California - Northern

[Audio51]

Quote: These pictures freaked me out so much I bought the vaccines at my feed store today. I will be vaccinating everyone tomorrow.... Is it just a 1 time vaccines or is it annual? And can I vaccinate the 1 week olds? Do I need to vaccinate my quail too?

Nameless is on the roost with everyone else. I think I broke her when I moved her last night

Is she likely to go broody again soon? Or is there no way of knowing?

No way to tell. I have had some go broody again within a couple of weeks after breaking them, some not for several months and some not for the rest of the season. Maybe you will get lucky and someone else will go broody for you...

I really appreciate the fowl pox pics (even though I was eating when I first saw them, lol). I would have been seriously considering culling, too, but when I see the after pictures I am amazed at how perfectly fine the eyes look under the scabs. Good to know should one of my hens have a problem.


Also, I wanted to show some pics of my goofy looking but cute little Polish mix chicks. Several are growing crests, and I have two people really wanting them if they're boys. Not often you have a line for pet cockerels.

Very cute! Will be interesting to see how the crests develop.

How is BYC working for you. It has been kludgy for me for the past two days.

They moved to a new server is seems. It is working a bit better right now though.

I am having trouble on some browsers, but less on others. The posted on the FB page yesterday that BYC was offline completely but I was having no problems on the site at that time.

 

[ronott1]

These pictures freaked me out so much I bought the vaccines at my feed store today. I will be vaccinating everyone tomorrow.... Is it just a 1 time vaccines or is it annual? And can I vaccinate the 1 week olds? Do I need to vaccinate my quail too?

The vaccine is annual.

Look up the dosage and ages based on the vaccine.

 

[TheKeeper]

Rawr!

My 2 latest zebra dove chicks.

 

[ronott1]

Rawr!

My 2 latest zebra dove chicks.

They are so cute!

There is a dove that roost on top of the chimney cap and the thrumping noise reverberates down the chimney. Good thing it is summer.

 

[Happy Chooks]

Rawr!

My 2 latest zebra dove chicks.

They are too adorable!

 

[CackleJoy]

I agree with the 300 being alot this time of year. In spring, I had many inquiries for pullets. But when I had them last month the desire was gone.

It will take me time to hatch and grow the pullets. I wouldn't expect to have any for sale until after Christmas.

Congrats on the big first step!



I don't want to rain on your parade, but this plan would make me a little nervous. Aren't EEs kind of famous for difficult sexing/late blooming cockerels? And EEs are pretty readily available in the area, I'm not sure going with almost all EEs is a good strategy- especially EEs that have been mixed even beyond the hatchery mix, so might lose the beards that make a lot of people find them so irresistible, or could be more likely to lay the 'wrong' color of egg for an EE. If you're very worried about your reputation/customers wanting to 'return' a bird, please think carefully about the people who might be returning with that surprise cockerel or brown-egger for the colored laying hens they thought they were signing up for.

You know those are all excellent points. I absolutely hate slow bloomers. What I have are Ameraucana's (black cockerel) with barred rocks to make sex-link EE's. I KNOW those will lay green eggs. If the sex link thing works then I have no worries. The other pen I put a bunch of blue egg layers in was the Swedish flower pen. They are early developers and lay a very light cream egg so the offspring should be blue or green eggs. I'm concerned about late developers though. I'll have to think about it.

The main pen I have some EE girls in and some Speckled Sussex. The 2 cockerels are EE from known sources (AM x with Orp). I was planning to only gather the blue eggs and the SS eggs because they are almost white. Again, the slow developing thing is a problem. Of course, if I'm not planning to start selling until January I could only gather and hatch the eggs from September. Then all my oldest pullets would be the EE's and at 12+ weeks they are usually IDable. I look for the development of fancy feathers. That usually shows up first. So you are right, this solution is not the best and If I use it, I can only gather the EE eggs for Sept and find another egg source for the OCT hatch.

If I could figure out how to do another batch of sex-link EE's then I'd be in great shape! I have 4 barred girls in the AM pen including this lovely gal. She lays a beautiful pistachio green egg - I bred her myself to a BR cock and EE gal. The other 3 girls are BR hens but my AM cockerel has lovely muffs and beard so hopefully the offspring are all nice.

Hi Aronia... Welcome to the Northern California thread. I don't think you will find anyone from Ontario Canada here but you will find nice people who are willing to share information, advice and some laughs

Howdy all! I am skimming. The fowl pox pics are...well foul but thank you Kathy for posting them. I had a hard time finding good pics last spring when I thought Ozzie had a case...turns out he was scabby from fence fighting with the General.

