Adorae’s Family Flock and Farm

[Adorae]

And to finish the rest. A Cream Legbar and a BYM Whiting True Blue mix.

The Bieleflders I think I have 2 boys.

Welsummer girls

The bigger Ayam Cemanis they are about 2 weeks older than the rest. They are not a fan of being touched.

Not pictured are 2 Coronation Sussex mixes that hatched later, and another group of English Orpingtons that I just got 3 blues and a splash. So many plans! We will see how everyone grows out.

 

[Adorae]

All the chicks are doing well. I'm going to need to made lids for the pack n plays so the babies can't try to fly out.
I think once these chicks grow out I may end this thread and start new threads for my various projects individually. This one has gotten pretty disjointed. Or I may keep this one for the egg laying flock.
My sister and BIL came over this weekend to help me with making a chicken tractor. We only got the base completed, but I feel like I can manage the rest and hopefully get it finish by this weekend. I need to separate Pudding the Dark Cornish from the rest of the flock, both for purity of eggs for my project as well as he's fighting with the other roosters and it just needs to happen. As soon as I got the eggs I need from him, I'll be processing him with a few other birds in April. I got a motor for the plucker and I want to make sure I can set everything up correctly and it work before I try to do a large batch of birds when the meat birds come of age.

 

[Adorae]

So one of my little Lavender Ameraucanas has cross beak. I feel like it has gotten pretty bad in the last 2 weeks. As day olds, none of them had any indication of it.

Everyone else is doing pretty good.

You can see cross beak right in the middle of this picture.

A few of my chicks started developing the poop balls on their toes. It's so weird that it is mostly happening pretty randomly to a few of the birds, but it seemed to affect all of my Silver Laced Orpingtons the worst. I had to give them a good soak last night to get it off their feet. They handled it pretty well. I'm calling 2 boys and 2 girls based off this photo.

And then my other order of Orpington chicks showed up today. I'm really excited for these beautiful fluff balls to grow up. I have black, more Silver Laced, Lavender and split lavender, and 2 Chocolate Silver Laced. I was up super early this morning to pick them up from the Post Office this morning before work. I was up a lot of last night worrying about these poor babies because they had been in transit since Monday.

 

[Adorae]

Another big update. So my last shipped order of the Orpington chicks has not gone well. I start with 17, and now I am down to 6. Possibly soon to be 5. They started dyeing off one by one after I got them home. I'm not sure what happened to them during the shipping. They were in transit for 4 days. I have 3 SL left, 1 lavender, 1 lavender split, and 1 chocolate laced. The lavender chick isn't doing great and I won't be surprised if she is gone when I get home.
I got 3 Jubilee Orpingtons from a local breeder. Even those these chicks are 1/2 a week younger, they are much larger already than the shipped chicks. I feel like the shipped chicks are slowly starving. They all go crazy when I give them wet food that I've put enhanced water in, though it seems like they drink all the water from the food, and then ignore the food and water bowls in the brooder.

I moved all the first wave of chicks into the bigger coop. They seem to be pretty happy.

I'm starting to see bigger combs. It'll be interesting to see which ones turn out to be boys. Same of my BYM are really big already, and the Mystic Onyx are hefty, which makes sense because in their description it mentioned that they were originally designed to be meat birds.

The 6 Ayam Cemani I got seem to be pretty good quality, I haven't seen any white coming out in their feathers. It'll be interesting to see if their quality stays high when they hit adolescence.

 

[Adorae]

Wow it's been a minute since I did an update here. I've been super busy with getting my chicken tractors build and working on a new coop with breeding pens. From the first group I have separated out all the boys, and they are now in a Suscovich style chicken tractor. They are around 11 weeks now and I have them with my 2 larger juvenile turkeys. I feel like the extra protein from he turkey feed is helping a lot to get some more weight on them. I'll get pictures of them soon.

I have some more babies to show, this is the 2nd group of chicks, from when they were tiny, they are much larger now at 6 weeks.

There's a lot of Orpingtons and meat birds in the 2nd group. Those are also the older turkeys in the picture. I need to get updated photos of everyone. Most of the Orpingtons are feathering out really nicely and I seem to have a good balance of boys and girls.

Then there is a 3rd group chicks that are all meat birds that are roughly 3-4 weeks old.

Then on to the 4th group! Which is another huge group of chicks.
So in this group I have a group of Silver Grey Dorkings and White Laced Red Cornish from Murry McMurry. They threw in an Eqyptian Fayoumi.

I have an order of turkeys and chicks from Cackle, which is by far my favorite place to get chicks. They are always good quality chicks and they throw in extras all the time. Turkey's are Slate, Broad Breasted White, and Royal Palm. The chicks are white Ameraucana, Cuckoo Marans, Copper Marans, Exhibition Buff Orpington, Austra Whites, and a couple more Crested Cream Legbar.
I have a huge amount of people interested in getting more of the colorful eggs in their cartons.

Then I also have an order of English Orpingtons from Papa's Poultry in California that shows up tomorrow. I am very excited about getting those babies. And I have a batch of eggs due to hatch by Friday that's a mix of egg layers, meat birds, (Dark Cornish/Freedom Ranger), and my Silkie mixes.
This entire group will be put into the new coop for growing out once they outgrow the pack'n play brooders.

