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Thanks! In hindsight I'm not exactly sure where my confusion was coming from. Perhaps I was conflating peoples preferences with breed definitions.

This is our process. We raise our home hatched cockerels and pullets together. We take quite a bit of time observing them together and when the guys start getting their testosterone you can tell pretty quickly which ones are dancers and which ones are rapists. The hens eventually will start...

We have a pet rooster in with our waterfowl. He's got a lot on his mind about nests. He has semi adopted the duck flocks and I will find him resting on a duck nest occasionally. He figured out pretty quickly we liked to find the eggs and would point out covered nests and errant eggs for us, and...

I have Barred Rocks. I hand fed, hand treated, and handled/pet them all as much as possible since they were babies so that I didn't have to chase them down or deal with struggling birds when we needed to treat them. Almost all the hens will bite and hold onto the fleshy bits of my hands when I...

Thanks littledog, It's kind of a cruel twist of life that I get more attached to the sick and injured ones - I have to spend so much more time tending to them. Her life was kind of sad, but she helped me understand something important going on in our birds that might make future generations...

Update: Frizzie's condition progressed quickly after this post, even with pasture and high protein organic feed. She seemed to get more and more uncomfortable, and without any hopeful remedy we decided to kill her. My best guesses as to what happened to her are: 1) We've only had to treat...

I had two chicks develop this condition this year in two different "cohorts" - incubation batches. The first chick got so bad we had to cull the poor feller. I did some more research when the second one developed it. There is an itchy flaky skin condition on face and feet with yellowish crusty...

A 25 year warranty makes me feel confident they are putting out a quality product. Looks like a great place to put my extra Roosters during down time!

I thought I would reply to my own statement. I'm a new duck owner and didn't know that they would grow back feathers in areas that become damaged. The blonde girl grew back just enough coverage to get her through the winter, though it was not as nice as her original layer.

I bought some barred rocks from a hatchery. I'm interested in having them for my own food but also to help maintain a valuable heritage breed into the future. I'm hatching extra chicks to sell into the local area and I'm wondering what "pure breed" means exactly. I obviously do not have show...

And with Easter coming up...

I'm in NE Tennessee. Tractor supply sells out of chicks, ducklings and turkeys by the weekend here. Anecdotally, I've heard the most people asking about turkeys. This is a largely rural area with a lot of farms. I'm having a hard time selling my chicks and ducklings for slightly less $ than...

How do you sell natural eggs? People want "dirty" eggs. Do I have to set up a "hen share" like people do with cows?

Lol! This was posted in 2014...silence. Thats what its like doing farm stuff in east Tennessee. It's 2023 now and still same. I'm trying to figure this out now. The official guides to selling eggs are the usual mostly true, but not fully true, bull**** you find in all states. However, its much...

It does appear that raw sprouted grains and legumes can transmit unpleasant illness(sometimes death) causing bacteria. As is usually the case around food safety issues it's unclear to me after reading the recommendations where the contamination comes from. I can only assume that salmonella or...

Raw wood and white. I think the lighter the better so its brighter in there in general for their health, and so you can see the color of their poops and see when or where someone has become bloodied. I plan on starting to do old fashioned whitewash this year too.

I AM out of ratio! Unfortunately, between the geese and the ducks we already have our pasture is getting a little tired and we are not even into winter yet. So no more ducks until next spring. We thought to have a backup male for the duck flock and hoped that our hens could handle the extra...

I am having a similar problem with a flock of khaki campbels, 4 hens and 2 drakes. For some reason the blonde gets a lot of extra attention and has a large bald spot that is getting really abraded. I'm so mad we didn't catch this sooner. Shes going to have to go through winter like that now. I'm...

A very late update to this thread: The folks we bought the goslings from contacted the fellow who they originally got their stock from and when asked about the color on the bills he said, "They just do that.". I think I'm just gonna have to settle for that answer, it's probably the best I'm...

Thanks so much for the info! Here are some other photos of my menagerie, including a better side view of one of my orange bills. I'm going to take a closer look at everyone's hip feathers now.