Buckeye Breed Thread

[punky rooster]

Hey Chris, how are you?
Sorry to hear about your weights. Is it the birds that are hot? Have you tried cooling them down at all? I don't know if that would even help...
Nice day here.
Mitch

 

[cgmccary]

I think they eat less when it stays hot & they're always panting. Even at night on roost, I see them panting from the choking heat and humidity.

 

[Nero]

Wondering where in Wisconsin I can get some Buckeyes. I am interested in this breed for a good dual purpose chicken and would rather get some from a breeder than a hatchery.

Any info would be great.

Thanks,
Brandon

 

[punky rooster]

Bigzio in Wisconsin has Buckeyes. Not sure where he/she got their birds, or if he sells. Send them a PM, and ask.

Mitch

 

[jenjscott]

I am sad to report that yesterday I lost the absolute very best buckeye cockerel I ever produced to the heat. His color was near perfect and type was wonderful. I was planning my breeding program around him. I just got him back from my friend where he was staying after the flood while I got my pens ready to go. I never even got him in the breeding pen. His first mating was supposed to be to the finest pullet, the one I lost to buffalo gnats earlier this year, so I was choosing from the next hatch for him. I am almost back to ground zero.

 

[Janet Hatch]

I am so sorry for your losses, Jen!

 

[punky rooster]

Darn, that really stinks, Jen. Sorry to hear you lost him. I wish you luck on producing an even better cockerel soon!
Mitch

 

[HallFamilyFarm]

Quote:

 

[cgmccary]

Sad to hear Jen. This heat & humidity can be really deadly.

I have lost my first hen to the heat. She had went broody, and I was slow to separate her from the nest & break her up. The fan had gotten knocked out by a storm (it normally runs across the front of my nest boxes. She died in the nest box. I have been trying to break them up as soon as they go broody.

Take care.

 

[SuburbanHayseed]

I am so sorry about all the losses to the heat. I have a closed circuit camera in my coop and was very upset to see my birds stuggling to breathe in the heat wave we had two weeks ago out on the East Coast. I did something that could be viewed as totally eccentric, which I probably am

. I was afraid I would lose my birds, now 11 weeks old. At 11 PM 7/23 I pulled out their dropping pans and loaded them with frozen food I was going to discard anyway. I just didn't know what else to do. Thank God I take things "too far" sometimes and installed that camera, otherwise I would not have seen how they were suffering. I looked at them at 1 AM and they were peacefully sleeping. I went out early the next moring and bought eight large "blue ice" packs and froze them and put them in the coop an hour before roost time, wrapped in plastic grocery store bags. The next moring I pulled the bags off and discarded them, sanitized the blue ice in 10% bleach and refroze them. The birds made it through the heat wave. As a biologist, I felt the pea comb might allow them to get through cold--- but not work as a body heat exchanger like a single comb.