Araucana thread anyone?

[Ray_n_Debi]

I love when I can let the hens be Moms. This is her second time. She hatched some eggs I had put under her the first time, this time those are her babies. She is so good with them and not a very nervous type. I keep her separated because her color is not to standards. I kept her cause I love her color anyway.

 

[smoothmule]

Lucy, I'm so sorry for your loss. Even though we know it's inevitable, it's tough to lose any of them.

I recently lost some of my better tufted chicks. I was just sick too but things happen. I just hatched 8 and half were tufted, all rumpless so there is always hope for starting over. I am always thankful for fat healthy chicks. They are all healthy and active and really hard to get a great picture, everyone was just a blur..

I've really been getting some nice whites and blues. I have a double tufted blue chick I plan to keep to see how it develops. I will have some clean faced/rumpless chicks to sell soon. A couple of blues and some splash at this time. If anyone is needing some, let me know before I post them at auction








Cackleberrycoop. Some people are just Nuts!

and I am one of the gang.

 

[Ray_n_Debi]

Awww.. love the tufts! Cute chicks!

 

[Illia]

Photos of mine. I got a lot of tufts too. Yay me!

All are from the same rooster, my blue and yellow Marango.

These are from my only Silver Duckwing hen. . .


A clean-faced pullet, likely going to be a blue-silver duckwing, but don't hold your breath yet.

Clean-faced pullet, not completely sure on color but I'm thinking maybe a gold duckwing with something else in there.

Born bilaterally tufted, now appears to just have one glorious tuft. Silver Duckwing, very likely cockerel. I'm going to love this guy!

Check out the silver-laced tuft!

A young bilateral Quail colored chick. The tufts are perfectly symmetrical in size but are starting to grow to be quite twisted in shape. How neat.

A young bilateral Blue-Quail colored chick. Tufts are huge but will probably end up saggy or one up, one down. I think I'm gonna LOVE this one!

And these from my girl "Josephine" . . .

A now deceased bilaterally tufted BBR. Really sad this one went!

A clean-faced Blue. Seriously undersize for her age though.

A tailed Silver Duckwing. (wings on one side were clipped after moving this chick from broody mom to brooder box)

Here's father Marango, quite sun-bleached and upset because he's no longer living with his girls (now in the bachelor pad) has to wear homemade spur-caps and lives with "the other guy." He's wet and covered in white feathers from fighting.

A little brawl between him and "the other guy." (my blue cuckoo)

The netting over a corner of the bachelor pad obscures the view, but, the boys were having their little quarrels. If someone's gonna fight around here, it's an Araucana.

Marango, even though he's now the new guy in the pen, has to be on top, no questions asked. . . So I capped his spurs to protect my other boy from harm, and capped the other boy's spurs in case when Marango gets tired from a lack of exercise, he doesn't get hurt as well.

The spur caps help both serious injury and they also distract the birds good. The annoying feeling of having things on your legs as well as them rubbing against each other cuts the fighting action down drastically, and allows me to enjoy the beauty of a mature male having full length, continuously growing spurs. (When I take the caps off after they've settled their issues.

)

 

[Ray_n_Debi]

Illia- Yay on the tufts

I think the tufts are taking over the chicken world

Very cute chicks!
I can't believe how you can put those roos together. Mine would peck each other to death even with the spur covers.
The hen I showed above was in with a rooster that had his eye removed by his brother. They lived together just fine until one day we went out to the coops and saw him.

So I guess he is alright now since he made those chicks for me.

 

[Illia]

Oh, they've done a good pecking job before. . . This isn't the first time I've had to re-introduce the boys, and the first time, yeah, the spur caps did little good. My Blue Cuckoo boy used to have one tuft, now he has none because his face got pretty bloodied and the tuft got torn out. That was pretty bad and I was pretty worried. He was fine in the end though and healed up very fast. I always know if someone is in a fight and if there's someone I will never worry of losing the fight, it's Marango. He's fought two boys in just half an hour before and "won" both fights.


I know it sounds like life is chaos and cruel here but honestly it's just those two times I've had serious fights, and it's always Araucana related, and always because of re-integration. Marango especially has been moved 3 times now due to constant changes in plans on who goes where.

