The line of FBCM (French Black Copper Marans, for those following along and not familiar with abbrev) that I used to have was very quiet. The hen I still have left is very quiet, but is not at the bottom of the pecking order, so it's not a dominance issue necessarily.
Cockerels' first crowing...
Oh, dear! At least you have a good sense of humor. Rob is tricky!
The one that really got me was the server upgrade/posts lost (2009). So many people were upset/concerned/sad/troubled/pretending to be understanding. It didn't matter to me because I wasn't registered. But I followed the...
Your chickens certainly won't automatically die on it since it conforms to chicken feed composition standards. But usually layer feed is formulated for the chickens in the large poultry houses that need X number of eggs to even stay afloat financially. They feed the absolute cheapest feed to...
Yay! Good job. I was trying to come up with a name based on that title "Fifty Shades of Grey (Gray?)"
50 Shades of Easter. Makes dyeing Easter eggs a thing of the past. Now we can focus on more intricate designs on the Easter eggs if we want to be crafty, like maybe be-dazzling the Easter...
A lot of good name ideas have been submitted! I love this one! I was trying to come up with a name for the feed using "shell," but nothing I can come up with will beat this. It sounds like a party for a basket full of colorful eggs!
My chickens have been eating turmeric (mixed into their feed) since 2009 with no change in the egg shell color. If I feed them larger amounts, it wouldn't be cost effective. So, while it could be the herring, or maybe salmon, where the plankton they eat is actually that dark melon color...
Oh, good job! As a long time visitor and subsequent member [over 4 years (badgeless)], I could feel it in my bones that we chickenkeepers here at BYC were almost overdue for news like this.
If the feed company can manipulate egg shell color through feed and they have over-ridden the genetic...
She probably won't start molting until late July - November depending on when her parents molted ... hens usually molt in late summer/fall if they don't get supplementary light in the winter.
As junebuggena mentioned, some hens are much more affected by changes. So, if things go smoothly from...
What is their lighting situation like? Do they know when the sun comes up and when the sun goes down? Since it's spring time, they should be in housing that will allow them to know that the day length is getting longer. It also wouldn't hurt to provide them a little bit of oyster shell free...
Well, usually, a hen's bright red and large comb indicates that she is about ready to start laying in the spring (or when she reaches about 20 weeks) or that she is actually laying. Is she laying?
My hens get small pink combs when they aren't laying or are setting and raising chicks.
I do...
Um. Yeah. But with 15 chickens, soon to be 9 more, I think it could be difficult. One day of eating a 2 lb. bag of almost moldy cheese won't give them too much protein. About 1/2 an ounce of animal protein per chicken extra will do the trick ... even for molting season or the few weeks...
London? You're in London? Oh, I loved my couple of weeks in London and rest of UK. That photo over to the left was taken in Selfridge's on Oxford St.
The pineal gland has an affect on the hormones that affect growth. It is affected by light. The extra light will cause earlier maturity...
Maybe I said this before, but chicken feed is usually formulated/made to give just barely enough nutrition to get the hens to lay. The feed doesn't usually go above and beyond the minimum to keep the hens laying. At 16% they will lay. They may not need 18% to lay, but they can lay more easily...
Okay, maybe. Good point. But our chickens were hanging out with the goats all the time because they could get through the fencing and liked the grain and hay that we fed the goats. Maybe the chickens didn't eat the goat pens' maggots because they tasted different from the maggots hatched near...
Well, I ended up keeping some of the flock, so I'm back at this for now. NOT DEFUNCT any longer. The project is fully funct. I guess funct means "functional" or similar.
And I still maintain that I don't see how there could be any BBS in my chickens. The hatch results don't ever show any...
I have DE mixed in with the chicken feed at a rate of 1%. Does it protect them from internal worms? Beats me. It does provide a source of silica though. I like how it attracts any moisture in their feed so that we have less chance of mold growing in the feed. If it was truly bad for the...
If you already have the chickens, then all you can do at this point is up the protein intake.
The size of egg your chicken is going to lay is determined by genetics and how it was fed and what kind of lighting it received during the first approximately 28 weeks of life.
If you don't have the...
If the weather is warm (90F or more), I do refrigerate because if I don't the yolks deteriorate and start breaking easily when I cook my fried eggs. I don't like broken yolks for breakfast.
Also, if I have any broodies, I usually have to refrigerate, too, because the eggs being incubated for...