Anyone heard from Meg lately?
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The seed box is an AZ BYC exclusive.
It is passed around to those of us (NOT Mikey) who have green thumbs and seeds are added and removed as you see fit.
Sounds like a bunch of fun for those people that can plant something and have it live more than a week.
If you were in the easter hatch-a-long you need to post results by midnight tonight. I had 12. My last two hatched today. i had my parents pick up 15 sultan egg while they were visiting my brother....not a single one hatched. I thought since they were not shipped I would have good results...I guess not.
Ok folks! The voting for the best short story has begone! Please vote for my story about Shamrock! Looks like I am the only Arizona Chickens entry.
TO: FUZZYBIRD : Phoenix Zoo, 33 years ago!!!, TO: Turkeybreeder - Sorry for you dilema. TO ALL : Hope everyones problems clear up soon and congrats to all who have new chickies!!!
That was a good review of the avian respiratory tract. A very interesting question about female hormones being used for chemical de-crowing. Seems that it was done early on with an aim to fatten up chickens faster. Depending on what hormone, dosage and age administered, estrogens can certainly disrupt male behavior. The problem seems to be disruption of testes development/atrophy along with the crowing behavior. A more modern study showed that exposing males to estradiol while incubating reduced the crowing behavior in adults without disrupting gonad size. Treated and untreated adult males also had similar circulating testosterone levels. Interestingly, in the same study, they showed that treatment of females (while incubating) with aromatase inhibitor (aromatase is the hormone that converts androgen to estrogen) causes them to crow in adulthood. I guess the trick is to identify males while they are still in the egg. Otherwise, it seems to be a relatively simple thing to do. I'd like to read the whole study.I had someone message this link to an article. In particular, I found the de-crowing information interesting, and started wondering if perhaps the simplest/least expensive/safest de-crowing method might be to give female hormones? I guess the questions are how safe is it really, and the extent to which it would affect fertility of the rooster.
http://www2.ca.uky.edu/afspoultry-files/pubs/Anatomy_Respiratory.pdf