California - Northern

[OR4-hmom]

I love my EEs, and my Silkies. Hmm.. quarter of an acre... that will work for starters

If you have roosters you can have the Silkies incubate the eggs so you won't need an incubator at first...

Welcome to the wonderful world of chickens!

If you want just a few birds to give you eggs for eating - do NOT research ANY of the breeds and do NOT look at the pictures on this thread or on this site... then you will continue to have only a few birds.

If you do by chance happen to see another breed (or two or three or...) shown around here that you just have to have.. then you will want to use chicken math. It works something like this:

Only adult laying hens and three roosters per breed are counted. Chicks are not counted, pullets are not counted, extra roosters of any age are not counted, hatching eggs are not counted (never count your eggs before they hatch)... When you get hatching eggs shipped only half will hatch - and half of those will be roosters, so plan on that when getting eggs (i.e. if you want 10 hens get 40 eggs). The bigger the incubator, the easier it is to fill it up. The smaller incubators are always too small....

.

Truer words were never spoken!

 

[Chickengirl1304]

Love it chickenmamma!!

 

[skeeve101]

I also have chicks due on Tues..................I can't remember what all is in there at this point.  But I might be a little far from you.

There's a will, there's a way

 

[amyfamily]

And here's a cute picture. "Dinner is served'

o

OMG That pic is adorable!!!

 

[chickee]

Does anyone know how to perform bumblefoot surgery? I just found out my hens have it and am freaking out. I don't have the resources to go too a vet and get treatment, and know it can be treated at home, I live in the Bay Area, Oakland. Anyone willing to help out?

I had a Wyandotte hen that had bumble foot in both feet (bad) and I treated them with Bag Balm, added granulated garlic to her feed (natural antibiotic) and kept her in a kennel at night so she wouldn't stress the foot by gripping the roost or jumping down onto the feet. It took quite awhile (can't remember exactly) but the plug fell out on its own leaving a smooth, round indent on one of her feet. The other foot took longer but has almost completely healed on its own also. I don't know if this will work for every case, but it is worth trying.

Good luck!

 

[tls_ranch]

Does anyone know how to perform bumblefoot surgery? I just found out my hens have it and am freaking out. I don't have the resources to go too a vet and get treatment, and know it can be treated at home, I live in the Bay Area, Oakland. Anyone willing to help out?

I had a Wyandotte hen that had bumble foot in both feet (bad) and I treated them with Bag Balm, added granulated garlic to her feed (natural antibiotic) and kept her in a kennel at night so she wouldn't stress the foot by gripping the roost or jumping down onto the feet. It took quite awhile (can't remember exactly) but the plug fell out on its own leaving a smooth, round indent on one of her feet. The other foot took longer but has almost completely healed on its own also. I don't know if this will work for every case, but it is worth trying. Good luck!

Regular triple antibiotic ointment and some strechy vet wrap works well too. Bumble foot can be caused by lots of things like thorns, broken glass, slivers, bruising from heavy birds jumping down from roosts etc. I had problems when I has a wire floor in half of my coop. I switched to a solid wood floor with deep bedding and rarely have problems with bumble foot. I did have one roo get it from thorns last year digging in the rose prunings/trimmings in the burn pile. Trisha

 

[Ali707]

Only adult laying hens and three roosters per breed are counted. Chicks are not counted, pullets are not counted, extra roosters of any age are not counted, hatching eggs are not counted (never count your eggs before they hatch)... When you get hatching eggs shipped only half will hatch - and half of those will be roosters, so plan on that when getting eggs (i.e. if you want 10 hens get 40 eggs). The bigger the incubator, the easier it is to fill it up. The smaller incubators are always too small....

.

You are so right about the shipped eggs!!!!! I got 15 in the mail and 4 maybe 5 hatched. I a not sure about one of them and two possibly three are roosters! So case in point!

Hey the safe play sand is on sale at home depot. I'm getting some. Let's hope no one dies!

That is what I have been using since day 5 and my guys are 4 weeks old and still going......

If I had just friend little peddler eggs I think i would be a bit sick.
As it is, our power went out for 2 hrs after the incubator fiasco while the minis were heating up. Luckily Mario has them all on backup power supplies. We went out to find a microswitch to replace the one we lost, but are not sure what we found will work ( apparently Fry's has them not in store only online) . we went to a place called weird stuff that has all sorts of ( you guessed it) weird old electronics equipment. The also did not have the right switch, but they had cable networking ladders very cheap that will make nice ladders in and out of the coop once I wrap it. Mario is debating now if he can even fit this micro thingies in the right spot.

