Consolidated Kansas

[Trish44]

Well I wasn't on much yesterday due to my granddaughter being here, but we did have a fairly good day. It was too darned hot to be out but only short intervals. We mostly stayed inside & watched a couple of movies. My DH had taken her to buy her a watch because she had asked for one the last time she was here, so she spent a lot of time messing with it & learning how to use it, which is good. She got a hot pink one that has different functions she can use like an alarm & stopwatch & such. She wanted those things because grandpa's watch has them. She is a pretty intelligent child & figures things out pretty fast. We had an unfortunate incident with my Big Red rooster while she was here. She is afraid of the chickens & I had been trying to tell her they wouldn't hurt her & had just said that again when she was running up towards the house & for some reason Big Red felt his hens were being threatened & spurred her on the back of her leg. It didn't bleed or anything, but I know it hurt because he did it to me a couple of times before I started kicking him for it & chasing him back. He leaves me alone now. So now I have told her to turn around & face him & carry a stick with her. I hope I can get him to leave her alone because I was trying to help her with the fear of the chickens & then he does that. He has been so good to defend his hens that I hate to have to get rid of him, but if he continues that behavior I will. I don't want him attacking other people.

Karen, I love your pics of the Alohas, they're so pretty. I didn't get a chance to tell you that yes, I have had some of the SF Hen chicks that color. That's too bad that you had such a poor hatch, but I was kind of wondering about it since the hens were so young & just starting to lay.

Danz, I loved seeing your pics also, it looks like the ducks were all having a really good time.

Heather, it could be that Tory just got comfortable enough at your place to start doing her job & is starting to bond with you. I would give her some more time now that she is starting to come around & do some training with her.

I have decided to get some more guineas to try to get our tick problem more in control here. I have had ticks on me every day when I come back in & I'm getting tired of getting bitten & just having them crawling on me, it's disgusting. sunflowerparrot knows someone who has some guinea keets so I'm going to have her get some from him for me when she gets a few more this week. I had just given up on having them before when I didn't have the dogs here to watch over things but now that I have them they should be OK. Danz, at what age do you let yours out to free-range with the chickens? Mine didn't get old enough to let them out before when I had them, they were slaughtered by possums before they had a chance.

 

[chicken danz]

Josie I would guess that Molly got flogged good by a rooster at one time then. When I got Marshmallow my cats hated and feared dogs more than anything. One of the very first days, my oldest just reached up and clawed her good. She still won't look them in the eye and even hesitates to walk around them. The other two dogs don't act like that because by the time I had them the cats had decided the dogs posed no threat.
I hear you on the rooster. There was a bantam rooster next door when I was a kid that would flog me every time he saw me. He would run across the yard to do it too. I hated that rooster! I feel so lucky that to date I haven't had a mean rooster.
Hawkeye I really don't have that many trees. They are all old and sort of concentrated in one area. And of course where they give their best shade is where they had terraced the yard so I can't set a pen up there. That is where I had the water bin sitting for the ducks. I do have a tree out by the original hen house and a few that grew up in a fence line near there. I need more trees where they would actually help with the pens. I let wild sunflowers grow along side my bantam polish pen this year and they are doing a great job of cutting the direct sun. They look like crap but they help. I need to be planting more trees so when these things finally fall over I have some shade. Most are old elm trees or hackberry and they are diseased and big limbs break off of them in every storm. Or at least trying to remember back to when we had storms!

I am sure though that we are far better off than having a new house where there were no trees.

 

[chicken danz]

Trish,the ones that free range were put out about 8 weeks old with a group of young chicks at the same time. If you have a place or a coop where you want them to roost at night, I'd just put a small pen in there for a few days after they are out of the brooder so they know where to go at night.
If you buy older ones I've been told to leave them penned for at least a month. Seems a lot simpler just to get them young! The rest of my guinea keets other than the ones the free range hen hatched are going today. I was going to keep some of these older lavenders for myself but since all of the free range chicks were lavenders surely I will have a couple girls in that group. I probably should take them from their mother and let her back out but they seem to be doing fine for now.
I should be out catching young hens that will go to their new home this evening. It just seems cruel to put them in a cage in this weather. I really need a smaller pen for things like that. No matter what,I never have enough pens available.

