Pennsylvania!! Unite!!

[AnneInTheBurbs]

My experience has been that chicks hatched within 4 weeks or less of each other are easier to combine. Older birds are easier to combine when they are the same size, have free ranged near or even with each other and are combined at night.


ETA: no babies yet.

Didn't you take your goat to the vet? What did they say?

Just a couple RIR's....had more but fox got 3 of them over the last month....

Sorry to hear that, but don't worry, some one here is always ready to refresh your stock!

Got my first egg from the CCL chicks that hatched in December and January. It's small, but I'm setting it anyway (got to check for fertility, right?). They are just shy of 6 months now, I hope the rest of them start up soon, I really like Legbars now that I've had them for a while.

This weekend's hatch includes the first 3 peacock eggs that developed chicks, I really hope they hatch   I want a "ridiculously tame" pea like I've heard other people have.

Yay! Hoping for good fertility for you! When you say the peacock eggs developed chicks, does that mean you candled? Also, I thought I spotted a blackish gray head pop out from under Broody Mama. Is that a male Rhodebar? I still can't tell how many she has, I got a couple pecks by trying to check.

So what you guys are actually saying is that my birds aren't really all that special? Oh well I guess I can stop hoping for that golden egg than.

Your chickens are always special to you!

 

[dheltzel]

Yay! Hoping for good fertility for you! When you say the peacock eggs developed chicks, does that mean you candled? Also, I thought I spotted a blackish gray head pop out from under Broody Mama. Is that a male Rhodebar? I still can't tell how many she has, I got a couple pecks by trying to check.

blackish grey sounds like a blue Marans or Ameraucana. Male RB's have a white spot on a light brown head, often they are more caramel colored than "brown", but always with the big white spot.

 

[OneMountainAcres]

Horrible picture, I know but I didn't have time to do a good one (later I will). These are the the babies that hatched for me yesterday. Anyone understand chicken color genetics?

All the have beards and muffs which means that my lavender ameraucana roo was daddy. The one I understand completely. Mother is a white EE so lavender baby makes sense. The other one that looks lavender, I'm guessing may just be light blue and will maybe darken over time? Mother was 3/4 blue copper marans and 1/4 buff brahma. She just looked like a big blue bird. The last one has me stumped though. Mother is a white silkie so how on earth did I get a black chick? Lol

 

[Chaos18]

For those of you with turkeys I has me a question. I started this thread in the coop section but thought I'd ask it here as well and its way easier to copy and paste than rewrite.

Ok so maybe this isn't a chicken coop but this is the "Coop & Run - Design, Construction, & Maintenance" forum so I thought I'd post it here. This is the building I want to turn into a turkey coop. Plan was to clean it out, patch any holes in the roof, add a roost and put either welded wire or hardware cloth or both on it, also plan on clearing the roof growth off. In my opinion this would be ok for summer months, as far as winter goes I would just screw some plywood to it to keep out some wind and try and keep in a little heat. Any other thoughts or considerations I should look at? The floor size of it is roughly 9'x5' or 45 sq ft. In it's previous life it was a chicken coop.

 

[BullChick]

That coop is enough for five turkeys to be comfortable. Turkeys are unlike chickens in that they are okay with the wind. Not that I made mine deal with it. I just kept the rain off their heads, and if I had mine through the winter, I would have had a wall to block the wind/blowing snow at roost level.
So, it looks and sounds like good turkey housing.

 

[OneMountainAcres]

That coop is enough for five turkeys to be comfortable. Turkeys are unlike chickens in that they are okay with the wind. Not that I made mine deal with it. I just kept the rain off their heads, and if I had mine through the winter, I would have had a wall to block the wind/blowing snow at roost level.
So, it looks and sounds like good turkey housing.

how many turkeys cam fit comfortably in an 8 x 10 shed? That's what we picked up for them. We have 9 babies right now.

 

[Chaos18]

That coop is enough for five turkeys to be comfortable. Turkeys are unlike chickens in that they are okay with the wind. Not that I made mine deal with it. I just kept the rain off their heads, and if I had mine through the winter, I would have had a wall to block the wind/blowing snow at roost level.
So, it looks and sounds like good turkey housing.

I plan on wintering some to have a continual stream of birds named after holidays.

 

[dheltzel]

Horrible picture, I know but I didn't have time to do a good one (later I will). These are the the babies that hatched for me yesterday. Anyone understand chicken color genetics?