And them I came home to find out floppy sister had crushed the new chick I gave her, the English orphington is missing, and a deer ate my garden. oh! and sparkles has some sort of eye infection, I get to dose her with tylan and neosporian and look for worms in her eye. YES WORMS IN THE EYE I DON'T KNOW WHAT TO SAY ABOUT THAT! ( at least she is still ornery and pissy so she cant feel THAT terrible)

This is not the best week I have ever had.

I have to concentrate on the fact I didn't fry all the eggs, I didn't kill myself in a car crash, I have some beautiful blue and splash orphs babies, Mario found someone who will keep gunieas for him so I don't have to have them here, and at least 2 of the Manchurian snows hatched so it was not a total loss, and no more quail have died. So all these things that happened could be worse!

here's a silly question: in a typically absent-minded moment, i bought "stable mix pellets" (aka horse feed) instead of stable bedding pine pellets (aka cat litter). 50 pounds of it. i now (at home) looked at the ingredients list and it's full of various kinds of hay, etc. -- is there any way that the chickens might enjoy this? (soaked first, perhaps, to de-pellet-ize it?) or should i just find someone with livestock to give it to (or just try using as cat litter, i'm sure it would work fine) & buy the proper item next time?

in other news, the weed-whacker guy is all finished, and the chickens are loving having full range of all the property again, as they wouldn't walk through the really-tall grass (over my head in places!) -- so much more area to explore.

and Bella has hatched three babies since friday, two birchen marans and one very-weak-so-far SFH, and no sign of pips on the other three eggs -- i'll give 'em through tomorrow, but then i think she might be done incubating. the marans are very lively!! and i gave the SFH baby vitamins, hoping it perks up.

I take it you opened up the bag already so you can't take it back......?

I've spent my Sunday making a chicken death list :-( 2 more cockerels to pick out and then my parts over. Johnny will do the culling. Ugh!

Boywonder - welcome to the thread! I'm in Concord so not too far from you. Sorry to hear you're having issues with bumblefoot. Stick around the thread because everyone's right, Zooweemama may know!

LOL, I have been doing this for the last week. It is a mental list really.....I never actually thought of it as a "death list" however. That is much worse than a "bucket list" or "grocery list" for that matter.

So if Johnny get's on a roll, maybe I can bring mine over too!

Thanks for the support guys!!! I too hope Zooweemama can help. I love these girls so much, I just wish I knew about bumble foot beforehand, it caught me by surprise. But I know my girls are troopers, I'll definitely be sticking around, it doesn't look too bad atm, but i'm watching them very closely! Anyone know how long they can carry this for?

On a side note, in my first set of chickens I had, I was completely new to them and didn't notice right away that one hen had a slightly swollen foot/ankle. (do chickens have ankles?) Anyway. I did notice it one day and she wasn't limping or favoring it in any way. Over about a week it didn't get any bigger. I watched her for a few months, and then noticed something black on the bottom of that foot. So I went to catch her (she didn't like to be caught or held), and took her in to the kitchen and washed her foot. There was a black circular something.... looked like a scab, or a black rock, something I couldn't really identify. I tried to get it off, (gently) and it wouldn't come off, so I dried her off an let her back outside. Later in my research, I believe what she had was bumblefoot, but it seemed to be either dormant, or healed, or something because it never got any worse and it never went away. She is still just fine years later on the farm where I rehomed her too.

I am hoping it isn't just my ignorance and she is in complete discomfort this whole time..... That is an awful thought, but she didn't seem like it.

 

[Ali707]

So I have never really had roosters at all before and since I hatched my own this time, I have at LEAST half of the 26 are roosters.

I am getting closer and closer to getting the coop done so I can move them outside. They are 4 weeks old this weekend.

It is normal for the roosters to start fighting already? I have one really big Barnvelder (I think that is what he is) and he was pecking everyone in the head. One of the Wheaten Ameraucana actually stood up to him a bit and they went at it.

I took him out of the group and put him in a pet kennel to see if things calmed down. He didn't peck at me when I picked him up but I didn't trust him not to the way he was picking on everyone.

Is that normal behavior at this age?

 

[chiqita]

They call it pecking order for a reason. That being said some dominant birds are more aggressive then others. Watch and make sure no one gets really hurt. ( hens will do it too)

 

[Ali707]

They call it pecking order for a reason. That being said some dominant birds are more aggressive then others. Watch and make sure no one gets really hurt. ( hens will do it too)

He was being kind of mean about it though, going after anyone that was going by. He was being a bully in my opinion. Of course, I know nothing...... He was going after the other birds even when he they were trying to avoid him. Since he won't be staying it seems kind of like a moot point to let him get all aggressive with everyone.