Looking for advice on how to prevent a situation in the future that I am currently in:

I sold NH/Dorking chicks last spring to a gal. These are supposed to be SL and the ones I have here definitely are. Girls are Red boys are silver/white She says I gave her a cockerel instead of a pullet...I think that is what she is claiming anyway, she was a bit garbled in her text. I sold several white boys from that same clutch as cockerels and have not heard anything to the contrary from that customer. They would be about 16 weeks now so sex will have become obvious.

She also took 4 of the Silkie/D'Uccle babies 1 silver and 3 Gold. These were rumored to have been SL by a BYC person but that has not turned out to be the case. I never represented the bantams as SL b/c I didn't know. Anyway she is now saying I guaranteed the bantams to be pullets and wants to know if I have any pullets to swap them out for. She bought chicks but wants pullets near POL in exchange

I sent her a text back asking for clarification, pics of the birds in question and telling her that I have no spare pullets. I have not heard back.

I am willing to refund her money and take the cockerels back but how do I know she didn't purchase birds from someone else too and is trying to switch on me or something.

To help prevent this in the future.
Should I produce a document with each sale w/ pics of the chicks, their sex if they are SL or "sold as SR" if they aren't?

I use a carbon copy hand-write style receipt book. It is easy to find people and I specify things such as age and what they are buying on the tag. IE: 12 wk EE pullet guarantee (means if I'm wrong I replace the bird with one of equal value to what they purchased OR take the original price off of an older pullet which I charge more for) or 10 chicks 1 wk old ST Run. That way I can go back and a) remind them to find their receipt which I told them to keep and b) remind them of what they paid for. It's very helpful. I see so many people that I have actually forgotten entire customer incidents.

 

[CackleJoy]

So the farm is now dogless (enter very sad emocon here).

We've never had a predator attack because he did his job. He also only ate chicks and loved the full grown chickens like friends. All we had to do was keep the chicks away from him (he thought they were treats on legs).





Our landlady showed up unannounced and approached this 130# guard dog with her hand out (didn't get permission) and guess what. He bit her. Yup, our dog bit the landlady

Since she was pretty convinced she was going to die of rabies (she was badly scared and had 2 puncture wounds and bruising but no stitches needed) she wanted him tested. I feel like a complete heel because his rabies booster was due in April and I completely forgot. A little self-forgiveness is probably due here because my husband was gone and I was doing all I could to keep the place from falling apart. Anyway, one cannot test a live animal for rabies. She must have the test results in spite of the fact the vet told us there was no documented case of rabies in the Central Valley for 70 years.

So yesterday my husband had to take our dog, actually my son's dog via a birthday present, out to the family ranch and bury him.

What a terrible day.

 

[ronott1]

So the farm is now dogless (enter very sad emocon here).

We've never had a predator attack because he did his job. He also only ate chicks and loved the full grown chickens like friends. All we had to do was keep the chicks away from him (he thought they were treats on legs).





Our landlady showed up unannounced and approached this 130# guard dog with her hand out (didn't get permission) and guess what. He bit her. Yup, our dog bit the landlady

Since she was pretty convinced she was going to die of rabies (she was badly scared and had 2 puncture wounds and bruising but no stitches needed) she wanted him tested. I feel like a complete heel because his rabies booster was due in April and I completely forgot. A little self-forgiveness is probably due here because my husband was gone and I was doing all I could to keep the place from falling apart. Anyway, one cannot test a live animal for rabies. She must have the test results in spite of the fact the vet told us there was no documented case of rabies in the Central Valley for 70 years.

So yesterday my husband had to take our dog, actually my son's dog via a birthday present, out to the family ranch and bury him.

What a terrible day.

That is so sad!

Will the land lady let you get a new dog?

 

[TheKeeper]

s (enter very sad emocon here).

We've never had a predator attack because he did his job. He also only ate chicks and loved the full grown chickens like friends. All we had to do was keep the chicks away from him (he thought they were treats on legs).



Our landlady showed up unannounced and approached this 130# guard dog with her hand out (didn't get permission) and guess what. He bit her. Yup, our dog bit the landlady

Since she was pretty convinced she was going to die of rabies (she was badly scared and had 2 puncture wounds and bruising but no stitches needed) she wanted him tested. I feel like a complete heel because his rabies booster was due in April and I completely forgot. A little self-forgiveness is probably due here because my husband was gone and I was doing all I could to keep the place from falling apart. Anyway, one cannot test a live animal for rabies. She must have the test results in spite of the fact the vet told us there was no documented case of rabies in the Central Valley for 70 years.

So yesterday my husband had to take our dog, actually my son's dog via a birthday present, out to the family ranch and bury him.

What a terrible day.

I am so sorry for you. What a horrible thing to go through.

On a side note, I thought landlords were always supposed to give 24 hours notice.

 

[chiqita]

You Will have to market the ees as rainbow layers. Sounds lije the boys only have 1 blue gene.
S