Quick Update: We ended up losing Ferdinand to fly strike. After I noticed it, we put him in a chicken tractor in the garage and sprayed him with vetricyn but it didn’t work out. Really bummed because he was such a good rooster.
On a positive note, I’m expecting my marans and bc1 olives to...
I ended up using elector on the whole flock even though they didn’t seem to be infected, it’s just the marans roosters that really seemed to have it bad.
I’ll check that out! I think the mites combined with the wet weather we’ve had made it so much worse. They haven’t been able to dust bathe like normal.
Update on the marans. Both of my roosters had a bad case of lice and mites while I was out of town for work. I ended up losing Hei Hei, and Ferdinand is still hanging in there.
I have him isolated and am treating him for vent gleet with an epsom salt bath and monistat.
So if I understand it, you’re going to keep Lil black in the breeding pool with one of your full blood BCM Roosters, and eventually her offspring (F2 or F3) will be back to the full bcm standard?
I’d be really curious to see how it works out because one of my broodies hatched a noir marans x...
That thing looks gnarly! Good advice, I’ll retie it and keep it open for a few days.
I’ve stopped keeping the chicken feed out all day and switched to 2x a day feedings. Hopefully that makes a dent too.
Thanks! Eventually the goal will be to sell some of the BC olive chicks and hatching eggs to offset feed costs, and scratch the itch of hatching and whatnot.
Yes definitely! I plan on maybe November/December. That should put them at the 8 month mark and hopefully laying healthy full size eggs at that point.
Everything I’ve seen said not to hatch pullet eggs but I think 8 months is close enough?
Overall plan this fall will be to cross Ferdinand with my dark layer to get more dark laying birds, and mix him with the two Craigslist pullets.
From there I’ll dabble with a cross of my dark layer and the big yellow legged roo to make them a little larger.
If you all have any thoughts or...
Here’s the big guy from the Craigslist group. I’d be very excited about him if he didn’t have the dang yellow legs. The pullet next to him is one of the BC1 olives. She has some nice fluffy legs.
I’ll probably try a few crosses from him to see if the yellow can be bred out.