Consolidated Kansas

[Frizzled Pink]

So did you live chat or type? I don't have a microphone any more. I have no desire to talk. I do have a camera on my notebook but have never used it. Don't want to. I haven't really researched the English standard. Was there discussion about the red, we have on our birds? I guess since I paid for it I'll try it for a year and see what happens. Mine are still too young to lay so they have a lot more growing and feathering to do.
Could someone who has an ecoglow 20 or ecoglow 50 look at the transformer that you plug in and see how many mA or A it say it uses. I am trying to figure out actual wattage that would be used for these. I know they list watts but there is a difference in how many watts you actually use depending on how many amps are used at what voltage. I'm still trying to figure out what is the cheaper unit to run out of the many types of heat available.

My 20 says input 100-240v-50/60hz 0.45A MAX and output 12.0V---1.5A, I hope that was what you are looking for, i have no idea what that actually means

 

[Hawkeye95]

Aw hawkeye that sucks!! Maybe the cold is just too much for him and he'll come around. But you'd think he'd be fertile by now. Are the girls previously proven?
I agree on the hatching thing and I am trying very hard not to start hatching too early. I know I miss sales when people are rushing to order chicks but in reality it is too cold for them to be shipped right now. I am of course test hatching but I don't know what to do with the chicks I have hatched other than to just raise them as layers.
I had by the way one chick die of pasty butt this morning. I hadn't been taking the time to watch them carefully. It came from the mixed orpington eggs. It was about a week old so it has some wing feathers. It appeared almost solid white (which wouldn't be unusual for a lemon cuckoo cockerel - they are much lighter than the pullets when hatched.) however when I examined it's wings it looked like it had some lavender barring on them. That made me really curious. Would it be possible for a lemon cuckoo crossed with a lavender (self blue) to produce a lavender barred offspring? I think that would be a very unique bird.
Here is another question I have for chicken genetics. If I were to use a white Orpington with dominant white and breed it to a lavender orpington or lemon cuckoo orpington would it be possible for the offspring's offspring to produce a light colored lemon or lavender if bred back to a non-split cuckoo or lavender? I had looked up genetics and understood that dominant white will only produce white. But I do know that it is necessary in order to maintain good quality in orpingtons that they need to be bred back to white or black occasionally. So this confuses me. If white produced white always surely there has to be a way to get back the colors. It's all so contradictory.
And the other thing that confuses me is that white orpingtons are not all white chicks. They have lavender or grey colored markings randomly but grow in white feathers. Strange huh?
Wish I understood all the genetics. I was a biology major when I first started college, before going into law enforcement. I thought I had genetics down to a T but that has been some 40 years ago and we never studied chicken genetics.
Thank Heavens! I would probably have messed up my GPA big time.

Only two of the birds are proven, the others are my young ones that are coming of age now. But I still think I have a rooster problem. I've not ever witnessed him trying to mate them... so maybe he hasn't figured out he's a boy yet. He's been in the girl pen because he managed to fly the 32 inch wall separating the boys from the girls. Trust me-- for a silkie, that was quite a feat!! And since he was being picked on, I left him in there since he wasn't causing trouble and the girls weren't running around screaming with him after them. He's really laid back, a very good boy. Maybe his hormones will kick in this Spring when it warms up. They are also not in the direct sunlight-- they have the plastic wrapping their pen.

There is a color called Isabel (or also known as Porcelian) but to make matters more confusing, the silkie people are now calling it Blue-Cream-- even though it is NOT out of a blue breeding. Basically it's a Lavender X Buff breeding and the color is gorgeous! It's a fantastic combination of the lav and buff, and I can't even describe it well, so I'll see if I can hunt up a picture.... The buff shows up on the wings and back and the lavender is the "base" color of the bird... Maybe you would get something like that???? This might give you an idea of what you could get:






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Okay, I am loving today! I didn't get a ton of stuff done, but enough that we were able to play outside and get water cleaned out and refilled for the birds. Here are a couple of pics from the layers and the silkies... the silkies were sun-bathing and all sprawled out.





