Colorado

[Mtn Margie]

Welcome DownCrown! Congrats on the baby chicks you two, that is so awesome.
We are in the part of the year where the daylight is getting shorter at its maximum rate and that can impact egg production rather quickly. Same thing for Jan/Feb time frame when it is increasing at its max. My girls are starting to slow as well and I am glad for the new layers and hope they will continue through the winter. My RIR's did their first year, but now I have so many different breeds and mutts it can be hard to tell who is doing what.

 

[Elyrian1]

For the nice person asking about HOA's in Parker and Castle Rock... Don't count on it. We lived in Douglas County for a couple of years and while the county allows for chickens depending on your lot size (#poultry per x amount of land), and the cities have their own limitations, you're not likely to have luck with the HOA's. Castle Rock allowed up to four hens last I checked, but the HOA's are not friendly around there. Very controlling from all accounts. Remember it's a very wealthy area and there are a lot of wealthy people there that don't like noise of any kind (chickens, barking dogs, children). I'll second the advice to not live in an HOA, and I'll go further and say if you want any number of chickens over four, you'll want to live outside city limits. My in-laws live in Castle Rock. Two different HOA's, both say no chickens. One of them is Latigo... and I don't know the other. Oak... something. Knew a guy on the west side of Castle Rock in the Meadows community had the same problem. And Meadows is big... really big. A lot of the west side if I recall...

On a more personal note...I do have a personal dislike, strong dislike, for HOA's. I don't like people telling me what to do with my property. And I'll readily admit, I've got the mindset of "Why would anyone want to live under the control of an HOA?" (Then again I was also raised with the mindset of if you can't take care of it yourself them maybe you ought not have it, and we are in the middle of fixing the old house up. Given the low price tag, it's worth it to me.) If you've got your heart set on Douglas County, be warned it's one of the wealthiest counties in the country and it'll cost you. A lot. I looked at a house in Castle Rock with a nice fat price tag over 350k and shook my head because in places where the cost of living is lower but not poor it wouldn't run you over 250k. I couldn't afford so much as an acre of empty land in that county... sheesh. We live in El Paso county now. The municipalities are a little friendlier to the backyard homestead movement. In the Springs you can, last I checked in April when we purchased the place, have up to ten poultry in city limits. HOA's excluded of course. And what is the cost of my freedom, because everything has a cost? An hour and a half commute to Golden every day . And don't get me started on the water shortage in Douglas County, haha!

 

[lomine]

My 4 week old EEs are doing great. They have been in a separate section of the coop for a couple of weeks now and are almost fully feathered. I did not have a very good second hatch though. I set 25 eggs and only 8 hatched. Only 13 were fertile and none of my Blue Am eggs hatched. I really wanted some more blue egg layers. It probably didn't help that most of the eggs were from the pullets and 3 of the 5 Am eggs were from the injured hen that had been separated. The weird thing was that the 8 that hatched were all from the pullets and they hatched on days 19 and 20. There were 5 hen eggs developing nicely but they just stopped at some point. I do much better with quail eggs. I'm done hatching for the year. I'm going to try some more blue eggs in the spring.

My Meyer delivery came today. I got 11 Cornish X, a Maran, 2 Welsummers, 2 Barnvelders, and 5 assorted rare breed. Looks like I got three different colored Cochins, an Anconda, and a Sicilian Buttercup. I'm a little worried about the Buttercup as the breed description says it is not cold hardy. Has anyone had one here in Colorado?

 

[Elyrian1]

Hey you sound like me trying to further my blue eggers along, lol. Those babies are all so adorable! This is where my problem with chicken math comes from, those tiny little balls of fluff right there!

 

[lomine]

Sadly one of the chicks somehow squeezed it's way out of the brooder and died. I believe Wash pecked it to death as that looks to be how it died and he was the only one in the barn. And it was the Maran I specifically ordered for those lovely dark eggs. Poor little thing, what a terrible way to go.

 

[lomine]

I started a thread to get help on my low hatch rates. The humidity level seems to be a bit of a sticking point and the fact that I'm at high altitude was brought up. I'm going to do some research but I'm wondering, what humidity you all aim for when incubating?