 

[Adorae]

Just writing in here to show off a pretty mixed bird. I think she is Columbian Rock and Whiting True Blue. Or she might be Lakenvelder instead of Columbian Rock. I will know more when she starts laying.

And then some pictures of my Orpingtons. I'm really loving how round they are all becoming.

I just got my new shed build into 4 pens. I have to figure out the watering system for them before I can open up anymore pens, and built their roosts and feeders. I'm pretty happy with out it's all going. Soon I will get another batch of meat birds together, this one will be Columbian Rock over Freedom Ranger. Then I will see how they compare to the f1 cross freedom Rangers and the Dark Cornish over Freedom Rangers.
I gotta say, I am ready to be done with hatching chicks for the year. lol..

 

[Adorae]

Oh wow, been a while again on an update. Lots of stuff has been happening.
Processed all but 1 Bresse cockerel.
Finished the pens in the Blue shed.
Moved all the chicks from brooders into 2 new pens.

Dealing with a raccoon problem. They somehow got into my adult coop and killed 4 broodies and 3 PoL Pullets.
They then got into a chicken tractor and took my 4 Lav Ameraucana grow out cockerels and my 3 Splash Marans, and a meat bird grow-out pullet, and ate the tail off my meat bird cockerel.
Does anyone know if he can still breed without a tail?
They also got a mixed grow out cockerel, luckily a scrawny one, but I feel like I have plugged all the holes in all of my structures to keep everyone safe. But still lost 16 total chickens.
I have a live trap out, but they keep eating the bait, but not triggering the trap. They've also got into my meat bird feed and taken a ton of it.

I've lost one chicken to the heat wave. And a few of my Dorking chicks have died. I have 4 left, but I don't think I will get anymore. They seem really puny, and it might just be the breeder.

I get my last order of chicks from Papa's Poultry this week, they are a bunch of different orpingtons. and I have a group of meat birds hatching in the incubator right now, 15.
I also picked up 2 Lav Ameraucana cockerels and a Splash Marans cockerel from a lady in town that hatched chicks, but cannot keep the boys because of city ordinances. This is to replace the ones that the raccoon took.

So this weekend, I will process all the mixed boys from the first hatch. Then I can move the younger turkey's out and the rest of that group of chicks.

I'm working on runs for the Blue shed pens, and I need to fix the ventilation in all of the shed/coops. I also need to get at least 1 more chicken tractor built to be a dedicated turkey shelter. Hopefully when I get to another update, I can have all of those things done.

 

[notabitail]

Oh wow, been a while again on an update. Lots of stuff has been happening.
Processed all but 1 Bresse cockerel.
Finished the pens in the Blue shed.
Moved all the chicks from brooders into 2 new pens.

Dealing with a raccoon problem. They somehow got into my adult coop and killed 4 broodies and 3 PoL Pullets.
They then got into a chicken tractor and took my 4 Lav Ameraucana grow out cockerels and my 3 Splash Marans, and a meat bird grow-out pullet, and ate the tail off my meat bird cockerel.
Does anyone know if he can still breed without a tail?
They also got a mixed grow out cockerel, luckily a scrawny one, but I feel like I have plugged all the holes in all of my structures to keep everyone safe. But still lost 16 total chickens.
I have a live trap out, but they keep eating the bait, but not triggering the trap. They've also got into my meat bird feed and taken a ton of it.

I've lost one chicken to the heat wave. And a few of my Dorking chicks have died. I have 4 left, but I don't think I will get anymore. They seem really puny, and it might just be the breeder.

I get my last order of chicks from Papa's Poultry this week, they are a bunch of different orpingtons. and I have a group of meat birds hatching in the incubator right now, 15.
I also picked up 2 Lav Ameraucana cockerels and a Splash Marans cockerel from a lady in town that hatched chicks, but cannot keep the boys because of city ordinances. This is to replace the ones that the raccoon took.

So this weekend, I will process all the mixed boys from the first hatch. Then I can move the younger turkey's out and the rest of that group of chicks.

I'm working on runs for the Blue shed pens, and I need to fix the ventilation in all of the shed/coops. I also need to get at least 1 more chicken tractor built to be a dedicated turkey shelter. Hopefully when I get to another update, I can have all of those things done.

That's a lot of stuff! I hope they'll all be ok.

I would think he'd still be able to mate without his tail.

 

[Adorae]

Just a couple of fun pictures. This was a nice evening and everyone was out enjoying the treats I threw out for them.

A group of very confused pullets.

I've lost 21 chickens to the raccoon in the last few weeks. I've finally decided to use poison because the live traps aren't working. I'm absolutely done with finding bodies, and wasting all the money.

 

[notabitail]

Just a couple of fun pictures. This was a nice evening and everyone was out enjoying the treats I threw out for them.
View attachment 3878577

A group of very confused pullets.
View attachment 3878578

I've lost 21 chickens to the raccoon in the last few weeks. I've finally decided to use poison because the live traps aren't working. I'm absolutely done with finding bodies, and wasting all the money.

I'm sorry to hear about your loss of chooks.