Our Ladies are wishy washy. Some refuse to eat pellets, others refuse to eat crumbles.
Some go through and pick out any goodies they can and try not to eat either. We mix starter feed with ground up mealworms for the chicks, but the older Ladies will sometimes get in there and hog everything...
We are trying to get a full spectrum of large colored egg layers. It’s tough as we are getting our chicks from Rural King, not a hatchery, so can only get what they have available.
If you were closer I would give you a couple Cemani Roos. We purchased , 2 years ago, 8 Cemani chicks that turned into 6 Roos and 1 predator loss of a hen. They are beautiful, but we are trying to get rid of 4 of the Roos. We have a mixed flock and tried to keep the Cemani separate, but then had...
Ill call Nutrena and ask if they will pay for a comprehensive study on this.🤑
Problem is, I’m not consistent enough to do this research.
Next weekend I’ll have my music on when out in the coops/yard, but it’ll be based on my mood at the time and not observing the Ladies reaction.
At least until...
Our Turks can get really worked up, to the point of circling us while certain songs are on and being visually agitated. On orchestra music they will stand and dance all puffed up and wing tips dragging the dirt. Music shuts off when I try to video it, but will try to get my wife to record it...
Just out of curiosity, I know that when I take my speaker out to work on the coops, I get a reaction from our Turks ( they like folk music, freak out on rock and grunge, and go nuts over Hugo Montenegro orchestra).
The Ladies don’t seem to care one way or the other.
We were in a similar situation with our incubator clutch , hatched in January. 5 Roos out of 15 hatched eggs.
Around mid May the Roos started getting aggressive towards the pullets, and the older ladies, except one that followed us around and we were able to pick him up and carry. He was the...
I’ve noticed that sometimes , when our Roos dance, the hen will run away, but found out she wasn’t in his harem. It’s a cute courting ritual.
We’ve had a few Roosters shuffle dance for other Roos. Weird, but whatever plucks your chicken.
One of our younger Roos picked a fight, and got his feathered butt kicked soundly. The older Roo got ahold of his comb and ripped it half off at the scalp.
Problem is it now hangs down and covers one eye, leaving him with a blind side to be attacked from, and also he is shaking his head around...
Over the past few years of having chickens we have switched feeds several times. Usually it involved egg production and general health of our hens. A couple of times it was availability of the higher protein feed and twice it was convenient location of the feed store.
It always came down to what...
In our case, she is attached to every feather on every birb. I had someone who was willing to take them, but she wasn’t able to let them go. Been wearing her down though, and the girls have been working on her also to thin out the testosterone in the coop.
We have bachelor coops for our extra Roos, my SO doesn’t want to cull and , well, that’s a topic for another thread..
We got upset when the boys started singling out a hen and then 5 surrounding her and holding her down.
Most of the flock free ranges daily, then 1 day a week the boys are left...
Are you buying specialty birds or just laying hens for production?
We’ve gotten a few special breeds from RK ( white faced Spanish ) and some cross production breeds ( Red Star) but usually get straight production breeds ( Leghorns, RIR, Brahma, Americauna).
We’ve had a few batches we purchased...
We get quite a few from RK. Our lady does a good job at getting pullets for us, 85%<>, I think of the last 40 we got 2 cockerel, a couple more before that.
We incubated and hatched 15 of our own and got 5 cockerels out of the clutch.
We’ve never gotten directly from a hatchery.
With all the rain we’ve been getting lately, have killed 2 water moccasins in our coop. One killed a hen in nesting box.
Worried about SO sticking her hand in nesting box to get eggs.
These were both large snakes and had to come up the side of coop to get in, as we have smaller wire lower to...
We’ve moved our Ladies to new coops, on the property. We free range daily, but kept them locked in for a 7-10 days just as a precaution. A few of them went to the old coop site the first time we let them out, but we herded them towards where the coop Roo was waiting outside the new coop. He...
I would do a deep clean as soon as you can.
If there are maggots there already then that area has probably been soaked for a while.
As Rosemarythyme stated, try to stay away from chemicals as much as possible if you are keeping the chicks in the brooder.