 

[HEChicken]

Karen, thank you for that detailed explanation. I too find it a fascinating project, after visiting your place. I guess I talked about it so much that DH suggested once we are better settled in, maybe I should consider joining in. That totally surprised me - he's not usually one to suggest chicken ADDITION. But I told him I really don't think I'd be good at a project. I'd have to do a lot more building to keep them separate and then I'm so impatient its hard to think about working off generations. Chickens are good to us compared to many other animals, since in 6 months they go from hatch to breeding age but even so, I can imagine having them run around at 3-4 months old thinking "this is taking too long. I want them to grow up and be parents NOW so I can see what this or that match will look like".

Danz, 5 of the keets I got from you are lavenders but so far seem to be male. What are the odds? I guess I shouldn't go overboard saying that because I've only for sure heard two that I knew were male. But I haven't seen any of the other three buckwheat. On the other hand, the only buckwheaters I have are two pearl hens so the rest are still up for grabs.

My breakdown is:

5 full pearl
3 pearl/white
3 full lavender
2 lavender/white

Of those, 2 full pearl are female and 2 full lavender are male. I'm still waiting to tell on the others. I read on the guinea forum that one breeder separates them out one at a time and waits to see what call they make, then leg-bands them and continues on. That method makes a lot of sense but assumes you can just walk up and pick them up to do all of that. Despite being brooder raised, mine are totally crazy when it comes to people. When they get out I can herd them back in - no way can I lift them and carry them back in. I'd need some of Karen's chicken wranglers for that

I just didn't handle them enough as babies, because after I got them I was so busy with the move and building my coop. I fed them, switched out water multiple times, and cleaned out the brooder as necessary but didn't have any extra time to sit and play with them so now they are as wild as if they were broody raised.

Anyway, hopefully you will get a lavender girl out of your free-range keets.

 

[JosieChick]

Darn!!! I just finished typing and the kitten shot across the keyboard and who knows where it went!

Danz- I bet Molly was flogged as a young dog, she is very respectful of the chickens and they aren't scared of her at all. How old do you think the chicks should be when I move them out with the puppy? I am nervous about putting tiny chicks in a cage near her but I also don't want them to fear her and it seems like at 6-8 weeks they are getting pretty flighty!

I need to try making her a drag. I have read of people using a tire or log on a short chain when they can't watch the dog closely so if they do go after something the drag "catches" them short and kind of trips them. At least that would give the birds a chance to get away if she tried to grab one. And I am going to order a shock collar today too.

I have this poor duck in the house, her wing is injured and she is not happy to be in here. She bit me last night pretty hard when I was trying to give her medications for pain. Stinker!

I am sorry to everyone else, I can't remember what else I read now since I had responded before and lost it all to a drive by kittening!

Well, I was going to upload pics of the new pea cage but BYC has apparently changed the nice, easy picture uploading system to something that doesn't work. I was just thinking how nice it was to post pics on here now and all I keep getting are error messages. Ugh.

 

[HEChicken]

Yeah it took me by surprise when they made that change too. What you do now, is when the little window pops up, choose "My computer" and it will take you to a little dialog box to choose your photo. From there the rest of the process should be pretty straightforward I think. The new system allows you to choose a picture size to upload. I'm guessing their "unlimited" storage started posing some problems for them as a lot of cameras these days take such high resolution photos that a single photo could be 20mb uploaded. With 50,000 members and some of them posting multiple pictures, I bet they started worrying about running out of space.

