5th Annual BYC New Year's Day 2014 Hatch-A-Long

[chicken pickin]

Yes Gardeningmama, great news, I just can't believe how time flies. When did I get this old?

Quilt theme? Check this out!! I want this done in my kitchen. Anyone out there that can paint like this? Come on over!
http://www.hometalk.com/2861378/victorian-kitchen

I LOVE THIS!!! I would do this. Not DH, he would find a new house to live in LOL.

 

[MontanaDolphin]

Have to share. Found out today that I am going to be a great grandmother!

Congratulations!!!!

 

[Gardeningmama]

Quote:
x2...I especially love the kitchen cabinets!!

 

[chickengirl1193]

That's a lot of birds in the spare room. I feel you though. I always lecture people that chickens don't get cold  - actually they do but they have sophisticated mechanisms to deal with it, not to mention they're wearing a new down jacket they just got finished sewing together.
In spite of excellent ventilation, my big combed roosters tend to get varying degrees of frostbite. Last year, I was prepared and had them all in a bachelor pad where I kept the temp above 20. This year I wasn't so prepared and the evening below zero temps were coming, I started putting all roosters in one building but got tired of trudging across the tundra carrying a boy that was trying to eat my hands. I got 5 put together but left the last 2 in the building with the best ventilation.
I also broke down and covered one open wall of that building with 90% shade cloth to cut the 35mph gusts.
I had 2 POL pullets in their own apartment. Monday they braved the snow and walked to the next building to coop themselves with a bunch of strangers. When I went to lock them up for the night one was missing. I looked all over and found her roosting on the gutter at the eave sitting on 10 inches of snow in below zero temps. She squawked when I put her in on the roost with the rest but I felt better about it. By the way one of them laid their first egg the next morning. I think it was the snow roosting pullet since she has the biggest comb.

Jungle fowl do live in tropical rainforest but their home range also encompasses the Himalaya foothills, so they readily adapt to a variety of climates.

I doubt very much that European chickens in the mIddle ages or those in the Andean highlands 500 years ago were provided heat

Just keep in mind that if you mimic what a hen does, you won't need to actually measure temperatures. Hang a heat lamp (or 2 if young chicks in cold weather) and the chicks will choose how close to sit to it so they're comfortable. It may be providing more heat than necessary but if they can get away from the heat, it simplifies the worry about temperature.
That deal about lowering the temperature 5° (see how I did that?) each week is for the commercial industry where they have 10s of thousands of chicks in a controlled environment. They don't have the ability to allow the chick to choose their comfort zone. If a chick is too hot or too cold - too bad. They're not going to live that long anyway and their method is based on cost/benefit.

Lovely. My first several losses were to opossums. Dogs and raccoons are now tied for first.

Try Alt, 0, 1, 7, 6      You may have to toggle the numlock key

Windows also has a character map tool in Accessories.

Horrible way to go.
I was fortunate one night when I didn't get home by dusk. I hadn't collected eggs and the 'possum was content with an egg dinner rather than climb up to the roost.
'Possums are the scavengers of our world and scour for scraps, waste grain, feed, crop residue, etc.. Excellent sense of smell and can find any morsel.
I've even trapped them just using scratch grain as bait.
If they can't find anything else, they have no qualms about eating a chicken.
People don't realize how many predators are afoot because they don't go out at night. A game cam is a real eye opener.

They usually move slowly but I've seen them really scramble. With chickens, they don't have to be fast after nightfall. The chicken won't move in the dark.

X2 Outside tray is the way to go. Saves a lot of feed.

Thank you. IME, most chicks with problems don't make it.
I had a chick with its foot stuck to the small end of the shell in a curved position and couldn't straighten it out. I splinted its foot but then the other leg became unusable. I spent all day fashioning a chair jail out of two big sponges with an opening for his head and one for the vent. He hated not being able to move but if he was let out he just scooted across the floor, being unable to walk. My plan was to hand feed him for a couple days to see if the legs improved but he didn't make it. It was probably genetic, nutritional or incubation related.
Anyway it is usually a waste of time.

Sandhill preservation has all kinds of frizzles. I received a few different varieties in a package from them. They do a lot of projects, some including frizzles.

Good idea. When it's wet they don't bill it out. I started fermented feed and it's amazing how much farther feed goes. I still have bulk feeders for dry feed with a catch tray underneath.
The fermented feed also takes care of the fines that the chickens avoid. The fines is where a lot of the vitamin and mineral supplements are and become suspended in the FF.


