Arizona Chickens

[RockNSuccess]

A couple chicken related things. Not sure who laid this large egg but someone must need a sitz bath! Put up a bird feeder and this is what came to visit this morning.

Holy CR@P that's a big egg!!

 

[kpgoldstar]

All right you convinced me, I will give it a try with my broilers first.

On another note I have joined the first egg club. Dont know who laid it but it wasnt there this morning, but when I went to check on them this afternoon there it was sitting on the floor of the run. Apparently the golf balls in the nesting boxes weren't obvious enough for them. It was pretty cool seeing that first egg ever.

The only thing that makes ff time-consuming is that you have to manually feed daily rather than leaving dry crumbles or pellets for them to graze on all day.

Beware if you add water to the dry mix to fill 3/4 of your bucket, some feeds will absorb so much water and expand to overflow your bucket. I have a small flock, so I use a smaller container. The first time you start add just enough water to cover the feed by about an inch of water. Stir about every 4 hours if you can, otherwise every 12 is sufficient. If the absorption continues, just keep adding water to keep it fairly moist, like wet cement. After about 3 days or sooner, you should start to see bubbles and it will have a sour smell.

Some feeds can emit a horrid smell, mostly feather fixer or anything with fish meal. Mine is strictly chick starter granules. I keep mine just outside my kitchen in the house and I can never smell it. Mine is in a foodsafe plastic container like you get at smart n final, or from the bakery at your local market. I keep the lid on, but not snapped down.

Once you are sure you have a good ferment, you can keep your formula drier which makes it easier to serve out at feeding time. I make enough ff to feed out for about 4 days and I keep it about grout consistency. Some people refresh at every feeding, like a sourdough starter, the way Demo mentioned. I don't. I feed out until I have about 1-2 cups left in the bucket, then I refresh the ff by adding in again as much crumbles as I will need for about 4 days, and enough water to absorb and get me back to the grout. There is plenty ferment still in my bucket that by the next feeding (12 hrs or so) it is fully fermented again.

Not only will your feed consumption reduce dramatically, but the poop becomes much more solid and there is practically no smell. Add to that the benefits of the nutrition for healthier birds and being sure they are well hydrated in our climate.

Also, with ff as mentioned in the first paragraph I feed on schedules rather then leaving feed for them all day. Mine have no access to dry feed at all. I feed the main ration at daybreak, maybe 1.5-2 cups for 4 juveniles. Remember that amount was probably only 1/2 cup dry to start with. They munch on that nearly all morning. Since the feed is moist it stays together better and is not scattered all over the coop while they're eating. If I have kitchen scraps I toss those in the run at the same time. I work so they get out to free range when I get home just after 5. I feed about 1/4 of their morning ration just as a snack mostly out of habit. If they had lots of treats that day, their crops are still full in the evening and they sometimes don't even finish the snack. If it is a day with no kitchen scraps they act like they are starved to death when I bring out the ff. After a few minutes though they are off and playing and will only gobble it up shortly before dark and headed for the coop. They probably don't even need the evening ration but we created a pattern so I don't want to change. Plus I don't want them going to bed with an empty crop.

Oh boy, I certainly didn't mean to get so long-winded! I am a little passionate about ff I suppose!!

YAY!!!! Congrats on the first egg! Mine are 17 weeks now so it won't be long. I bought a bale of hay today to start on the nesting boxes. My girls still have the smallest of combs, still a blonde color but 2 are starting to grow wattles...just barely. I hope to join your club in a few weeks!

 

[RockNSuccess]

Hey, all! I need some advice from the chicken experts.

Okay, so I posted the other day that I had two Lav Orp eggs hatch at day 23. The had pipped, and had a pretty good sized piece out of the egg. However, she didn't appear to be able to rotate. The pip was there in the morning and when I got home at 6:00, there was no change. The membrane looked to be drying out so I put some warm water on it and very carefully made the pip larger. Because I didn't see any veins, I went ahead and pulled the membrane back enough so the chick's head was clear. It hatched an hour or so later.

