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  1. Tstraub

    incubator of the home-made kind

    I have had some success with a homemade incubator but things were pretty inconsistent so I have switched to a little giant incubator I got purchased used for a good price. Is hard to make any specific suggestions without knowing exactly what your working with so I’ll just share some general...
  2. Tstraub

    Help me decide which chickens to keep and get next - breeding for rainbow eggs.

    I grew up fishing for keep so the act of taking a life for food was part of my life from as far back as I remember. I originally thought I might feel differently about an animal that I raised but honestly when the time came it wasn’t nearly as difficult as I had made it to be in my head The...
  3. Tstraub

    Help me decide which chickens to keep and get next - breeding for rainbow eggs.

    Cull means to remove them from the breeding program. Cockerels that aren’t good enough to breed are usually grown out to butcher weight and sent to freezer camp. Pullets that aren’t worthy of breeding but also don’t have any faults that compromise their health can be kept as breakfast egg...
  4. Tstraub

    Help me decide which chickens to keep and get next - breeding for rainbow eggs.

    If I counted correctly you are currently at 22 chickens and thinking about downsizing in order to bring in more birds. You don’t space to do any sort of SOP breeding program. Breeding to standard requires hatching a lot of eggs. Serious breeders will hatch hundreds of eggs in order to get dozens...
  5. Tstraub

    Straub’s search for colored eggs

    Yesterday evening I sold 2 pullets and a cockerel to a friend of my wife’s. We sold her several day old straight run earlier this year. She had already culled down to one cockerel then lost him, so we brought her flock up to what she needed and got ours closer to the number I want to carry...
  6. Tstraub

    Straub’s search for colored eggs

    They are looking really good to me. I expected worse quality simply because I didn’t have to travel a log distance or pay a lot of money for the hatching eggs. They came from a Craigslist add. I believe the seller was actually paying attention to what he was breeding. I still have work to do to...
  7. Tstraub

    Straub’s search for colored eggs

    Here are two of the olive Eggers from the same hatch day to show how the Bresse grow compared to my colored egg project birds. Same age, same feed, different housing but close enough for comparison. I didn’t weigh all of the OEs just grabbed on of each. I tried to get ones that looked to be on...
  8. Tstraub

    Straub’s search for colored eggs

    Weekly weight in result. It was pretty windy today so you’ll have to excuse all the ruffled feathers. Nobody wanted to corporate with me on a natural pose either. Every time I try to take pictures all of them tuck their tails
  9. Tstraub

    Straub’s search for colored eggs

    Egg production is way down in the main coop. I’ve been getting 3-6 eggs a day. About 1/2 the girls have finished their molt and are back in feathers but haven’t come back into lay. If things don’t pick up I’ll plug in the light and timer. I can’t justify feeding all these birds unless they are...
  10. Tstraub

    Wing It Ranch

    I used to struggle to get mine to return to the coop. These days I just take the lazy approach as long as there is no immediate threat of a predator attack I just wait until sunset and they put themselves to bed. On the rare occasion that there is a hawk or eagle in the area they almost always...
  11. Tstraub

    Are these female Plymouth rocks?

    The leg and beak color looks more like cuckoo Marans to me but the feather pattern looks a bit to tidy for a cuckoo. I’m not really sure what I would call it. Are they laying? If so what is the egg color
  12. Tstraub

    Wrath's Marans

    Bresse are dominant white so I think a Ayam Cemani rooster and White Bresse hen will make a version of a Zombie. Not as common as using a leghorn but a similar look
  13. Tstraub

    Wrath's Marans

    They are both dual purpose breeds so I would guess that the first generation hybrid would probably do pretty well because of all the hybrid vigor. F2 and beyond would likely be all over the place in consistency as all of the genes mix together. They are both French breeds so maybe they have some...
  14. Tstraub

    Wrath's Marans

    Yep, now that I started the Bresse flock I don’t know that I’ll be doing a lot of Marans SOP breeding but definitely want to make some room for some nice dark layers in the breakfast egg crew
  15. Tstraub

    Wrath's Marans

    I don’t have a lot of first hand knowledge of standard breed Marans. 2 1/2 years ago(before I knew any better) I bought 12 BCM hatching eggs off Craigslist because they were the cheapest I could find within a reasonable driving distance. I put them in a home made incubator and 8 of them hatched...
  16. Tstraub

    Wrath's Marans

    Well if they’re on your feed bill I would aim for 20 weeks as well. But I’m cheap. Gotta make the most efficient use of feed and housing here
  17. Tstraub

    Wrath's Marans

    I typically aim for 16 ish weeks to get them off the feed bill earlier. I did a batch at 14 weeks because I was going on vacation and wanted to take care of it early to make things easier on the chicken sitters. I don’t recommend 14 weeks it hit between molts and plucking pin feathers was...
  18. Tstraub

    Straub’s search for colored eggs

    10 week weight in for the Bresse and I’m very happy with the results so far. They really do look to be growing much faster than my olive Eggers that were in the incubator at the same time. It’s hard to describe but just handling them they feel more fleshy than to OEs. The OEs feel real bony like...
  19. Tstraub

    Wrath's Marans

    Thanks for sharing that video. It came across my Facebook feed yesterday and I didn’t have time to watch a 1/2 hour video so I scrolled past it. I needed a reminder. Now I need to try Bresse. If all goes well I should be setting eggs in late February or early March and do it first cull sometime...
  20. Tstraub

    Need ID help

    I suspect silkie mix. Does it have feathers on its legs and feet. Any extra toes?
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