Pennsylvania!! Unite!!

Pics
Date sort Score sort
Auroradream26 said:
http://classifieds.pennswoods.net/classifieds/viewad.cgi?adindex=3224349

If I had the money, I would SO buy this! If anyone needs or wants a new incubator, here's a cabinet one for sale.
Click to expand...

GQF cabinet incubators are great, but it's easy to get a little out of control. I bought a used one a year ago and hatched over 600 chicks with it. We have over 100 more hens now than we did a year ago and housing them all has been a challenge. Most are getting to point of lay, or will be soon and we are averaging about 2 dozen eggs a day now, which I an happy with, given the time of year and weather and all.
 
Blarneyeggs said:
I manually close my doors each night. And collect the water containers so they don't freeze, and put the food away so we don't get rats.

So my son broke his arm playing hockey. We are having the oddest year medically, I really don't believe in 'bad luck' or bad ju ju. But I could use a break from all this negative stuff. My son seems fine, smiling away as they wrapped him up, no tears. He's quite a trooper.

Wish I was here:



Click to expand...

Hey B:

Hope things work out...(on the stress level)....Christmas is coming and its a great time to decompress...
 
wingstone said:
Actually suburbia is a perfect place for a fox t hang out, all kinds of easy food for them and less natural predators for them, dogs are often fenced in and guns can not be used.... I would say you got a smart fox
Click to expand...

yep...I am a suburbanite...behind my house is around 30 acres of forest....its home to every critter in the area...and draws every predator...
(including humans during bow season)...my foxes, /racoons/skunks have stayed away during the fall (they are there but stay away from my backyard), and only become a problem in late winter/ early spring when thing get tough....
 
fisherlady said:
It is sad but true that all hens don't make good broodies.... I have found that lower pecking order birds still tend to be easier to intimidate if you have a flock with stronger personality hens. We have 3 hens similar to this now. 2 of them are still good broodies, though they tend to avoid many of the bigger hens they will sometimes surprise us and turn into little lionesses and they did well with teaching their little ones, the 3rd (her name is Jo) tends to not do as well and eventually she allowed another hen to do more mothering of her chicks than she did herself. Jo is now broody again, but I won't let her set on eggs until I know at least one or two other hens are broody at the same time.. this will give me a chance to let her try again but I know if she fails to be the mother I want her to be I will have the other broody to pick up the slack. Thankfully it looks like I have 2 more Silver Pencil Rocks and one other barnyard mix who are in the mood to set now also, so I may have to gather eggs soon. I guess if the weather sucks the hens figure setting on eggs seems like a good way to pass the time!?!? They need to check the calendar!
th.gif
Click to expand...

Fisher:

All your girls do well...you flock is broody bootcamp....you always have many and have reported numerous 'group broods'....imho, you have it way to easy...lol
 
dheltzel said:
GQF cabinet incubators are great, but it's easy to get a little out of control. I bought a used one a year ago and hatched over 600 chicks with it. We have over 100 more hens now than we did a year ago and housing them all has been a challenge. Most are getting to point of lay, or will be soon and we are averaging about 2 dozen eggs a day now, which I an happy with, given the time of year and weather and all.
Click to expand...


over one hundred more than last year! And I thought it was crazy that I went from 15 to 28! Lol.
Speaking of which, I haven't posted any pics in a while :)

400

Cloud and her crew. They're almost as big as she is!

400

Shackles and Honey, coming to see what's up.

400

Lucky is looking very much like a pure Blue copper Marans :) I'm really excited about that though she's 1/4 brahma.

400

I'm really loving Pebbles' coloring. She's a SLW/BCM mix so I'm not sure how that happened lol. She must've got that wheaten gene from my roo.

400

Midnight and her babies, Wynter, Flurry, and Fria.
 
Auroradream26 said:
the sad thing is, before Midnight went broody, she was one of the higher ranking hens and was quite the raging ball of hormones (to the other chickens) while she was sitting on the eggs. Now she's a wimpy push over. When Cloud went broody, she was a lower ranking girl, but now everyone respects her and gives her room lol
Click to expand...

Auro:

I've seen this too...everything changes in a flock every day...your midnight may regain her dominant status after the brood or others my claim the space....midnight may be comfortable being a mid level girl or may exert her dominance...may take months to know....
 
stake said:
Fisher:

All your girls do well...you flock is broody bootcamp....you always have many and have reported numerous 'group broods'....imho, you have it way to easy...lol
Click to expand...

I agree that it seems like a broody boot camp! I am really starting to believe that it is more environmental than genetic, I had 2 hens go broody who were raised by a broody but their parent stock is not broody type at all.... so I seriously think the power of suggestion can be a very strong thing. The group broods I am still trying to figure out. I can understand the ones who were raised together as 'sisters' being more prone to it, but the communal attitude with the chicks has really been evolving over the past couple of years and I have seen 2 different young hens 'drop off' their chicks to an older broody with chicks of the same age in the evening and then go up to roost on the shelves... in the morning they come down, pick up their own 'kids' and head outside to start their day. The two young hens who did it are actual sisters and I have never seen that from any of our other hens. It is amazing to watch the 'babysitter' just shuffle the extras in for the night. Rarely do any hens fuss about a 'neighbor kid' stopping in for a visit. We have a security camera in the coop with night vision, it is cute to watch the little ones spill out of nests in the evening one or two at a time, run to the waterer and then head to different box for a visit, then eventually end up back with their own broody.
idunno.gif


As far as the easy part... we have been blessed, but their have been some heartaches along the way, which is an inherent danger when raising chicks in a flock scenarios. We have had a couple of unexplained fatalities found in the fenced run which we attributed to chicks being stepped on by big birds who weren't paying attention and a few who died overnight in the nests with the hens who may have been natural or suffocation, but no way to tell. Using large fowl broodies can be a frustrating thing for eggs being at risk of breaking during the brood or a few even broken when non-broody hens decided to hop in the broody's nest to lay their egg for the day. A few of the hens we provide more separation for, but I don't want to have to set up totally new areas and keep the chicks separate through the entire brood... I hate seeing these things happen, but DH and I have talked about the safeguards and risks and we just still come back to the fact that we prefer the flock environment for our goals in our coop.
stake said:
Auro:

I've seen this too...everything changes in a flock every day...your midnight may regain her dominant status after the brood or others my claim the space....midnight may be comfortable being a mid level girl or may exert her dominance...may take months to know....
Click to expand...
totally agree...
 

New posts New threads Active threads

Back
Top Bottom