Greetings all! Busy here too, like everyone else. Spent the afternoon cleaning all the pens in the coop down to the floor, vacuumed, sprayed with miticide and oxine and let everything dry, then all fresh shavings. Birds were outside all afternoon, really enjoying what sounds like possibly the last nice warm weekend for a while. I'm doing my second worming tomorrow, making a couple of batches of yogurt for the birds, and leaving Monday for a few days in Denver to deliver the training I went to AZ to learn. I was going to just drive back and forth until Bob read the forecast and said I probably should not try to drive Monday and Tuesday nights. At least this time I'm only a couple of hours away and have nothing due to hatch until the end of next week.
I hatched the first Silkie chick out of the pen covered by the Black Catdance Silkie male, and the chick is silver, so probably a Splash, which means probably out of the Splash pullet I got from Shylee. It is adorable. Bob picks it up at least twice a day to say hello and look it over. He is quite enchanted with it. I don't blame him
If I have time tomorrow I'll snap a couple of pics. It has a dark hatchmate out of the other Silkie pen and a Fayoumi chick that hatched about a week earlier. They are all doing well.
The other Silkie pen is raising 10 chicks, they are now almost 2 months old, 3 are Fayoumi x Speckled Sussex, 1 is a Cream Legbar, and the other 6 are all their own chicks. All in there are doing well also - they are nearing the age where they need their own pen, but it's going to be cold this coming week and they still huddle with the hens at night, so we thought it might be better to wait another week before separating them.
The Fayoumi trio stopped laying this week, probably due to shortening days, they are a desert breed and I imagine they are unlikely to lay much until the days begin to lengthen again. I am interested in tracking whether there is any difference in the chicks that are Fayoumi x Sussex, as Sussex are known to be winter layers. I won't know until next year, of course
I lost one of the two SLW a couple of weeks ago and the one left is a cockerel, very pretty, so I moved him out with the two hatchery Speckled Sussex hens, then today I moved the 4 Rhode Island Red pullets out there, who should begin laying any time. Whatever was going through my flock
seems to have cleared, but it took every last Speckled Sussex I got from Tony Albritton, and every Rhode Island Red cockerel I had. I may try to get a new RIR cockerel from greathorse in the next few months, and if he has an extra SLW pullet that would be a bonus
If I have to wait until next year, so be it.
The Cream Legbar pair (lost the little tiny pullet) looks pretty, but on the small side, and the pullet is gold rather than cream. That said, as long as the cockerel is cream, which he certainly appears to be, he should be able to produce cream female offspring. The pullet should begin laying fairly soon. They hatched in May. Bob was asking today if they will get any bigger, and whether they should be bigger. I replied that they should be a little bigger than they are, and that as long as they produce correct offspring, I can select for size along with type and color to improve as I go. I think Ashdoes' pullets should be laying soon as well.
After all is said and done, as much as I hate using chemicals, I think the worming has helped, along with treating for mites. The birds all seem stable and content. No one looks iffy right now. It is a huge relief. As I look back, it seems I started with a run of Marek's, which has to be present on the property or shed by vaccinated birds, and those who didn't succumb were nonetheless in a weakened state, leaving them vulnerable to mites and worms. There is no treatment for Marek's, but there is for worms and mites, and now that the birds seem all to have the upper hand on the parasites they are acting like normal healthy birds again. Bob has learned to check birds randomly for anything amiss, look under wings, at vents (yeah we had a few "Eww!" moments LOL but he's over it now), at behavior, eating, and general attitude, and in spite of himself he is becoming an accidental poultryman. Huh, sounds like it should be a book
. Totally my fault, I hadn't locked up their run when it got dark. Luckily my DH heard the ruckus and went out, saved my Buff Brahma, she is missing all the feathers on one foot now. Otherwise everyone else is ok. I am really sad about both of them but especially Luna. We have an elderly couple that lives next door and she frequently flew over the fence (it is only 3') and would tour their yard. They loved her and looked for her every day. At one point I felt bad that she was in their yard and put up a reed fence, their daughter told me how much they missed seeing the "white chicken." I feel really bad, I will have to break the news to them this weekend.