She seemed to be okay. Kind of flopping around as she worked to get her sea legs. She reached a point where she seemed like she was fine. However, by the next day, she couldn't walk. Here are some pics of her legs. Notice at the hock (is it called a hock in chickens?) that the one side is larger and there appears to be a small wound. Is it possible she could have injured herself in the incubator when she was flopping around? This leg she keeps pulled up and doesn't seem to want to put weight on it. Although, I have seen her standing/sitting with both legs under her. Also, the joint seems to flex more in a way that the other doesn't. It kind of tilts inwards.

Ironically enough it was her sister I was concerned about after hatch, because she couldn't seem to get on her feet at all for the longest time. Now she is running everywhere. I named her Scuttlebutt due to the way she darts off from a dead standstill.

Anyway, any thoughts? I was thinking of trying to wrap the joint to stablize it. Do you think that would work? Any suggestions would be so helpful!

 

[Timskins]

The only thing that makes ff time-consuming is that you have to manually feed daily rather than leaving dry crumbles or pellets for them to graze on all day.

Beware if you add water to the dry mix to fill 3/4 of your bucket, some feeds will absorb so much water and expand to overflow your bucket. I have a small flock, so I use a smaller container. The first time you start add just enough water to cover the feed by about an inch of water. Stir about every 4 hours if you can, otherwise every 12 is sufficient. If the absorption continues, just keep adding water to keep it fairly moist, like wet cement. After about 3 days or sooner, you should start to see bubbles and it will have a sour smell.

Some feeds can emit a horrid smell, mostly feather fixer or anything with fish meal. Mine is strictly chick starter granules. I keep mine just outside my kitchen in the house and I can never smell it. Mine is in a foodsafe plastic container like you get at smart n final, or from the bakery at your local market. I keep the lid on, but not snapped down.

Once you are sure you have a good ferment, you can keep your formula drier which makes it easier to serve out at feeding time. I make enough ff to feed out for about 4 days and I keep it about grout consistency. Some people refresh at every feeding, like a sourdough starter, the way Demo mentioned. I don't. I feed out until I have about 1-2 cups left in the bucket, then I refresh the ff by adding in again as much crumbles as I will need for about 4 days, and enough water to absorb and get me back to the grout. There is plenty ferment still in my bucket that by the next feeding (12 hrs or so) it is fully fermented again.

Not only will your feed consumption reduce dramatically, but the poop becomes much more solid and there is practically no smell. Add to that the benefits of the nutrition for healthier birds and being sure they are well hydrated in our climate.

Also, with ff as mentioned in the first paragraph I feed on schedules rather then leaving feed for them all day. Mine have no access to dry feed at all. I feed the main ration at daybreak, maybe 1.5-2 cups for 4 juveniles. Remember that amount was probably only 1/2 cup dry to start with. They munch on that nearly all morning. Since the feed is moist it stays together better and is not scattered all over the coop while they're eating. If I have kitchen scraps I toss those in the run at the same time. I work so they get out to free range when I get home just after 5. I feed about 1/4 of their morning ration just as a snack mostly out of habit. If they had lots of treats that day, their crops are still full in the evening and they sometimes don't even finish the snack. If it is a day with no kitchen scraps they act like they are starved to death when I bring out the ff. After a few minutes though they are off and playing and will only gobble it up shortly before dark and headed for the coop. They probably don't even need the evening ration but we created a pattern so I don't want to change. Plus I don't want them going to bed with an empty crop.

Oh boy, I certainly didn't mean to get so long-winded! I am a little passionate about ff I suppose!!

YAY!!!! Congrats on the first egg! Mine are 17 weeks now so it won't be long. I bought a bale of hay today to start on the nesting boxes. My girls still have the smallest of combs, still a blonde color but 2 are starting to grow wattles...just barely. I hope to join your club in a few weeks!

Thanks for the info. Yes the daily feeding is what I was trying to avoid. I have a tube feeder for my layers so if need be they can be left alone for several days at a time. I like having the freedom to go out of town for a few days. Mine are 21 weeks old as of Friday. I put straw in my nest boxes a few weeks ago and they took all the straw out within hours and kicked pine shavings in.

 

[kpgoldstar]

Thanks for the info. Yes the daily feeding is what I was trying to avoid. I have a tube feeder for my layers so if need be they can be left alone for several days at a time. I like having the freedom to go out of town for a few days. Mine are 21 weeks old as of Friday. I put straw in my nest boxes a few weeks ago and they took all the straw out within hours and kicked pine shavings in.

