5th Annual BYC New Year's Day 2014 Hatch-A-Long

[Gardeningmama]

I wanted to send out a big thank you and good job to the other Participants that were nominated for the award. ChickenCanoe was a amazing and made this hatch great! Others contributed too.

Bantambury, Many of us were very impressed with you and your maturity! You were very helpful and insightful.

Gardeningmama, you managed to reply almost as much a I did! You really kept the thread moving and helped a lot of us!

JDchicks, We would not have had as good of a hatch without you!

Even though the three of you did not win, Hatch a Long members took the time to send me a PM telling me why you were the best participant.

Thanks to all of you!

Thank You Ron. It's been a blast, and like it is with every Hatch-A-Long I'm sad to see it winding down. Come on Spring & The Easter Hatch-A-Long!!​

 

[Frankie Ruiz]

Have to share. Found out today that I am going to be a great grandmother!

congrats !!

 

[acemario]

Thanks @ronott1 for the great Hatch-a-Long! My three chickies are doing amazing. It's looking like 2 pullets and a roo... only time will tell Thanks all! Very enjoyable hatch!

 

[JDchicks]

Thanks Ron, Best Hatch-a-Long I've been in! Hope to see everyone at the Easter Hatch-a-Long.

And thank you for the nomination for best participant. I really enjoyed talking, sharing and learning more about chickens and some new friends. It was awesome!

 

[Cynthia12]

Yes Gardeningmama, great news, I just can't believe how time flies. When did I get this old?

Quilt theme? Check this out!! I want this done in my kitchen. Anyone out there that can paint like this? Come on over!
http://www.hometalk.com/2861378/victorian-kitchen

 

[BoereMeisie]

Winner of the Cutest Chick Hatched contest:

Avlana!



Second Place:

Esti!



Congratulations! Save the pictures for the Calendar contest later this year!

All of the pictures were great and thanks for sharing them.

HaPpY DaNcE!!!! Thanks to all who voted... Did the flowers do the trick?

 

[BoereMeisie]

Oh gosh, where are my manners?

A big

CONGRATULATIONS!!!
to Avlana and all the other contest winners

 

[BoereMeisie]

And a HUGE

THANK YOU

To Ron, and all the others who answered all of our newbie questions. I have learned so much from this hatch-a-long, things that would have taken me years to figure out myself! This was an awesome experience, and I will definitely join in the Easter hatch-a-long

Did anyone figure out I just discovered the text tools lol

I will stop being a thread hog now...

 

[Pozees]

Yes Gardeningmama, great news, I just can't believe how time flies. When did I get this old?

Quilt theme? Check this out!! I want this done in my kitchen. Anyone out there that can paint like this? Come on over!
http://www.hometalk.com/2861378/victorian-kitchen

LOL I doubt you are "this old" - and hey, it beats the alternative! And I want that in my kitchen too!!! That's adorable!!

 

[ChickenCanoe]

The "real feel" out right now here is about -28. Brrrrr. Brought the majority of my flock (so roughly 40 birds) in the house (spare room) for the night.

Hopefully we bundled up the rest of the flock, dogs, ducks, horses, goat and pig well enough to get them through til Wednesday.

That's a lot of birds in the spare room. I feel you though. I always lecture people that chickens don't get cold - actually they do but they have sophisticated mechanisms to deal with it, not to mention they're wearing a new down jacket they just got finished sewing together.
In spite of excellent ventilation, my big combed roosters tend to get varying degrees of frostbite. Last year, I was prepared and had them all in a bachelor pad where I kept the temp above 20. This year I wasn't so prepared and the evening below zero temps were coming, I started putting all roosters in one building but got tired of trudging across the tundra carrying a boy that was trying to eat my hands. I got 5 put together but left the last 2 in the building with the best ventilation.
I also broke down and covered one open wall of that building with 90% shade cloth to cut the 35mph gusts.
I had 2 POL pullets in their own apartment. Monday they braved the snow and walked to the next building to coop themselves with a bunch of strangers. When I went to lock them up for the night one was missing. I looked all over and found her roosting on the gutter at the eave sitting on 10 inches of snow in below zero temps. She squawked when I put her in on the roost with the rest but I felt better about it. By the way one of them laid their first egg the next morning. I think it was the snow roosting pullet since she has the biggest comb.

