Pennsylvania!! Unite!!

Our run is 75% covered with pretty decent drainage so doing OK, birds stayed in most of the day.

fangedknight said:

How's everyone holding up with all this rain though? My runs are decently flooded... I swear we're mulching the darn things this year.

Click to expand...

My turkey pen is a swamp at the moment and the chicken coop is mucky but we're all good up here. We did have some crazy flooding at work though. Glendale Lake is 4' above normal level...



I've recently cut back my flock dramatically. I went from around 30 chickens to 15 and 11 turkeys to 7. I'm also cutting up all my fabric for hen saddles but once it's gone, I'm done. It's getting too hard to keep up with everything along with work and the family. That, and uncle Sam wants a big chunk of my profits :/ I kept mostly my older hens and toms to live out their days (@fisherlady Ana is still here lol). I rescued a little mutt roo at the swap who is happily watching over my flock now. We named him Reggie

Oh and by the way, there's a swap tomorrow morning (Saturday, April 5th) from 9-1 at Tyrone Milling if anyone is nearby I will be there with a bunch of olive egger/ easter egger chicks, black copper Marans chicks and hen saddles.

Office chicks at the Tioga County Extension office just moved out of the nursery and into the toddler room

Lockdown has begun!!! I've got 18 eggs waiting to hatch and oh my gods am I going to punt this incubator if things don't start working right. I get the temp up and the humidity drops, I get the humidity up and the temp drops!

-sighs- It's been old faithful for many years but I think it might be time to get a newer one. (I say newer because there's no way I can afford a brand new Brinsea let alone the one I want). I know I started looking for used cabinet incubators on fb marketplace but I had to pause that search with life getting so hectic.

And yes I've got two sponges I cut in half and soaked and put in there, I have a tray of water with a pipette I'm putting into the water hole at the top of the lid and the vent is closed fully. I just pray this hatch goes okay because if I lose all my chicks due to something stupid I'm gonna lose my last marble. It's never been this difficult... and I'm trying to wrap my head around why and I just can't.

Hey all it's Hatching Day! And something funny just happened.

Good news, there's one out already and she's in the brooder hopping around like a goof ball, and two starting to pip. (Slightly bad news, there's one that hatched still in the incubator with a big yolk sac and I have a funny feeling she died because I can't see her breathing).

The funny thing... Remember how I said this was supposed to be a Red Sex Link project? Apparently, the information that Google gave me when I was trying to double-check exactly what the cross I needed was, was incorrect.

I have a Rhode Island Red Roo x Barred Rock Hens.... I accidentally have Black Stars. Thankfully still what I need and still beautiful! But not what I thought I was breeding

fangedknight said:

Hey all it's Hatching Day! And something funny just happened.

Good news, there's one out already and she's in the brooder hopping around like a goof ball, and two starting to pip. (Slightly bad news, there's one that hatched still in the incubator with a big yolk sac and I have a funny feeling she died because I can't see her breathing).

The funny thing... Remember how I said this was supposed to be a Red Sex Link project? Apparently, the information that Google gave me when I was trying to double-check exactly what the cross I needed was, was incorrect.

I have a Rhode Island Red Roo x Barred Rock Hens.... I accidentally have Black Stars. Thankfully still what I need and still beautiful! But not what I thought I was breeding

Click to expand...

Google lies all the time!

Your cross creates "Black Sexlinks". To make "Red Sexlinks", you need to use a hen that has the Silver gene. These often appear white and the Rhode Island White is most often used commercially as the female side of a red sexlink hybrid.

dheltzel said:

Google lies all the time!

Your cross creates "Black Sexlinks". To make "Red Sexlinks", you need to use a hen that has the Silver gene. These often appear white and the Rhode Island White is most often used commercially as the female side of a red sexlink hybrid.

Click to expand...

Ahhhh okay see that is a lot easier to understand than the very technical article I found yesterday while trying to figure out what I did.

Don't get me wrong the article had some great info. But it was a bit more on the technical genetics side than I had the brain capacity for at that particular moment.

Which now I'm getting ideas for later... Hmmm.

Either way I have an update on the chicks. I was up all darn night with them and they're still not done hatching. But we're making decent progress. Out of the 18 eggs that made it to lockdown, 11 hatched (one didn't survive, she had a big yolk sac still attached and just didn't make it). So there are 10 healthy babies in the brooder atm. With 7 more eggs to go!


And! The latest one to hatch was the upside-down egg I mentioned a couple weeks ago. He's a boy, and he hatched out just fine and he's completely healthy and normal. Which is fantastic!

https://www.abc27.com/pennsylvania/chicken-feed-sold-in-pennsylvania-recalled/amp/

I’ve gotten ADM Pen Pals at Stromberg’s Wilkes Barre location before. I’m not currently using chick feed tho.

Hatching update: 11 healthy babies, 6 boys, 5 girls.

Had one egg in the incubator for a few days that had externally pipped on the side and missed the air cell completely. I was trying to let her do her thing but she didn't make it. Found her this morning. Recandled the final 5 eggs, two definitely quit. And I have 3 more that I'm pretty sure might be done too. Nobody's internally pipped, it's day 25, and there's absolutely no movement.

If this is the end of this hatch, it's pretty good for my first one of the season. 18 set, 12 hatched (one didn't make it that hatched). So 66.67% Hatch rate. I'll take that as a win!