The layers enjoying a BOSS treat outside.

 

[chicken danz]

So earlier this afternoon I grabbed the little bird that lost the toes. I had thought it was a pullet but I am convinced now it is a cockerel. I hadn't looked up close before. I brought him in and took his picture while I was holding him so it is too close and fuzzy and the flash went off which made the picture too bright. But you can get the idea of how messed up his feet are. It looks like he has two more dead tips that will fall off. I thought he would keep those but they are dead as well. You can see from his stubbles that he simply walks on the balls of his feet. I also took a picture of his feathering so you could see what colors he is. First picture. He really is a pretty young bird. I'm kind of sad now cause I know he'll just be butchered eventually.
Any way here's the pics. Excuse the quality.

 

[chicken danz]

Had a great afternoon with mammahen and crew today. Her kids are so well behaved. My dogs loved all the attention. Took them all on the grand tour and probably bored the kids to death. What a patient group!
Mammahen is going to be hatching some little fluffies in about 3 weeks too. It a win win for me. It's a few less chicks to brood until I am ready to start selling.
And she got the rogue rooster I posted pictures of a while back. He will have his own little harem now.
Thanks for coming and bringing the family. I needed some time to appreciate my own mess out here.
Got my first email from the Cream Legbar club, Trish. I think it will help to get those notices to remind me to takes some time to read up. I wish my girls were laying so I could enter the egg contest. I do wish I had more of these so I could have lots of pretty eggs.
Now I've got to get laundry done.

 

[maidenwolfx80]

Danz- this little guy came from the same hatch as that one with the frostbitten feet. I am sorry he is so bad off. They really are beautiful birds. I was wondering if they could be faverolla mix? He has feathered feet but I just dont see it being brahma, I dont know he has such pretty colors though. At least your little guy will live on in its brother because he is staying.

 

[Trish44]

So did you live chat or type? I don't have a microphone any more. I have no desire to talk. I do have a camera on my notebook but have never used it. Don't want to. I haven't really researched the English standard. Was there discussion about the red, we have on our birds? I guess since I paid for it I'll try it for a year and see what happens. Mine are still too young to lay so they have a lot more growing and feathering to do.
Could someone who has an ecoglow 20 or ecoglow 50 look at the transformer that you plug in and see how many mA or A it say it uses. I am trying to figure out actual wattage that would be used for these. I know they list watts but there is a difference in how many watts you actually use depending on how many amps are used at what voltage. I'm still trying to figure out what is the cheaper unit to run out of the many types of heat available.

We just typed at the meeting mostly on the chat part. There were two speakers, officers, who were speaking & a few people were able to talk, but mostly it just worked best to keep everyone muted because the more people that were unmuted it seemed like the more extra noise we had to put up with & then it became hard to hear & understand. I guess as we use this thing more we'll learn how everything works better, but overall it didn't go bad for the very first meeting, I actually thought it went very well. You may want to study the UK standards for their birds, because ours is going to be almost the same. There is a google site where members only can go on there & leave comments & ask questions, so I'm sure they will send you the link for that if they haven't already. I'm just hoping this club doesn't get like the Ameraucana Breeder's Club where everybody is so snooty it seems like. I can't even get anybody to answer my email about my breeder listing & I'm a member. There is going to be a lot of discussion going on about a lot of things coming up & there are a lot of things they need volunteers for. I guess we'll see how things go.

I didn't get anything done today other than attending that meeting, making my menu & grocery list, going by Sunflowerparrot's place to see her newly hatched chicks & her brooder she built, borrowing her game cam so I can put it up out here, & buying groceries. That & feeding birds after I got home was the extent of my day. I hope to get some work done on the inside of the coop tomorrow. I guess I'll find out if I see anything out of the ordinary after I get this game cam set up & find out if there are other predators here or if it's my own dogs killing the chickens. I would much rather it be a sneaky predator than my own dogs, by a long shot. All of the chickens were accounted for tonight, so that was a good thing, I breathed a sigh of relief after doing a head count. I did go ahead & put my new little SFH pullet in the pen with the other SFHs just to keep her safe. I would just be crushed if something happened to her, she is such a sweetie & she's so darned cute too. Danz, are any of your SFHs laying yet? I had one that has started laying & they actually have been pretty good sized eggs lately too, but now she hasn't laid for a couple of days, so I don't know what the deal with that is. I hope the others start laying soon. My Cream Legbars are not laying yet either.

