Consolidated Kansas - Page 1560

Post me a pic. Are you within an hours drive of El Dorado ?? Two of my hens are Sussex so I'm sure they'd like him!

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Originally Posted by Candace69 

 

Talk about duh, I thought she ASKED if she was a great pyr, dis is my brain....

Thanks for clarifying Hawkeye! :)

No problem!  I often respond to something I have imagined or didn't read right.  No biggie.  

Josie, I meant to say I agree that was smart of Molly to look up when you pointed.  Dogs usually don't "get" pointing.

Awww...Karen, sorry you don't get to go to the fair.

LOL about the "wild goose chase".  I never thought about that expression before and what its origin must have been.

Candace, I bet you can substitute rabbit for almost any beef or chicken recipe.  I substitute all the time depending on what I have.  I know there are some sauces/condiments that are more complementary with one meat or another but in many dishes it really doesn't matter and you can use any type of meat.

I actually had a wild goose chase myself earlier this spring. On my road there was one lone snowy goose sitting by a pond for months. I didn't know if it was injured or nesting or what but it was a pretty open field and I just knew the coyotes would get it. So one day I had DH stop and I climbed the gate and went in to try to wrangle the goose. Well use your imagination. The thing would sit until I would get 25 feet from it then take off and go 100 feet away. I think I spent 45 minutes running around that pond trying to catch up with that silly goose before deciding if I kept chasing it, the vultures would be having me for lunch. I kept thinking someone should have been telling me to act my age. Sadly it was there maybe 2 more months then disappeared.

I went out about 7:30 and found one of my big ole buff orpington hens laying on the ground by her pen. I don't know if she broke her neck or what. No obvious trauma. It worries me though with the owls an hawks coming around. One might have grabbed her and dropped her. I don't have netting over that pen but most of them go inside the building to sleep so I have no idea what happened.

I left the lid off the bin last night that the peachick and one of the lemon cuckoo pullets are staying in. I noticed about bed time they jumped on the edge to sleep. They had their tails pointed toward the bin so I left them. Now I've created a monster. Each time I put them back in they jump back up on the edge. I guess I'd better get a temporary peafowl pen built regardless of whether I have another baby peachick or not.

I have more Swedish Flower hen chicks hatching today. Yipee! If I have a good hatch that should be enough for some good breeding stock. Hopefully by spring I'll be hatching a few of my own.

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Originally Posted by Hawkeye95 

Lizzy-- how did I forget to reply to you?  Anyway, after reading your horrible story of spending 2 hours trying to run down geese, I was just thinking how crazy it was that she let them all out before you even got there.  I mean, surely, she could have at least left them in so you could see them.  Wow.  I hope you find another goose.

I guess her logic was that I had specifically stated that I wanted a FEMALE white chinese.  When she looked at her birds and didn't see anything that she thought I would be interested in, she figured she would let them loose and THEN call me to tell me that it was a waste of time to drive all the way out to her place because she didn't have anything I would be interested in.  The flaw with her logic, though, was that she didn't think about me having a 2nd, 3rd, etc. choice and still wanting to come out anyway.  She also didn't think about me wanting to determine the gender of the birds myself.

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Originally Posted by karenS 

 

Lizzy, sounds like a wild goose chase for sure, and not even funny. 

No, it wasn't even funny.  The neat thing was that this lady had a bunch of different animals.  While I was there, I got to feed a llama, pet a baby llama, and pet her goats.  I also got to see a Hennie (hennie = mini horse + donkey) for the first time.  I'm a horse lover, so that was really neat. 

This morning I went out to the chicken yard and with a sinking feeling, did a head count and came up one Muscovy hen short.  They can fly pretty well and love to fly the length of the yard but sometimes misjudge and go over the fence.  Usually they just waddle around and wait at the gate to be let back in, but this time, I scoured the surrounds and didn't see her.  They usually stick together as a group, but as a last resort, I checked inside the coop in case she went in to eat by herself and there she was.  No, not at the feeder.  Sitting in a nest.  WHAT???   She is only 4 months old and I thought at this point they wouldn't lay until next Spring???  A little while later she was back out with the others so I went to check where she had been sitting and no egg.  So I guess it was a "dry run", but even so, I didn't think they'd be interested in practicing until they were closer to actually laying so I dunno.....time will tell.

Danz, sorry about your BO.  Was she very old?  Perhaps she had a heart attack or died of some other natural cause?

Speaking of old BO's, I have a hen who is more than 3 years old and still laying 2-3 eggs a week.  She's been such a good girl that I decided to go ahead and incubate one of her eggs to try to get a daughter from her, to carry on when she is too old.  I've seen Cyrus mount her and her eggs that we eat appear to have good fertility so on my last batch I threw one of her eggs in, but had to pull it early as candling at 7-days revealed a porous egg that was not developing.  So when I set a second batch, I had another of her eggs laid that day and threw it in (after first checking it was not porous).  This egg started to develop and I was pleased but at the 14-day candling yesterday, it looked like it stopped developing and there was no movement.  I opened it up and it looks like it stopped around day 10.  Nothing happened incubator-wise at that time and this was the only egg that stopped so I'm starting to think "old" eggs just don't develop as well.  Perhaps, as with people, as the hen gets older, the genetic material of the egg starts to deteriorate.  I'm guessing this fetus died because something was going wrong with its development.  Oh well, I tried.