All the have beards and muffs which means that my lavender ameraucana roo was daddy. The one I understand completely. Mother is a white EE so lavender baby makes sense. The other one that looks lavender, I'm guessing may just be light blue and will maybe darken over time? Mother was 3/4 blue copper marans and 1/4 buff brahma. She just looked like a big blue bird. The last one has me stumped though. Mother is a white silkie so how on earth did I get a black chick? Lol

It is confusing to cross a Lavender and White and get black, but that is exactly what I would have predicted because white silkies (at least mine) are recessive white (as opposed to dominant white). Recessive white needs 2 copies to appear at all, especially in the chick down. Lavender birds are really black, but with a double dose of recessive blue (also called self-blue because it breeds true). Black is a very "strong" color, dominant over everything except dominant white if it exists in even 1 copy. So, with the lavender suppressed because it's recessive and not carried by the silkie, and recessive white suppressed because it's not carried by the "black" Ameraucana, you get a black bird that carries both Lavender and Recessive White, but neither show at all.

 

[chippysmom327]

My necropsy report came back today, it said "Mareks suspected"

, with coccidiosis.

I have no idea how om the coccidiosis, because nobody (including the one I sent) has never showed one symptom. Poop was normal, no puffiness or lethargy. Whatever. I might not even treat everyone because there's no blood in the stool and the chick died a few weeks ago.

What also kinda made me a little skeptical was the lady said "the corpse was pretty decomposed when I got it (shipping issue), you know, maggots" and there's no way there were maggots on that bird. Sorry to be graphic, but we broke it's neck, put it straight into a ziploc (didn't even set it down anywhere), doubled bagged and then double bagged it in walmart bags, and it went straight in the fridge. So that made me a little mad. Like, how do I know this lady did a thorough enough examination on the bird? She only said one thing that led her to believe it was Mareks. I asked what other things could cause the thing that made her think Mareks and she beat around the bush. I also asked why those 3 (out of 5) chicks got it and why all the other chicks I've hatched this year didn't get it, and she didn't know. Like oh, okay.

She also said that 5 weeks for mareks is the absolute earliest she's ever seen on a bird, that's almost unheard of except for lab experiments where they force the birds to get it.

Another thing she said was almost 100% of chickens carry/have it, so don't worry about selling adult birds at swaps. I can hatch chicks and sell them, but it would be kind to tell them that I've *possibly* had Mareks in my flock. I'm not hatching anymore chicks, I don't want to infect other people's flocks because I don't believe everyone has Mareks.

So basically, I'm just gonna have a closed chicken flock for now on and I'll just get into call ducks instead.

What really really sucks is the fact that Allie and Bino (my albinos) are prime age to get Mareks. I'm praying they don't get it...

Well, I'm glad/kinda not glad I sent the bird for a necropsy. I almost didn't, since no one else came down with it.

I keep editing because I keep remembering things, but my little sister's frizzle serama has been hiding eggs for over a week (her and my oegb both have, but different places) and she didn't come back to the coop tonight. I'm hoping/kinda not hoping she went broody. I want her to because I want her to come back and my sister to not be upset but I don't want her to be broody because if she comes back with chicks they'll be at risk for developing mareks when they're older and we'll have to keep them all. That and the fact that the only two chicks that lived from my broody are both cockerels. That means we have 3 hens and 3 boys. Not good. I have no idea what I'm gonna do.

I hope your sister's Serama comes back safely.

Marekshas always made me nervous, I know people who have had it and are diligent about biosecurity, never interacting with other birds. No showing, and no 4-H. I also know someone who has had it, but still manages to show her birds, she vaccinates every chick hatched and re-vaccinates juveniles and adults - it helps that she works in a lab and access to equipment for dividing the vaccine.

I was reluctant to show my birds as Mareks can be contracted through dander and how you avoid that at a show is beyond me. but then I had a long talk with a well respected breeder (also has a background in science), he told me that Mareks is everywhere and that he knows for certain that it's on his property, when a bird isn't thriving, he immediately culls it. He says his other birds are exposed and develope immunity to the disease. He wins time after time after time with his birds. Hearing him tell this really helped me relax about the disease. I think your birds and any upcoming chicks are going to be fine.

She was back this morning, which is AWESOME, we were all thrilled as that usually doesn't end well around here.

Thanks for the reassurance. I don't know what I'll do as for the hatching chicks and everything. The *only* thing that she said led her to believe it was Marek's was "thickening of the sciatic and femoral nerves". She said Marek's is the only disease that does that, but she suspected it, and could never be 100% certain. That I could try treating for a B-vitamin deficiency. There were no tumors on the bird (they weren't in the report).

 

[chippysmom327]

So we've confirmed that the serama is broody, since she disappeared again. Should I let her hatch her eggs even though I just got a "suspected Mareks" diagnosis?