Backyard Brahmas!!

[Vickis Girls]

Summer, I can't quite remember...was it the problem of underweight hens? So maybe these younger ones are from a different line than the ones with health issues? Are these from a different hatchery? I hope it's a genetic thing like you said.

Huntress, the BOSS is starting to sprout!!! Makes me really miss my garden.

 

[Huntress78]

My ladies have started laying. In the mixed flock I don't know which breed started first, but I've caught both of the dark brahmas in the nest box.

With my flock of 2 Dark Brahmas, two Delawares, and Australorp, and a Black Langshan I'm getting up to 5 eggs a day. Most of them normal medium or large size in colors from mid-brown to a beautiful, terra cotta pink. I have no idea who laid which.

There have been a few interesting oddities as they got started: eggs brown on one end and pinkish on the other, "pixelated" eggs mottled in terra cotta and white, a pointy egg, a half-size egg, and a jelly egg (laid from the perch overnight and frozen solid when discovered.

Marion, who should have been Rosemary, is exactly what I would have wanted in a rooster if I had intended to get one. His voice is pleasant and not as loud as the late, Red Boys. He crows for the pre-dawn, the actual dawn, and only occasionally throughout the rest of the day. He respects me (I make sure to make the tamest hen squat for me every time I am at the coop door). His 6 hens are not losing feathers on their backs and yet the very first dozen eggs were, as best I could tell, fertile (I am unlikely to hatch any unless we move to a more rural area).

It is a little disconcerting to look at how very LARGE they all are. It makes me wish that the run were twice as big and that I'd had the coop set up 2 feet off the ground instead of 18 inches.

Amazing isn't it...how eggs are all the same yet all different? One of my Darks lays a very pointy egg and all the Dark's eggs have a pink cast. I think the pink comes from the bloom because if you wash them they are just brown.

If you have the space you can always make the pen bigger. Are the legs of the coop down in the ground? Maybe you can jack up the coop and put some blocks under the legs to give more head room.

 

[livininbrazil]

It could be something genetic, as the birds are from a hatchery and I'm sure they are related. My newer brahmas are looking good and have less black on the feathers. Maybe they are a different blood line than my others.

Hi Summer, are you talking about your birds that are/were skinny and you thought maybe they had a gizzard problem? So they´re OK still? It has to be genetic, then, like some human families are just skinny, no matter what they eat? Just not a desirable thing in Brahmas!

I have some chickens here that are mental, eat absolutely anything at all, and aren´t dead yet! They´re Dels. Mad as hatters. I feed them the same diet as the others.

I´m glad your new lot are doing well.

 

[Huntress78]

Huntress, the BOSS is starting to sprout!!! Makes me really miss my garden.

Good! I hope the girls like it.
I miss my garden too. We've been pushing snow in that direction this winter so one of my raised beds is under like 15 feet of snow. I'll be lucky to see that one before Memorial Day.

 

[Nikki816]

Got my first brahma egg yesterday and I figured out who laid it today my splash buff columbian pullet (buff with splash instead of black) was sitting and arranging herself a nice little nest.

 

[Gryphon]

Woot! How big was it and what color? My Light Brahma is laying mediums (50-55g. so far) light brown, sonetimes with tiny white speckles.

 

[Nikki816]

Didn't weigh it, but it was small. Light brown

Woot! How big was it and what color? My Light Brahma is laying mediums (50-55g. so far) light brown, sonetimes with tiny white speckles.

 

[Trooper Man]

Can someone please help me find some started partridge or blue partridge brahmas?

 

[bumpercarr]

The only ones I've been able to find are big $$$ for a trio. I'd help you out, but I don't have any to spare myself yet. Maybe by summer I would have some. But I'm all of the way in NM, I'm sure you'd love to see NM, but it is a long way to drive for a few birds

 

[3KillerBs]

I've had occasion to show my chickens to several people who have known chickens and they all comment on how big my Light Brahma rooster is. He's a hatchery bird (Ideal), only 7 months old. I'm sort of wondering how big he's actually going to get.

How big are the Brahma roosters in your backyards? Hatchery or breeder stock?

So far the "gentle giant" reputation is holding good. I tell Marion that he should wipe his feet because the Delawares have dirty backs, but he does his duty without seeming to leave a feather out of place.