Cross Continental Friends!!!

[SlowBill]

that particular cross is done to fulfill my desire of having something like madagascar, impossible to find here, even if it's not a bad meat line!

many others are done just for business, in search of compromise between weight and speed of growth, or to create a double attitude chicken

final weight gene went from cockerel, speed of growth from the hen

I hope you want to create an american auracana bantam, do you've got to do less selections, you can cross a bantam cockerel, maybe with rightest color and design as possible, and a little ameraucana, who lays little and very green eggs

when you start to fix size and feather color, you've got a long way to fix the egg shell, reinserting new ameraucana cockerels, to split the blood, and restarting the size selection

it's normal to have new blood after the third generation, to prevent diseases

It's almost 2.00, buonanotte piccoletta

 

[Megan Amber]

Goodnight Bill- I missed talking with you. Sleep Well

 

[KimIvie]

Thank YOU for the big welcome. Really do appreciate it. I am in Valdez, Ak. We have many chickens and eight Nigerian dwarf dairy goats. We are up to our eyeballs in fresh milk and eggs and could not be happier. I currently have Orpingtons, Silkies, D'Anvers (peeps), Bantam and Giant Cochins, Ameraucana (peeps), Seramas (two wonderful hens), Easter and Olive eggers and a flock of high production layers : comets etc.

 

[Megan Amber]

Cool, Nigerians! Do you really get a lot of milk from them? I want goats but am still deciding on breed.

 

[KimIvie]

We have two girls in milk now and are getting two quarts per day total. This ends up being three gallons a week. For our small family needs it is more than enough. I did buy from good dairy stock and my girls both still have their kids on them for seven hours day. All things considered. I think it is going well.

 

[Megan Amber]

That is a lot of milk-even for my big family.Do you make cheeses and other dairy products?

 

[Megan Amber]

Tarheelbirdy-I am sorry about your garden, I hate it when that happens. The weather is a bit odd right now though, your right.

Karen- How is everything with your current situation? I pray well or at least a little better. Did you get your roosters butchered? Mastadons are cute and fluffy but I forgot to mention also tiny!

 

[KimIvie]

I just made the first batch of homemade strawberry icemilk. Icecream out of the goat's milk instead of cream. The milk i have is very high in dairy fat so it is yummy. My husband has made two batches of cheese. It is very good too. We just have to find the time to do it more.

 

[Megan Amber]

That's interesting. And it sounds good. I want to make all kinds of dairy products when I get goat(s).I do hear it is time consuming though. A friend of mine was saying that it is very hard to separate the cream from the milk. She has nubians and I wonder if that maybe has something to with it. So I always read that nigerians were smaller than pygmies. But then I wrote a local breeder and she said that her nigerians were bigger than her pygmies. Does this sound right to you? How big are yours. Forgive my questions-I am the foolish nosy one of the group!

 

[thedollysmama]

I got to meet my neighbor whilst I was staggering out to the laundry room (separate building from the house). His naughty little dog had grabbed one of my serama roosters and was dunking it in the creek. I can't run but I can scurry and yell so off I went in my pajamas and Crocs, those hideous shoes I love so. The neighbor was on the outside of the fence yelling at his dog to stop. I scared the dog and he jumped out of the water as I jumped in. This is a good metre plus drop into water that is about a half meter deep and very cold snow melt. Some how i completely lost a shoe but the best part was the poor chicken. The rooster, poor thing, oh, guys, it was so funny. I shouldn't laugh but there he was, in as small a ball as he could make himself, floating and slowly pirouetting in the current of the creek, just as wide eyed and frozen as a statue. I grabbed the rooster, who actually seems to be fine now, wrung him out, and tucked him into my pocket while the neighbor apologized over and over, offering to pay, saying he doesn't know why we didn't shoot the dog, etc. I told him point blank I wasn't too concerned about the rooster but was worried about my pregnant goat, who was mildly amused at the ruckus. I told him that we had shot other dogs and would shoot his if it came back, which he understood.
Imagine the look on my husband's face when I came back in the house wet, covered in leaves, mud, a little blood, and feathers and telling him I met one of the neighbors.
The rooster is fine but a little jumpy and has three scraggly tail feathers left.

Karen
Who leads a strange life...my coworkers don't know what to make of me