Certainly you can feed daily when you are home. We got our chickens October 7th and have only been away for one night since then, sad indeed. My babysitter watched for that one night and we gave her scratch to scatter in the run at their normal free range time and I preloaded the feeder trough with ff for her to place in the morning.

I would think that even once you start feeding ff on a fulltime basis for both your layers and meaties, you can let them eat dry if you are going to be out of town. Mine haven't had dry since they were about 2 weeks old, but you just do what you can based on your lifestyle. If we had to be gone and couldn't burden the caretaker with ff, I would switch to a tube feeder for that minimal amount of time.

I always say that at very minimum our birds have it WAY better off than battery egg farms. If they can't be let out for a few days or have to eat dry food instead of fermented, they are still pampered, well cared for backyard chickens.

 

[Demosthine]

All right you convinced me, I will give it a try with my broilers first.  

On another note I have joined the first egg club.  Dont know who laid it but it wasnt there this morning, but when I went to check on them this afternoon there it was sitting on the floor of the run. Apparently the golf balls in the nesting boxes weren't obvious enough for them.  It was pretty cool seeing that first egg ever.

Congrats on the first egg! My girls have been so long molting that I'll be as excited as a newbie when I get one! LoL.

For the five-gallon bucket, I found the perfect stirring spoon. It is a long plastic one from What Ale's Ya at 64th Avenue and Bell Road. It is used to mix your batch of wine and such when it's in the six gallon primary fermenter. I think it was only about $5, but it was well worth it. For the bucket, though, just get a cheap one at Home Depot or Lowe's.

 

[Sonoran Silkies]

Quote: Does Litchfield Park allow them? I'd have thought not, but don't really know.

 

[Sonoran Silkies]

Giro is the nickname for the breed more commonly referred to as the Gamefowl. There are numerous strains, but in our region, they are used largely for cock fighting down South of the border. And as you mentioned, "gallo" means rooster in America, although a majority of the world translates it as "cock." Since Americans use that as such a derogatory term, rooster is the preferred word in many circles. Just on my brief research, it appears the photo above is a Silver Duckwing Old English Game Fowl, although it may be a mix because the standards require black legs. In the Silver Duckwing Old English Jungle Fowl, the legs should be blue/green in color. That photo appears to be very yellowish. Not an expert and that's a hard picture to judge from, but it may give you a better starting place for searching.

So there is no breed called the Gallo Giro. It was posted by a mis-informed individual, which is extremely common in this day and age.

Doesn't look at all like an Old English--not sure what it is; type is WAY off, and it would be dubbed if OE--but I do agree on silver duckwing.

 

[MagicChicken]

Hey, all! I need some advice from the chicken experts.

Okay, so I posted the other day that I had two Lav Orp eggs hatch at day 23. The had pipped, and had a pretty good sized piece out of the egg. However, she didn't appear to be able to rotate. The pip was there in the morning and when I got home at 6:00, there was no change. The membrane looked to be drying out so I put some warm water on it and very carefully made the pip larger. Because I didn't see any veins, I went ahead and pulled the membrane back enough so the chick's head was clear. It hatched an hour or so later.

She seemed to be okay. Kind of flopping around as she worked to get her sea legs. She reached a point where she seemed like she was fine. However, by the next day, she couldn't walk. Here are some pics of her legs. Notice at the hock (is it called a hock in chickens?) that the one side is larger and there appears to be a small wound. Is it possible she could have injured herself in the incubator when she was flopping around? This leg she keeps pulled up and doesn't seem to want to put weight on it. Although, I have seen her standing/sitting with both legs under her. Also, the joint seems to flex more in a way that the other doesn't. It kind of tilts inwards.



Ironically enough it was her sister I was concerned about after hatch, because she couldn't seem to get on her feet at all for the longest time. Now she is running everywhere. I named her Scuttlebutt due to the way she darts off from a dead standstill.

Anyway, any thoughts? I was thinking of trying to wrap the joint to stablize it. Do you think that would work? Any suggestions would be so helpful!

You might try posting this on the Emergency forum if no one answers here. I don't have an answer for this one.

 

[Sonoran Silkies]

Quote: Neat idea about the nest boxes for lovebirds! How many yolks are in that egg?! I'm guessing at LEAST 3!