to feed out?

Foxes are definitely an issue here!! The rooster called alarm yesterday and I went down to check...our stumpy tail lizard had escaped his pen and was investigating the chook pen! 20mins later he called alarm again... this time to the sky where a falcon was hovering! Lucky I was still outside...

@appps yea I used my own hygrometer and thermometers. The firsy batch of eggs had one hatch and die...turns out the temp was out by about 2.3 degrees!! I recalibrated and my 2nd hatch was beautiful!

I found it way too hard to keep the humidity stable and stressed bigtime about the aircells being too small. Bumping up to 70-75% meant no shrink wrapping. Everyone was fine. 99-100 farenheit works out to 37.2-37.5 so you are spot on! I got my numbers mixed up!

@Fancychookladythe picture is indeed worth a thousand words...we have them, but plastic weave....same thing? Definitely going straight on to concrete! Thanks for the input, everyone! @ChristieB sorry for your loss @appps I had an incubator with a fan. I dry incubated then on day 18 filled...

*ignorance alert* what is a chaff bag?

All very reasonable questions! My hubby just raised the point that the screens have been sitting in a dirty shed for god knows how long and he considers them unsafe for ANYTHING. The more I sit here staring at it, the more I like the idea of just plonking it where it is....

Hi guys. My brooder had a hard winter and the already suspicuous floor rotted out. I am replacing it but am divided between using a solid floor like it was before, or I have some old fly mesh door screens that fit perfectly too... the mesh is very fine so no little legs will go through. It will...

@Fancychooklady That is a fair point! The boys have never really had anything to do with the chooks...i have started him off today handling and "integration" to see if that helps. If not, we will have roast chook...