 

[chicken danz]

Heather guineas are never going to be totally tame. I have the free rangers which hang around my feet at feeding time but I can guarantee you if they are out in the yard or the pen they aren't going to be caught. I used a net and caught mine and put colored wire ties on the girl's legs so I could keep the girls separate from the boys. I have a few pearls that a broody raised in the pen and I have no idea what they are. They're just too crazy to keep track of.
I still would think you would have about 50-50. Have you ever asked Shana what she ended up with? She had the other half of the bunch. It's nice to have some females but the boys hunt down bugs just as well so at least it's not like having too many roosters that you have nothing to do with.
Josie I would try maybe 5-6 weeks or so I guess. If they get to that flighty stage you want her to leave them alone so I guess it would be best not to start her with flighty chicks. If you need some sacrificial birds that are already used to dogs I've got tons.I really need to thin them down. You could always butcher them later if you wanted. Ultimately that's where most of them will go anyway.
I've only had one duck that ever bit me. It's more like a major pinch than a bite. I was treating an infected eye and she was sick of being caught and treated. She did eventually get well but she bit the heck out of my arm a couple times.

 

[JosieChick]

Yeah it took me by surprise when they made that change too. What you do now, is when the little window pops up, choose "My computer" and it will take you to a little dialog box to choose your photo. From there the rest of the process should be pretty straightforward I think. The new system allows you to choose a picture size to upload. I'm guessing their "unlimited" storage started posing some problems for them as a lot of cameras these days take such high resolution photos that a single photo could be 20mb uploaded. With 50,000 members and some of them posting multiple pictures, I bet they started worrying about running out of space.

I kept getting the picture all chosen but then it would just say their was a uploading error. Its probably my super slow country internet connection! I will try again later.

Josie I would try maybe 5-6 weeks or so I guess. If they get to that flighty stage you want her to leave them alone so I guess it would be best not to start her with flighty chicks. If you need some sacrificial birds that are already used to dogs I've got tons.I really need to thin them down. You could always butcher them later if you wanted. Ultimately that's where most of them will go anyway.
I've only had one duck that ever bit me. It's more like a major pinch than a bite. I was treating an infected eye and she was sick of being caught and treated. She did eventually get well but she bit the heck out of my arm a couple times.

Danz-I will let you know about birds. I think I may try caging the babies out there in a week or so which would give them time to get used to her before they get too wild and crazy. I have a whole bunch of young cockerels (about 4 weeks old) that I could try out there too. The red broilers are quite brazen so that might not be a bad idea. I would think it would be important that some of the birds I cage with her not go away (be butchered)? Or will she just extrapolate to all the birds on the farm from them?

Yeah, that girl got me good, it was a hard pinch. Not like a chicken if it pecks you hard and breaks the skin but she just snaked her neck around and grabbed right onto my arm! I think it startled me more than anything because I was so busy getting her meds ready to give her!

 

[chicken danz]

I know what you mean, Lindsey. I'd be holding this duck trying to doctor her eye and she would swing that neck around and clamp down. They are normally so docile it's kind of surprise when they show any aggression. I think in a dog's mind a chicken is a chicken. But who knows.

 

[Trish44]

We just got home about 30 minutes ago & I ran out as soon as we got here to spray everyone down because it's so darned hot here. We had to go to Wellington this afternoon right in the middle of the day for our annual eye appts. & we were gone for about 3 hours. I barely had time to run out & put my blue ice things out in the water & a couple of bottles before we had to leave, so I was worried that I would come back to find dead birds. So far they're still hanging in there, but I could hear my poor black Ameraucana rooster struggling in his cage, so they were the firs to get cooled down. I think even just wetting the ground where the birds can sit on wet ground helps cool them off. I dumped out the turkey pan & gave them cool water again to stand in & one immediately jumped back in there as soon as I had it filled. I took the mister out to the chick's pen & left it for awhile & I'll go out later & move it to some place else. My poor rabbits looked so miserable, they're just panting as hard as they can pant to try to cool down. I put the last two blue ice things I had in two of the rabbit cages & I noticed one little rabbit was laying next to it. At first they started chewing on them & moving them around, but now I think they finally figured out what they were good for. I need to make more room in my big freezer & freeze some more 2 liter bottles.

I did get my pen cleaned out out in the run for the new guinea keets coming & got it ready for them, so all I have to do now is put something over the top to help shade them. It's been about a year since I tried to have guineas before. The GPs will have to check them out & catalog those in their heads as something that belongs here. It's so funny to see them every time I bring in new birds.