Jungle fowl do live in tropical rainforest but their home range also encompasses the Himalaya foothills, so they readily adapt to a variety of climates.

I doubt very much that European chickens in the mIddle ages or those in the Andean highlands 500 years ago were provided heat

okay thank you every one for the ideas! im going to put them in the coop in a few weeks but keep a heated spot and lower it 5 degrees a week and then I'll probably leave them with a low wattage heat lamp for the remainder of the winter. I just want them to have more room in the coop outside. and then next winter they won't use a heat lamp. this is my first time with chicks so I'm ironing out all the kinks.

Just keep in mind that if you mimic what a hen does, you won't need to actually measure temperatures. Hang a heat lamp (or 2 if young chicks in cold weather) and the chicks will choose how close to sit to it so they're comfortable. It may be providing more heat than necessary but if they can get away from the heat, it simplifies the worry about temperature.
That deal about lowering the temperature 5° (see how I did that?) each week is for the commercial industry where they have 10s of thousands of chicks in a controlled environment. They don't have the ability to allow the chick to choose their comfort zone. If a chick is too hot or too cold - too bad. They're not going to live that long anyway and their method is based on cost/benefit.

I had to post this. Over on my Pa Facebook Group, a girl posted this picture saying these opossums (first 1 and now 2)have been sleeping every night in her coop, in the nesting box and haven't bothered the chickens, so she's allowing them to stay. I didn't say a word because the poor girl is already over there getting fileted, but WOWSER!

Isn't that insane?? I really hope this story doesn't have a bad ending.

Notice the chicken roosting on the box?

Lovely. My first several losses were to opossums. Dogs and raccoons are now tied for first.

So trying this out now..lol

Didn't work for me?

Try Alt, 0, 1, 7, 6 You may have to toggle the numlock key

Windows also has a character map tool in Accessories.

She obvioiusly has never seen the damage they are capable of. My mother told me when she was a kid on the farm they were roused one night to the chickens screaming bloody murder. They ran out to the coop to find that a possom had a hen half eaten and she was still alive because it had started eating from the back. They are a nightmare and you think they are slow until you see one move at speed and the needle sharp teeth bared at you hissing like a demented cat.

Horrible way to go.
I was fortunate one night when I didn't get home by dusk. I hadn't collected eggs and the 'possum was content with an egg dinner rather than climb up to the roost.
'Possums are the scavengers of our world and scour for scraps, waste grain, feed, crop residue, etc.. Excellent sense of smell and can find any morsel.
I've even trapped them just using scratch grain as bait.
If they can't find anything else, they have no qualms about eating a chicken.
People don't realize how many predators are afoot because they don't go out at night. A game cam is a real eye opener.

I've always wondered this when I hear of opossoms attacking chickens. I thought they were slow? I'm kinda creeped out now. Luckily I haven't dealt with them yet.

They usually move slowly but I've seen them really scramble. With chickens, they don't have to be fast after nightfall. The chicken won't move in the dark.

Could use a larger feeder and keep the feed level at half. If you have the option of an outside tray, that's the most mess/waste free system I've found.

X2 Outside tray is the way to go. Saves a lot of feed.

It was a very simple design.

I made a template out of a piece of paper and shaped it like the letter 'D', so the flat edges were on the fold of the fabric. I cut it out, then cut out a hole in the middle. Then I just trimmed it to size on the chick, lightly sewed the back up across it's back (like a corset, basically, but only tight enough to keep it on, not tight enough to make the chick cut a 'fine figure'). I slipped a big safety pin through at the back and slipped some yarn there, and then tied the yarn to a frame I was using over the top of the box. It was tied so that I could adjust how much or how little the chick was standing on its leg. I just made sure it could reach the ground to peck/drink and that its vent wasn't covered up.

Unfortunately, the chick didn't make it. Its leg healed up well and it was standing and walking fine on it, but it just up and died. It was always much smaller than the other chicks and never very 'lively'. I suspect peritonitis, though I didn't think to do a necropsy on it.