 

[HEChicken]

Hawkeye, sorry about the disappointment with the fertility. I guess you might be AI'ing again this year, huh? At least your hens are laying - mine haven't started yet. I keep hoping every day.....

I got so much done today - it felt good to be productive and to be comfortable working outside. First, I got the gutter feeder finally finished. The feeder itself has been finished and working for some time but I had always intended to put a PVC upright into it so it could be loaded and fed directly from the feedroom and I finally got that done today. I had to cut the PVC a little so that it would fit down into the gutter, and then I cut it angled at the top too, to make pouring it in easier. Then just screwed it to the coop wall with some strapping and filled it up. It works like a charm and it will be interesting to see how many days feed it holds.

I then decided to turn over the bedding with a hoe, and by the time I'd carried down several different sized hoes and a couple of rakes to the coop, realized it would be handy to just keep them there. So I got a tool holder and got it installed in the coop too, and now I can keep all my tools there to make it really quick and easy to grab one and turn over the bedding whenever it needs it.

Finally, DH suggested it might be a nice afternoon for processing. I realized it wouldn't be any easier to wait a few days, so I agreed to go ahead and do it this afternoon. We processed 2 LF roos and 2 bantams. It was really sad as these were nice guys, but I am glad to have a few less mouths to feed, and I think the atmosphere at the coop will be more relaxed since the head roo won't have to spend all his time "protecting" the hens from being mated by his competitors. The feather plucker worked pretty well but without a drill press we had to do it with one person holding it while the other held the bird and moved it onto the plucker, which isn't the best way to do it. We were able to pluck about 3/4 of each bird and then finished them off by hand. It was still a lot faster than doing them 100% by hand, and it got DH motivated to buy us a drill press....yay!!!

Trish, although I have no Cream Legbars, I love the color of their eggs and thought I wouldn't mind having a couple of pullets down the road. So....I did join the club as an associate member, just for the interest of following the progress as they get established in the US. Thanks for sharing your experience at the meeting.

 

[Penny Lane]

sounds like the order I placed with Cackle Hatchery for a June 3rd hatch date, where are you thinking of getting yours?

I will either order from MurrayMcMurray or get them from a local 'chick days' or a newfound neighbor who hatches chicks Wnere is Cackle Hatchery?

 

[HEChicken]

Hawkeye, I'm so proud of my silkies! If you remember, I was really pleased when they learned to navigate the pop door and go into the coop by themselves at night? Well, they never seemed to get that the pop door goes both ways, so every morning I had to lift them out of the coop. I didn't do it immediately, going back down to the coop between 10-11am, hoping that eventually thirst would motivate them to learn how to exit. There is food in the coop, but no water. Yet every morning I went down there and no matter how late I left it, they were still inside the coop, waiting to be carried out. I went away for a few days, and had to tell the chicken-sitter to be sure and lift them out each morning while I was gone. Well, the last week, they have finally figured it out and are getting out by themselves!!! I'm so proud of them for learning this and also pleased as it is one less thing to worry about forgetting to do, or worry about the chicken sitter forgetting when I do have to leave. This morning they must have exited right along with the rest of the flock as they were already outside by the time I got down there.

 

[Trish44]

I will either order from MurrayMcMurray or get them from a local 'chick days' or a newfound neighbor who hatches chicks Wnere is Cackle Hatchery?

Cackle Hatchery is in Lebanon, MO so it doesn't take long for chicks to get here from there.

It's supposed to be a pretty nice day, so I plan to go out & work on the coop today & see how much I can get done. DH said he was going to help me, we'll see if he actually does, he's already a grouch today, ugh.