Consolidated Kansas

[ttrammell]

Hi all. New to the forum, do not have chickens right now but hope to start a new flock this spring. Had RIR's in the past, really miss having chickens and fresh eggs.

 

[checoukan]

Welcome ttrammell we have a great group here, and lots and lots of years of experiance combined together. I am south of you near Columbus.

 

[Chickies-duckies-etc]

I have some chicks a little over a week old that started getting pasty butts and runny poop and they were getting droopy. I mixed a little Gro Gel into their feed that I feed wet and their poop became normal again and they started bouncing (or flying) all over the brooder again. That worked really well that time anyway.

 

[mrsdanamiller]

Thanks Hawkeye and chicken danz!

Avoid being tempted to buy an older bird from just anyone. Make sure it is healthy and you know a little about their practices before you buy from them. Always quarantine a new bird from outside before letting it join your flock.
Most anyone you will see on this forum, if anything will go above and beyond normal precautions to keep their birds healthy.

Ok I definitely(obviously

) want to have healthy birds. So does the quarantining and not mixing diseases thing mean that I should not buy a couple chickens from one guy and a couple from another guy and then one more from another guy(all young just-starting-to lay pullets)? ......Cause that's my current plan. hehe

 

[chicken danz]

Thanks Hawkeye and chicken danz!
Ok I definitely(obviously

) want to have healthy birds. So does the quarantining and not mixing diseases thing mean that I should not buy a couple chickens from one guy and a couple from another guy and then one more from another guy(all young just-starting-to lay pullets)? ......Cause that's my current plan. hehe

If you bought them all at once I would just stick them together and hope for the best. If you buy them one by one I would quarantine each one as they came in. Sometimes a perfectly healthy bird will get sick just being transported from place to place. Stress does this. No reason to chance spreading it to another bird.
Originally Posted by ttrammell

I have some chicks a little over a week old that started getting pasty butts and runny poop and they were getting droopy. I mixed a little Gro Gel into their feed that I feed wet and their poop became normal again and they started bouncing (or flying) all over the brooder again. That worked really well that time anyway.

That's good information. I would never have thought of doing that. JosieChick also told me a while back to try giving chicks cage bird gravel with their food for that at least with little bantam sized chicks. It seemed to help.
I had a very expensive afternoon/evening yesterday. I thought I might end up spending a couple hundred dollars and spent well over $600. I'm definitely going to have to tweak the budget some how. We went to Ottawa to get supplies and DH had his own shopping list for lumber and such. So I ended up paying for it all cause they put it all on one ticket. That was $450 at the DIY store. Then we went to Orchlen's and I spent another $135. Then to Walmart and spent another $75. What I can't figure is the last two places I got virtually nothing.
Anyway in all of that I got the lumber and the cattle panels to build a 20 foot long hoop house. And DH got lumber to build another another small coop. I hope to be able to use it for a breeder coop if he ever completes it. I was thinking I could build the hoop house cheaper than I could buy more fence panels and build a small house for it but I am in doubt.
I am wanting to get this done this week if I can just work around the weather. I need a place to pen birds that I am selling next weekend. I'd prefer to gather them up a few at a time rather than rush the last minute. Once the week is over I hope to move all my guineas to the hoop house instead of having them in a couple separate pens. I need to take some measurements but I'm thinking I will put them out behind where I have other birds. I think sometimes they get the other birds upset with all their yelling.
I plan on building them a "coop in the hoop" instead of just covering it so they have some good shelter. That way they will have a nice dry place to lay eggs this spring. That will also free up the pen I use to raise baby ducks and another larger pen I can put pheasants in.
I got a couple more rubber feed pans and 3 more heated dog bowls. I hope that will give everyone a heated water bowl and a feed pan to hold fermented feed with my newly divided cages.

 

[maidenwolfx80]

Wow so many new eggs lately. Weclome everyone ..

Here are the D'ulandsk Danz they are looking beautiful, some of the pis are blurry, they were too busy finding scratch



Look at his puffy cheeks














I have one boy and teh other 3 are girls. They are amazing little birds. So beatifl.

 

[HEChicken]

An exciting morning here this morning. While drinking coffee I looked out the window and saw movement in the pasture. I grabbed the binoculars and it was the coyote I saw a couple of weeks back. It disappeared into the hedge, so DS and I decided to walk out to the pasture and make sure everything was okay. We were walking along with the dogs, talking and not making any attempt to be quiet, when there was a flash of movement and out popped the coyote in plain view - not 20' away from us. Close enough I was able to see the "oh crap" expression on its face when it saw us. It whipped around and disappeared back into the trees, with my coyote-chasing-dog in hot pursuit. The dog reappeared several minutes later from much further away, looking quite pleased with herself. We had a bunch of Canada geese on our pond at the time and the coyote came out of the trees looking in their direction rather than towards my coop. I'm hoping the dog chasing it will make it think twice about coming back around here, and move on. We've been hearing them more at night recently and at our barn I've seen 6-10 large piles of feathers in the past few weeks where a goose met its end. I think perhaps they are more active this time of year since it is their breeding season. They would probably be mating now to deliver their pups in April, so are probably in need of more calories to nourish their little ones. As long as they still to the geese, I'm okay with that.