 

[Elyrian1]

Oh crud. Sorry for your loss dear. I'll second your question about humidity, and add that I won't buy and have shipped any eggs that come from a place at less than 3,000 feet after my first disastrous hatch.

 

[uzisuzuki]

Been awhile since I've been here! It turns out that raising peafowl by hand is more time consuming than I thought it would be (at least until they moved outside full-time). they are getting huge - even little Mim! It looks like Fin is going to show the pied gene (I think that's what it's called, I'm still not really sure how the colour variations are talked about). Syrax is developing a lot of black colouring suddenly and he is definitely the fashionista of the trio. Mim, so far, just looks like he may end up looking exactly like his sire only smaller. From the way I was understanding the genetics of peafowl (which was not very well, to be honest), I was expecting all 3 to look like their sire. Fin and Mim, overall, look like regular India Blue babies. Syrax looks like the male version of his dam so far, with a lot of black coming in. It'll be interesting to see how they develop over the next year.

(Fin, Mim, and Sy)

The 3 chicken chicks I hatched before my three sons up there are also doing well. They have been living with Ronan, Lucien, Epiphany, and Mazikeen, which has helped curb One-Two's inherited turd lord attitude. I'm still planning on moving Epiphany, Mazikeen, and Mina in with the main flock once the hatchery chicks get a little bigger.

(Mina)

(Mumbles)

(One-Two)

Speaking of the Murray McMurray chicks - they Mystery Chick turned out to be another rooster. That brings my total to 7. He seems to be a Faiyumi, which is pretty cool even though I was really hoping he was a she. We did lose one of the White Polish girls to unknown reasons. It was one of the bigger girls and there weren't any outside signs of trauma and none of the others have behaved strangely before or since I found her. So, now I have 14 White Polish and 1 Faiyumi, and 3 barnyard mixes for this year.

That's been keeping me pretty busy when I'm not applying for jobs and working on my pottery/ceramics and illustration projects. I hope y'all are doing well!

 

[lomine]

Been awhile since I've been here! It turns out that raising peafowl by hand is more time consuming than I thought it would be (at least until they moved outside full-time). they are getting huge - even little Mim! It looks like Fin is going to show the pied gene (I think that's what it's called, I'm still not really sure how the colour variations are talked about). Syrax is developing a lot of black colouring suddenly and he is definitely the fashionista of the trio. Mim, so far, just looks like he may end up looking exactly like his sire only smaller. From the way I was understanding the genetics of peafowl (which was not very well, to be honest), I was expecting all 3 to look like their sire. Fin and Mim, overall, look like regular India Blue babies. Syrax looks like the male version of his dam so far, with a lot of black coming in. It'll be interesting to see how they develop over the next year.

View attachment 1126243
(Fin, Mim, and Sy)

The 3 chicken chicks I hatched before my three sons up there are also doing well. They have been living with Ronan, Lucien, Epiphany, and Mazikeen, which has helped curb One-Two's inherited turd lord attitude. I'm still planning on moving Epiphany, Mazikeen, and Mina in with the main flock once the hatchery chicks get a little bigger.

View attachment 1126245
(Mina)

View attachment 1126247
(Mumbles)

View attachment 1126252
(One-Two)

View attachment 1126251

Speaking of the Murray McMurray chicks - they Mystery Chick turned out to be another rooster. That brings my total to 7. He seems to be a Faiyumi, which is pretty cool even though I was really hoping he was a she. We did lose one of the White Polish girls to unknown reasons. It was one of the bigger girls and there weren't any outside signs of trauma and none of the others have behaved strangely before or since I found her. So, now I have 14 White Polish and 1 Faiyumi, and 3 barnyard mixes for this year.

That's been keeping me pretty busy when I'm not applying for jobs and working on my pottery/ceramics and illustration projects. I hope y'all are doing well!

"Turd lord attitude"

 

[TyKyra Lancaster]

Hi everybody,
We live in Colorado Springs and my mom really likes geese and has been wanting them for a while now, so we were wondering if geese are allowed in the city.
- Thanks