Thank you. IME, most chicks with problems don't make it.
I had a chick with its foot stuck to the small end of the shell in a curved position and couldn't straighten it out. I splinted its foot but then the other leg became unusable. I spent all day fashioning a chair jail out of two big sponges with an opening for his head and one for the vent. He hated not being able to move but if he was let out he just scooted across the floor, being unable to walk. My plan was to hand feed him for a couple days to see if the legs improved but he didn't make it. It was probably genetic, nutritional or incubation related.
Anyway it is usually a waste of time.

I want to get a frizzle for my mom SO BAD...but I can't find the one she wants anywhere! Heck, I'd take hatching eggs now that I know my bator works! Does anyone know where I can get a pair of Polish Frizzles? She wants them to look like this pic I just pulled off the internet (or similar...gotta have the fluffy on the head):

Sandhill preservation has all kinds of frizzles. I received a few different varieties in a package from them. They do a lot of projects, some including frizzles.

I put the food in a dish and dampen the food. They don't dig at it to find the smaller pieces. Once they can handle the larger pieces, I stop wetting it.

Good idea. When it's wet they don't bill it out. I started fermented feed and it's amazing how much farther feed goes. I still have bulk feeders for dry feed with a catch tray underneath.
The fermented feed also takes care of the fines that the chickens avoid. The fines is where a lot of the vitamin and mineral supplements are and become suspended in the FF.

You guys ready for spring yet,,,?

Waving a BIG WARM HAND from Fairbanks Alaska..

Where its warmer here 150 mile from the Arctic Circle than it is 75% of you... PEACE>>>

A polar vortex like no other. Get ready, we're about to send it back to you. By Thursday we'll almost be as warm as you. At least we only have to hunker down for one or two weeks a year.
I was wondering why this vortex seemed so extreme. I did a Google search along with the search term 'polar magnetic shift' and found only one news article. Apparently I'm not the only one thinking outside the box. (there's 2 of us).

A fun read and food for thought.

http://www.standard.net/stories/2014/01/06/what-are-we-utahns-make-deep-freeze-east

Oh gosh, where are my manners?

A big

CONGRATULATIONS!!!
to Avlana and all the other contest winners

Esti had a big advantage in SA with all those pretty flowers for the chick to walk through.

At least she was kind enough not to rub it in that she's having a heat wave now.

And a HUGE

THANK YOU

To Ron, and all the others who answered all of our newbie questions. I have learned so much from this hatch-a-long, things that would have taken me years to figure out myself! This was an awesome experience, and I will definitely join in the Easter hatch-a-long

Did anyone figure out I just discovered the text tools lol

X2

I still haven't figured it out. I can't access size or color.

I wanted to send out a big thank you and good job to the other Participants that were nominated for the award. ChickenCanoe was a amazing and made this hatch great! Others contributed too.

Bantambury, Many of us were very impressed with you and your maturity! You were very helpful and insightful.

Gardeningmama, you managed to reply almost as much a I did! You really kept the thread moving and helped a lot of us!

JDchicks, We would not have had as good of a hatch without you!

Even though the three of you did not win, Hatch a Long members took the time to send me a PM telling me why you were the best participant.

Thanks to all of you!

Congratulations everyone and thank you very much for all your nice comments.
You're all so kind.
Ron, you did an amazing job. Great patience and encouragement.

~~Whenever a friend of mine calls, she tells me to get off of BYC and get back to work. I told her of this honor and now I feel vindicated.

I could talk about chickens all day. Oh, I forgot, I do talk about chickens all day.

I teach chicken classes at area community colleges, civic centers, The botanical garden and other green/sustainable living venues.
Along with others in our chicken meetup group, I also go to city council meetings in support of people trying to change their local ordinances to allow chickens.
We have had great support from local television, radio and newspapers backing our efforts.
Our record is 7 and 1.
St. Louis is unusual in the fact that the county is made up of 92 contiguous cities besides the city of St. Louis(which allows 4 without a permit). Each one has different rules. It's possible for one person to be allowed 3 chickens, their neighbor across the street may be allowed any number including roosters and someone at the end of the street can have none. Oddly enough, it's my experience that the more affluent or larger a community, the more likely they are to have few or no restrictions. The poorer or the smaller the city, the more likely they are to ban chickens.
Out of the 100 largest cities in the US, 92 allow chickens.