And maybe you will have some babies to sell that are extras?  Maybe???

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Originally Posted by chicken danz 

***snip***

 

I have more Swedish Flower hen chicks hatching today. Yipee! If I have a good hatch that should be enough for some good breeding stock. Hopefully by spring I'll be hatching a few of my own.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Hawkeye95 
Rob-- hey we spent the entire day at the State Fair today!!  It was so fun!  BTW-- go check out the poultry barn, they have a bunch of really nice Silkies in there this year!  I was so happy to see that.  The last two years, there were NO silkies at all.  And before that, just hatchery quality birds.  They did have a white hatchery quality silkie rooster in there-- not sure what they are thinking about that.  Ah well.  The others make up for him.  They even had a few AOV's (all other colors) in there-- one was a Frost!  That is a new color that lots of "silkie people" are working on!  I was excited to see it!  I took a picture of it and was going to post it to my silkie group!  LOL!!  

     I'll let the girls know you liked their birds.  Technically the only AOV is the Frost, but the computer system only offers white/black/AOV.  I'm pretty ticked off at the fair right now and don't know if we'll return next year.  The entire event this year has been nothing but screw-up after screw-up where the poultry is concerned.  (Opens) Some of the problems have been inconvenient (splitting up classes, no cages) while some have been completely egregious (removing sick birds and putting healthy ones right into those cages). Now they're medicating the entire barn. We were informed one of our birds even died yesterday.  Anyone who goes, remember to shower, change and clean shoes before visiting your flock. 

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Originally Posted by HEChicken 

Thanks Karen!  Oh - and here's another genetics question for anyone who knows: since an EE is technically a "mutt", does an EE roo over an EE hen produce another EE?

You have to wait for the offspring to lay to determine that.  All blue/green egg laying offspring could be considered an EE, the brown layers would not IMO, I don't care what the hatcheries say.  If I'm paying the extra $ for an EE, I expect colored eggs.

 

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Originally Posted by sharol 

I finally gave in and took Butch (the roo) to the vet for his bumblefoot today.  To my surprise, my vet said it wasn't really very far advanced.  He cleaned it out and packed it and wrapped it.  He also gave us antibiotics (oral) for several days.   Butch was VERY good at the vet's.  I guess I can do the clean out next time, and my vet says he will give me the antibiotics if I need them. 

 

On Thursday I'm supposed to remove the wrappings and check out the wound for healing.  We shall see. 

 

I swore I wouldn't take a chicken to the vet, but Butch is special.

We use gauze, vet wrap and ointment.  Severe cases get penicillin as well.

 

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Originally Posted by Chickies-duckies-etc 

 My experience with the blue egg thing - I bought a "backyard flock" from someone that was moving.  It consisted of some black tailed white japanese, hens and 1 roo, 1 EE banty roo, 1 banty cochin roo, and some seabright hens.  Because, because, they ended up in the same pen and the cochin roo did not survive.  After some eggs hatched and the chicks grew and the pullets started laying, I was very surprised to find some nice "blue" eggs.  Not green, blue. The EE roo was the only chicken in the pen that even could have carried the blue gene, so from that, I found out that all you need for blue eggs is a roo that carries the blue gene.  I have been enchanted with the little hens that look like the japanese and lay the pretty blue eggs. Some layed slighty off white eggs which is the natural color for the japanese and some layed a slightly brown egg.  That might be the natural color for the seabrights.  There are a few blue egg layers in the following generations, but with it is a "fiesty" disposition from that EE roo that is not so good. It has been interesting.

 

I am not sure, but isn't the green egg color from a combination of the blue and brown gene?  I have not studyied it so am not sure on that. I have thought if someone wanted to put the time  into it, some interesting blue egg chickens could be developed just with a good blue egg gene rooster.

If a bird has even one copy of the blue egg gene, you can tell by the eggs she lays.  Two blue genes will produce blue, one blue gene/one white will produce blue, one blue gene/one brown gene will produce green (green shade determined by shade of brown it's paired with)  With a maran brown will get you olive, whereas paired with a cream will be a brighter green. 

 

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Originally Posted by HEChicken 

There is a lady here on the forum who makes shoes for chickens who have bumblefoot and sells them on the buy-sell-trade section.  The only thing is, they're $10 per shoe and there is a left and right foot, and a couple of sizes.  So, in order to have one on hand for any size hen getting a bumble in either foot, the initial outlay would be $40, and then of course you'd probably end up with a half dozen hens all getting it in their left foot at the same time anyway.

As I was cleaning up the yard (now that it is cool enough to do so), I noticed that the nylon rope stuff I used to tie down the netting over the run was getting a bit faded.  When I went over and really looked at it, it was falling apart.  I threaded it through the edges of the netting and then fastened the netting/rope to the upper part of the fence with zip ties 2 years ago.  I had a couple of places where the rope had broken, and so I decided to patch it  for the time being.  No such luck.  The stuff fell apart in my hands.  Yikes.  Two sides of the run adjoin a pasture, and so the threat from those sides is very real.

I bought more (better) rope, and I spent the morning repairing my run.  I still have to get another reel of the stuff because Walmart only had 2 50 footers and I needed 3, but at least the 2 sides on the pasture are secure again.

Just an FYI.  I should have been checking that stuff periodically.

Sharol