A polar vortex like no other. Get ready, we're about to send it back to you. By Thursday we'll almost be as warm as you. At least we only have to hunker down for one or two weeks a year.
I was wondering why this vortex seemed so extreme. I did a Google search along with the search term 'polar magnetic shift' and found only one news article. Apparently I'm not the only one thinking outside the box. (there's 2 of us).  A fun read and food for thought.

http://www.standard.net/stories/2014/01/06/what-are-we-utahns-make-deep-freeze-east


Esti had a big advantage in SA with all those pretty flowers for the chick to walk through.

At least she was kind enough not to rub it in that she's having a heat wave now.  
X2

I still haven't figured it out. I can't access size or color.

Congratulations everyone and thank you very much for all your nice comments.
You're all so kind.
Ron, you did an amazing job. Great patience and encouragement.

~~Whenever a friend of mine calls, she tells me to get off of BYC and get back to work. I told her of this honor and now I feel vindicated.
I could talk about chickens all day. Oh, I forgot, I do talk about chickens all day.

I teach chicken classes at area community colleges, civic centers, The botanical garden and other green/sustainable living venues.
Along with others in our chicken meetup group, I also go to city council meetings in support of people trying to change their local ordinances to allow chickens.
We have had great support from local television, radio and newspapers backing our efforts.
Our record is 7 and 1.
St. Louis is unusual in the fact that the county is made up of 92 contiguous cities besides the city of St. Louis(which allows 4 without a permit). Each one has different rules. It's possible for one person to be allowed 3 chickens, their neighbor across the street may be allowed any number including roosters and someone at the end of the street can have none. Oddly enough, it's my experience that the more affluent or larger a community, the more likely they are to have few or no restrictions. The poorer or the smaller the city, the more likely they are to ban chickens.
Out of the 100 largest cities in the US, 92 allow chickens.

right now I have one heated spot and plenty of cool but I have one chick that sits directly below the light and pants, but all of the other chicks are fine and when I move the light up to cool it off for the one chick they all pile in the corner... so it's just that one chick that's unhappy even tho he can leave to go to other cooler parts....

 

[chickengirl1193]

@ChickenCanoe...I just read that article you posted, I didn't realize there was a magnetic field switch happening... and also I always get very annoyed when its weather like this and people say that global warming isn't real because it's so cold out... they don't realize that this is part of it. it's an extreme climate change... I'm an environmental science major and I just took a global climate change course...

 

[SallyinIndiana]

I have a very slow hatcher today. THe shell is already in two parts but the chick is laying there peeping instead of kicking the lower half of the shell off. I though maybe it was the egg carton holding it back so I removed the egg carton this morning. Nope the chick wants to lay down. The peeping is attracting the barn cat that is inside visiting due to the extreme cold.

 

[coopsbyty]

Have to share.  Found out today that I am going to be a great grandmother! 

CONGRATULATIONS!!

 

[carriebain]

Yes Gardeningmama, great news, I just can't believe how time flies.  When did I get this old?  

Quilt theme?  Check this out!!  I want this done in my kitchen.  Anyone out there that can paint like this?  Come on over!
http://www.hometalk.com/2861378/victorian-kitchen

I love that, but my husband would kill me! Ha

 

[ChickenCanoe]

Here's a good one. One of the charges against ousted former Egyptian president Mohamed Morsi is stealing chickens from jails.

http://english.ahram.org.eg/NewsCon...sident-Morsi-faces-livestockrelated-accu.aspx

 

[ChickenCanoe]

@ChickenCanoe ...I just read that article you posted, I didn't realize there was a magnetic field switch happening... and also I always get very annoyed when its weather like this and people say that global warming isn't real because it's so cold out... they don't realize that this is part of it. it's an extreme climate change... I'm an environmental science major and I just took a global climate change course...

Yeah, it's just weird weather.
It's called GLOBAL warming, not LOCAL warming. Conveniently failing to notice that Australia is having the hottest summer on record and unprecedented drought?
http://www.accuweather.com/en/weather-news/record-setting-heat-wave-in-au/21789651
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/dec/31/queensland-swelters-in-heatwave-with-no-relief-in-sight
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jan/06/thousands-of-bats-killed-by-hot-weather-in-queensland

Arctic Russia's ancient permafrost melts.
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2009/oct/20/arctic-tundra
The future of food with extreme weather.
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/oct/15/extreme-weather-starvation-food-production

Some areas here could be having record high temperatures just a week after these record lows.
http://www.heraldtribune.com/articl...ecord-heat-could-follow-record-cold#gsc.tab=0