Australorps breed Thread

[call ducks]

*For talking about the Australop breed and it's colour's including White,Blue,And slplash. Pics are welcomed *

i have just my first dozen of black Australop chicks to day. I hope to get a few blue of splash chicks this year to

 

[Adelaide]

My Blue Australorp chick

Sweetest little thing ever!

 

[call ducks]

here are some chick pic's

 

[jeria]

This is Sassy my 3.5 week old chick with an attitude.

 

[want2know]

Hi BYC folks,
Haven't posted in a long while, but I have to give a shout out to my oldest Australop, Teriyaki. She is the HERO of my flock. More than once she has been the one to alert us that the flock is in danger. A couple of days ago she saved two of my hens from a fox. She came up on the stairs to our kitchen door and started screaming. Normally she is pretty quiet, so when I saw it was her I knew there was something wrong, so I ran out to check and a fox had my Orpington. As I was running down I started shouting, screaming, he dropped her but then grabbed my Barred Rock, but I kept screaming and he dropped her and fled, terrified. After about a half hour, all were accounted for and in good health. Big Bird, the Orpington had lost a lot of feathers, but she has lots to spare.

 

[teaton]

I finally got some Black Australorps! 6 pulletts and 1 cockeral they are cute chicks, look like little penguins! And they have gotten big fast!!!

 

[bruceha2000]

I agree that they are. I get more from them in winter. They still do lay all summer, but it slow's down a bit. I did manage to get enough eggs to incubate eggs from my flock all summer long, and some people in my state came to buy the chicks straight run while I was still hatching out some of the other chicks!

I suspect that has to do with the temps. Where you are the summers are hot, the hens not so comfortable. My 2 alpacas are the same. They will hang mostly in the barn all summer. But give them a nice mid 30° day or night and they will happily be outside.

I've been seeing more feathers around the coop lately. My sebright bantam stopped laying and I'm seeing a bunch of her feathers, and I noticed some feathers from what I think is one of my eggers. My leghorn has been shedding feathers for a couple months already. Why would they molt when it's getting so cold? I'd think would have done that when it was hot. I worry about them getting too cold. Last night I peeked in on them and it was 50 degrees in the coop, but 42 outside. I'm sure it got much colder. I have a thermocube on a heat lamp that will turn on ~35 degrees. I noticed my leghorn has a black spot on his comb already. I didn't expect him to start having that problem until much later.

Don't sweat it ... at all. One of my 2012 BA's (hatched early June) didn't have her first adult moult until the end of January 2014. Right, when it is as cold as it gets here and that means double digits below 0°F. She was half naked. I'll skip the details as to why but I had a heat lamp over their plastic waterer to keep at least half the water ring with open water (the side closest to the lamp). One would think that if she and the other girls were cold, they would hang by that lamp. Nope, only went near it to drink.

My coop is a converted stall in a drafty old barn, the water was in the next stall over. The girls have the entire lower part of the barn to run around in all day and by January it isn't any warmer inside than outside. They CHOSE to not be near the heat lamp.

If your birds are getting frostbite it is an indication that the humidity is too high. You need more ventilation, it is as important in the winter as the summer. The birds can, with their down coats, easily survive temperatures WAY below what you will EVER see in Arizona. There is neither heat nor insulation in my coop. In fact 3 sides are hardware cloth only from 4' to the ceiling at 7', the stall coop is 10'x12'. None of the drafts that come into the barn get to the coop though.

 

[robinwhiskers]

Australorps are one of my dream breeds. They are so, so regal and majestic to look at.

 

[Diannastarr]

Some people are creeped out by snakes, I'm not one of them. How nice the King is there to protect you from the rattlers. S/he is lovely.

, ive never been afraid of any animal , even snakes as long as they dont bite....lol... but this snake and i have a long history, since one day i saw 4 of my wild cats out on my back porch and they had a small snake they were planning to eat, so i ran out and made them drop it , then ran and got a glass dish to cover the baby snake so i could contain it and look up on line what it was, i found out it was a baby king snake, so i took it in and healed up its wounds, so after a wile it was healed & i took it out to the back of my land at dusk ,knowing they are night snakes , and i release it under a big thorn brush so the cats could not get at it, and it had some time to get away, so fast forward almost 20 years later , this giant king snake has saved me a few times and on this night i was able for the first time to take pics of it, so i took like 20 pics of it & after i went back inside , some thing told me that was the baby snake i had saved, i searched on line and found , king snakes can live 20 years. so was that the baby i had saved and does & it remember me , since in minutes it would have been dinner, for 4 cats, its all just amazing when you think about it..! i like to think it was that tiny snake i saved all those years ago, but no matter what im just so grateful for my big beautiful king snake.! and i hope its a girl so she will have more kings to guard my land...!!! nature does work with us & does a great job of it, i must say...!! sadly most people don't notice, but all i have to say is life is about learning ..!! & being grateful...!!!

 

[gumamelachick]

I have 1 in my current (my first!) flock. She was hatched 3/15/10. Here's Opal at 2 days:

and at 4 weeks in the run looking at Diesel:

I love her beautiful black-green feathers! And she's such a sweetheart! She's here in the garden at a little over 7 weeks: