Recent content by Torghn

When you compare them to other animals chickens are very "dumb". They can learn, but it seems more often than not they react or behave based more on instinct than anything else. Several of my birds have decided to roost in a small tree next to their coop. This was no big deal until it got really...

Has anyone crossed a cream legbar rooster with a rhoadebar hen? Will the offspring be auto sexing and more importantly distinguishable from the "purebred" cream legbars? I tried to keep them separate but the rhoadbar hen would have nothing to do with that.

I had all of my chickens housed together, tonight I separated them by breed into different coops/runs. How long should I wait before collecting eggs for hatching if I don't want any hybrids?

I was wondering if any one could help identify the sex of my first hatch. The rooster was a Rhode Island Red and the hens were Easter Eggers. Below are pictures of the chicks as well as the parents. The color patterns very quite a bit and I wonder if they are random or possibly sex-linked...

Thanks for all the replies. At what age do you usually harvest them? They are about 6 weeks old now, will they continue to grow for a few more weeks or are they about done?

So my first batch coturnix just started laying and I have way to many males. It's time to thin them out. I have no problem cleaning and cooking them my self, my only problem is I'm not a very good cook so I need something easy that tastes good. My wife so far is unimpressed with the birds...

Here are my 4 week old BCM I think I have two pullets and two cockerel, what makes me unsure is that one of the cockerel's is huge compared to the other. The smaller of the two is smaller than either of the pullets as well. Here they are let me know what you think. Bird 1 "pullet" Bird 2...

For those who asked, here's an update on my "brown" copper marans. They both parents are normal looking black copper marans so these guys must have some kind of recessive gene. Post 836 has the pictures from 1 week old, these are at 2 weeks:

Quote: Yes with clean legs! Its hard to see from those pictures, but the legs aren't clean. Right now the fuzz is the same rust/copper color as the legs. Supposedly they came out of some very dark eggs, and he claims the roo is one of his BCM. I do believe he has one non BCM roo though it's...

So I was fortunate to find a local breeder that has some really nice Bev Davis BCMs. While I was picking up some newly hatched chicks he had 3 that he said he was going to cull because they had way to much copper. They did look very different from the normal BCM chicks but I was wondering if...

If they get a long will the white breed with the others? Since I only have one I don't really want to set up a pen just for it.

I'm party way through my first hatch. So far 24 Coturnix quail have hatch, 23 look almost identical and one looks like a golden. Are these a different breed or just a different color variation? I'm 50% certain it hatch from one of the few blue/white eggs I revived. The Eggs: The bird...

So I should remove him totally wet and put him under the heat lamp or just move him to a dry spot to dry first?

Quote: They were drinking earlier but his foot fell down in and over time got him entirely wet, he's wetter now then when he hatched and he seem to be struggling. I think I'm going to risk opening the incubator to fix this problem.

This is my first hatch so I'm really a beginner. I have 56 eggs currently in the incubator, 2 of them hatched about 6 hours ago, none of the others have started to hatch. How long is a reasonable amount of time until I should star to worry that I'm going to have a 3% hatch rate. The real time...