Recent content by NewGuineaChooks

  1. NewGuineaChooks

    purple yam

    I certainly ate a fair number of them when living in Papua New Guinea, but I only saw them in gardens and bought them at market rather than growing them myself. Local lore over there says your can't sing or play music during planting season or they won't grow! They don't need a lot of water...
  2. NewGuineaChooks

    Zone 9b, salt air, sandy soil, wind . ..

    I previously lived 50 ft from the beach on one of the many islands in the Pacific Ocean. It had constant 35 mile per hour trade-winds 4 months of the year, soil that was primarily coral sand, and so much salt in the air that stainless steel forks rusted. So there were some similarities to what...
  3. NewGuineaChooks

    Newguineachooks

    New Guinea Chooks was introduced to chickens as a toddler. Our first chicken coop was finished before our house! (They had their coop, and we lived in a camping trailer) Most of my school-age years were spent living in the pacific island country of Papua New Guinea; hence my name. I don't have...
  4. NewGuineaChooks

    They are hatching !!!!! Update

    Sounds like fun! That would be quite a size difference you're seeing!
  5. NewGuineaChooks

    First broody hen.

    Yay! I always think broody hens are fun. It's sort of like surprise presents that you get in 3 weeks when the chicks hatch. Most broody mama's take good care of their chicks and will make the other chickens keep out of the way. Just make sure that yours isn't one of the rare ones that ignores...
  6. NewGuineaChooks

    fencing for free range chickens

    Well, we keep the dogs 'away from the chickens' instead of the other way around. We bought an electronic fence pulse machine ($200) and a wireless radio collar for each of the dogs ($50ish). We plugged it in the corner of the living room, and set the radius so the dogs can't roam all the way to...
  7. NewGuineaChooks

    Feeding layer feed to non layers?

    I would feed -all- of them grower/raiser feed until your girls start laying. The pullets don't need the extra calcium until they are making egg shells, and the little ones can actually have bone growth issues if they have too much calcium while growing.
  8. NewGuineaChooks

    How/where do you store your eggs?

    That's a neat idea! We keep ours in a basket on the kitchen table. When we collect the eggs at the end of the day, we pencil the date on each one, so we have to sort through the basket to find the older ones.
  9. NewGuineaChooks

    Do you candle eggs under a broody?

    Yes, you can. Best to do so in the evening after it's gotten dark. The hen will be a little calmer then. Use gloves if she is very aggressive. Day 14 is a good day to candle them. Take a couple eggs out at a time, and mark them with a pencil before you put them back in. But I don't candle...
  10. NewGuineaChooks

    Huge Egg!

    Wow! And ouch for that hen!
  11. NewGuineaChooks

    Once an Attack Roo Always An Attack Roo?

    Well, this is probably bad news for Duke: I have -never- (25 years of chickens) known a rooster to get mild-mannered in his old age. They get gradually more aggressive as they age, and you will likely have more and more problems with Duke. Sorry! :-(
  12. NewGuineaChooks

    Hens + Chicks question

    Yes. If you have two broody hens in the same area and they both hatch out chicks, they will each try to protect their own chicks by pecking the chicks of the other hen, to keep them away. Some hens are more tolerant than others. Some hens, if you slip a new chick under at night, will adopt...
  13. NewGuineaChooks

    Moving old hens into coop with new hens

    Is the old/small coop portable? If so I'd put it next to the new one, so the chickens can see each other and interact through the wire. If the old coop is not portable, your best option is to rig some kind of tempoary chicken wire enclosure next to the new coop, or even sectioning off a part of...
  14. NewGuineaChooks

    What kind of baby feeder to get?

    The long metal chick feeder that has a row of feeding holes along each side is -great- for feeding chicks. They stick their heads in to eat, but the top keeps them from scratching the food out onto the floor. I find that mine need food scattered on a plate for the first 3-4 days until the figure...
  15. NewGuineaChooks

    WANTED: POSITIVE FEEDBACK on BYC sellers

    DipsyDoodleDoo: I got a well packed order of eggs from Lisa. She was very helpful in our email communication, and her Ameraucana eggs are high quality! I had horrible temperature spikes in my incubator, as the thermo wafer gave out, and STILL I had three chicks that were strong enough to survive...
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