My Blue Cuckoo has always lived in the bachelor pad though, same with my other previous boys, so it's always about the new kid on the block who thinks he's top man. And, it ends up being that physically speaking, he is. He's just a tad smaller but still ALWAYS wins the quarrels. He moves like lightning and has non-stop stamina. It's annoying.

 

[Ray_n_Debi]

Sounds like exactly what you want a rooster to be. I bet he is great with protecting his hens!

 

[Illia]

Oh it's why he's still around.

The family wanted for a while to get rid of him so we'll only have one rooster of each breed (

) but his stamina is one of many reasons to keep him. I like my birds tough and smart. And yes, good at fighting goes in hand with that, even if it isn't something you particularly want to find out about.

 

[smoothmule]

Illia,
Love em

I keep saying I'm selling off everything but the blacks and whites but I just can't do it,

It would sure give me more space to work with those colors but I think I'd miss the off colors and the surprise "correct" BBR and Duckwings. So, I'm just going with the flow. I'll worry about that all later if I really run out of space. I had lost my chicks that I was keeping when I moved them into the large coop in the barn when they outgrew the pens so they could integrate with the older hens and some of my roosters (oddly enough, I don't see much rooster fighting here except Degas and Rudy who hate each other)
Anyway, I evidently left the door unlatched and they all got out in the barn and my blue heeler had just had her puppies in there and was extremely protective. You know chickens, they all ran to get in the big pan full of dog food and it was right in front of her and the puppies and she "reacted" killing but not eating most of the young birds. She's settled down with the pups, now 3 weeks old, but I make sure to latch the door now.

I had planned to stop hatching this fall but changed my mind so I can have at least a few more tufted chicks for next year. They may be a little slow in getting started, at least the pullets, but better than none and better than waiting till spring to start over since you never know which adults might stop laying or breeding or worse. I have some stack cages set up in the garage and an extra brooder now so here we go again. I have the 4 nice tufted chicks, one really nice blue, that will be great for starters since I had only kept 6 chicks for next year anyway. We'll see how many I can hatch this fall. They've slowed to a crawl in laying and since I wormed them, those eggs may not be good to hatch, worming can affect fertility.

I'm still waiting to hatch a really nice black cockerel. I have some very nice hens and a couple of pullets, all clean faced/rumpless but one pullet with a single good tuft and my hen that is double tufted. If I could even find a really good clean faced black rooster, India could give the tufts. I broke her nest up and moved her to get her out of broodiness and it worked fine but she hasn't started laying again yet. I have one cockerel out of her with big tufts, a partial tail, a little red leakage in the neck hackles and a poor comb, bleh. I'm still considering trying him out with one of the best clean faced black hens that is rumpless to try for a more decent cockerel with tufts/rumpless to breed back to India but I'd have to really cull hard. He gets to stay in case I don't find a rooster to buy and don't produce any better than he is. He's sort of a last resort and would take me the long way around. He's only here till he can give me a better cockerel than he is or I find one. Then he's stew

The white rooster I got that was such a booger to attack is now a pet

I can pet him, carry him, pick up eggs, feed etc and even let him out to free range with his hens in the evening for a few hours and he's super now. I still get the eyeball but it's more like "OMG here she comes again" rather than "I'm going to get that woman" look

 

[smoothmule]

Here are a couple of the last chicks to hatch. I really like this double tufted blue chick but I would trade it for a double tufted black cockerel or I may put it and the splash below it up for auction when they're old enough to sex.

I'm thinking this will be splash??

A nice yellow chick, feathering out white

I am going to put the 4 older chicks below on the BYC auction. One is a nice white chick with a single tuft and yellow legs, a cool/unusual blue clean faced chick with very dark legs, a white clean faced with willow legs and an odd blue colored clean faced chick that has too short of a back but it's healthy and doing fine, just not to my liking. They are all rumpless and will be sold as a group. I'll weigh them and figure shipping and the box before I post them. They will be on the auction here unless they sell before someone bids. They should be laying/breeding in late spring.

Illia, what color is that dark blue? Is it just laced? Juvenile feathering throws me off sometimes.