I spent yesterday morning with JosieChick, helping her and her DH set some posts for her poultry pens, and then last night had a lovely dinner at HuHot with more chicken people. It was so nice to see ChooksChicks, WichitaKidd, Deerfield Acres, and Hawkeye95. We will have to do that again soon!!!

Danz, I got you beat unfortunately

. I spent Friday at EquiFest and let's just say, horse stuff ain't cheap. I did have fun though - ran into a few Aussies and it was kind of funny because I heard one guy talking and asked where he was from. He told me the city, and I said "me too". He was a vendor and was sitting there eating an Old Chicago pizza, so as soon as he heard that, he pulled out a chair and made me sit down and have pizza with him. 30 minutes later, we were best mates and when I later took my daughter and sister back to meet him, they were amazed that I had apparently run into an old friend, asking where I knew him from. I told them "from before lunch".

 

[Deerfield Acres]

Danz, good grief with that expense. How big is the hoop house going to be, or did I miss it with my speed reading/short attention span brain? I'm thinking about building a hoop house for the grow out birdies but I didn't expect that much expense.

maidenwolf, those are just adorable little things! Lucky you, girl.

HEChicken, that coyote will hopefully stick to the geese, since they are an easier meal. It's unnerving when they cross our paths. I cannot believe how loud they are at night. They've given up on my birds since I got the wide impedance energizer for the fence. I wonder how often they check it to be sure the power is still on?

What fun to meet up with a fellow Aussie! It doesn't surprise me at all that your daughter thought you'd known him for sometime. You are just one of those people that makes others feel really at ease.

I love getting together with chicken people. It was nice seeing everyone, meeting Heather's beautiful daughter and WichitaKidd's lovely wife last evening. What fun!

Yesterday was my one year anniversary for owning chickens. My DD remembered the date for some reason. I sure have learned a lot from this group and appreciate it all so much. I'm excited about the upcoming year with the Alohas and learning a lot more about breeding. I've just finished reading the entire thread on Heritage poultry and learned a lot more about the complications of breeding and the importance of breeding to Standard and line breeding. I look at my birds very differently these days. I am really excited about applying what I've learned to the Alohas. The Alohas are to become a line of birds that are hardy, truly dual purpose and beautiful. These birds have a long way to go but we are progressing toward the goal. On the Heritage thread, some of them seem to think that everyone ought to be just as zealous about saving every single heritage breed and never venturing outside that box. However, I believe that every bird was at some point a "project bird", or we would all still be raising jungle fowl. I do appreciate the need for a more structured approach toward building a better bird and the need to preserve heritage birds.

My goal for the upcoming year with the Alohas is to build a rounded, wide bodied bird that will be conducive to good egg production. Right now my largest, best colored and rounded body type is a 4 lb. hen. I'm going to try very hard to reach a 6.5 - 7 lb. frame hen over the next year or so. We'll see how it goes.

My secondary goals are to keep small breeding groups of quality Buff Sussex, Wheaten Ameraucanas, Speckled Sussex, Plymouth Barred Rocks, German New Hamps and our tiny little Seramas.

Just rambling this morning.

 

[maidenwolfx80]

I so want to set up a get together with as many of you that can do it. I just love meeting the people I talk to on a daily basis. Maybe one can be set up were we could even do a pot luck.

Thank you Karen I love these little guys.

 

[HEChicken]

Danz, good grief with that expense. How big is the hoop house going to be, or did I miss it with my speed reading/short attention span brain? I'm thinking about building a hoop house for the grow out birdies but I didn't expect that much expense.

If it helps, DH and I are building a hoop house this afternoon - about to head to the store and get the lumber for the frame. Trish's is 12' long by 8' wide, and that allows for enough height for her to stand upright. However she is taller than I am, and I have hog panels vs. utility panels, already on hand. Rather than buy more panels, we wanted to use the ones we have, so we've just come in from seeing how far we can bend them over (the hog panels are stiffer than utility panels). We can easily bend them to create a base 10' wide. We could probably stretch it and do the 8 if we used a ratchet but.....we realized that if we do it 12' long (3 panels) by 10' wide, it is still tall enough for short little me to walk upright in the center. Yep, I layed down on the ground near the chicken coop to test that theory

. So - ours is going to be 12x10, which will actually give them more sq. footage anyway. This is only to be a breeding pen for my turkeys since I don't want Madge going off and building herself a nest in the hedge, when that coyote is so close. The rest of the year they will be out in the main flock, but it will be nice to have the pen for any other purpose too.

Anyway, you are taller than me, so you might want to stick with the more typical 8' foot base. You can do the length anything divisible by 4' since the panels are typically about 4' high. If you are buying panels, you want to get the utility panels. They will be 4" square holes throughout. Hog panels have 4" squares at the top but they gradually get smaller so at the bottom they are 4x2" rectangles (Google Images may be your friend if this explanation doesn't make sense). The extra wire to make the smaller rectangles at the bottom of the hog panel, make it more difficult to bend.

DH and I don't agree about the easiest way to make the hoop house. He things build the frame and then put the panels into it. I think, lay the panels out flat, attach the side boards, bend the panels down, and then add the ends on. I told him we'll just have to make two and we can do one each way and SEE which way is easiest

. He's such a good sport he didn't even say "no", just "do you really need that many pens?"