Consolidated Kansas

[tweetybaby2005]

Good info, thanks! I guess I called the wrong PO and that's why they weren't interested in talking to me

Ducklings are cute but they are MESSY! There is nothing that doesn't get dunked in the water and it gets splashed out and played in constantly. It is almost impossible to keep the brooder clean and dry when you have ducklings. I have 6 Muscovy ducks and I like them but as adults, they still make a mess wherever they go. Ducks have to have water deep enough to submerge their whole beak so they can flush out their nostrils, but mine will also crawl into the water bowl for a bath, even if it is way too small for them. Then they splash all the water out and there's nothing left for the chickens but a goopy, muddy mess on the bottom. They do have lots of personality, lay well and are said to be good for meat, so they have their redeeming qualities, but don't say you weren't warned

On the egg washing issue, I don't wash mine either, for the same reasons Hawkeye mentioned. If it were covered in poop, I probably would, under warm water. And occasionally I will have an egg break in the nest box and get the others covered in yolk, and those I do wash, but the rest I don't. 98% of the time the eggs are clean - even the duck eggs - and if they have a little straw or something stuck to them, that rubs off pretty easily. The eggs will last a lot longer if you don't wash them.

Hmmm... I really have to think it through having ducklings then. I think I'm already OCD over the cleanliness of my chicken coop, not sure if I will be able to handle the duckie mess. Thanks for the heads up.

Phew, I am yet again a million miles behind you guys! Sigh.

Hope everyone is well. We had a bit of a disaster here last night. I left the house at 6 PM to meet DH to pick up a couple dressers at his parents and to pick Lucie up at the clinic who had her leg amputated yesterday. Everything went really well with Lucie's surgery and she is doing very well at home. She even walked this morning with just a little sling support which is impressive. I think she will do really well once she is healed up.

Anyway, back to the disaster. Got home at 8:30 and we ate dinner, got the dog settled into her crate and at 9:30 I went out to hay the horses for the night. The gate was hanging wide open and the horses were GONE! In a frenzy DH and I started walking around with halters and buckets of grain calling them. We followed their hoof prints on the road north for about a mile and then DH went back for his car to start driving. We called the Sheriff to report them missing and called his parents who came out with spotlights. After about 35 minutes of me walking with grain, DH and his parents driving with spot lights and no sign of them the three non horse folks were ready to call it quits. So I told them they could stop looking but I was going to keep looking until I found them. I lost their trail heading east on the road and assume they left the road and went into a field. So I started driving around with my car and spot light. I tried to be very careful to only shine the light into fields and clicked it off when I drove near folks houses but I alerted one of the neighbors who happens to be a police officer and he chased me back to the house in his truck thinking I was a robber only to find a sobbing pregnant girl who had lost her horses! So he went back to his house gathered supplies and helped us start looking! He also recruited a sheriff friend who was on duty to help and DH made a sign to put out front of the house. Luckily enough another neighbor heard their dogs going nuts and went out to see our horses in their yard! Phew, we went up and gathered them up and I walked them two miles back to the house and we finally got to bed at 2 AM. We had snaps on the gate but now there are snaps and new chains around the posts with pad locks! If they get out of that I don't know what to do with them!!!

Danz- Are you sure one of those darling goslings are grey? They both look white to me? I will post pics of my grey babies later tonight when they were goslings for you to compare.

Josie - so glad your horses are OK and you found them! Just brought back some memory when I found out that my newly adopted sheltie went missing. My blood just went cold and I just frantically hollering at him hoping he wasn't too far and could hear me and realize that I was looking for him. If your horses can get out of the gate with the padlock and what not, then they are great Houdini.

And then there were 5! Yes we had to go to the"O" store the night after a new batch of babies came in. See the problem is the brooder box is just too big and looks empty!

Look !!! Look!!! They are tearing up that FF now!
Actually don't think we have any Ferment going yet. Just finally found some UP/ACV today. Bought a small bottle of it & a gallon of plain ACV to make more with.
RoosterLew - your chicks are soooo cute. I think the chicken math is catching up with you.

It sure took me a while before I could make a post with multi quotes. My Kindle Fire won't allow me to do it and my DH's iPad doesn't either. Something about BBC code not supported or something like that. Such a pain. I'm a natural worry wart so Danz is right that once the chickens become my pet, I start to stress and worry. I was so worried about the baby chicks being shipped out in the cold that I wasn't able to sleep well for 2 nights until they got here. Once I got them, I worry about them not doing well, getting chill, not eating, drinking, etc. But I think it is all worth it. I really love those fuzzy butts.

I took a picture of my favorite rooster while I was out there feeding the chickens this evening. Just want to see if you guys can identify him for me. I originally had a pair of them but lost one to something... not sure what. Probably a coyote. I was really sad about it. I will post the pic tomorrow since I've to download it to the computer at work. That computer is much faster than this slowputer I'm using right now.

I'm anxiously waiting for the WSU basketball game to start tonight. Thank goodness I can "talk" to you guys until it's time to watch the game.

Kuan

 

[sharol]

Same in Emporia (only earlier). I went in a couple of days before they are due and talked to the clerk at the desk. She laughed and said that chick calls go out when the truck arrives at about 5 and was that too early? I told her no, and got the call at 5:30 the next morning. I was glad I had checked in with her or I wouldn't have known to go to the back dock to pick them up.

My experience as well as others I know that have had chicks shipped is the post office will call you and tell you they are in.. My post office here in Winfield calls me about 7 in the morning and tells me I have a package that is peeping lol

 

[sharol]

Go Shocks!!

I'm anxiously waiting for the WSU basketball game to start tonight. Thank goodness I can "talk" to you guys until it's time to watch the game.

Kuan

 

[Trish44]

Greetings to all you new fellow chicken lovers

!!! So nice to have you here -- so true, you really need to have friends you can talk "chicken" with, without getting the dazed and confused look! Hee hee.

On a much gloomier note, we had a terrible chicken tragedy. I lost my best (naturally) Aloha hen to a freak pen accident involving my poor, tender-hearted 10 year old son. His 12 year old sister was partially at fault for refusing to follow protocol in having two there to prevent just such an accident. He didn't notice Nicoletta had come to join him and he turned loose of the pen to let it fall back into place, at the same time Nicoletta decided to dash in and have a scratch in the fresh bedding. Those kids just cried their little eyes out. I just explained that everyone makes mistakes and that's just how we learn. I told them they will never have heavy bookshelves that aren't anchored to the wall because they will already know what can happen, if their child decides to climb it. Better to lose a chicken, even a much loved chicken, than a child in later years. Poor kids, I hurt so badly for them, I forgot to hurt about losing my hen. She was a very sweet and chatty bird, I'm going to miss her terribly. I'm thankful she didn't suffer for her sake and the kids. What a disaster.

I absolutely hate losing birds.

Oh I'm so sorry Karen, that's a really hard lesson for the kids to have to learn & heartbreaking. I hate losing chickens too, you get to know their personalities & get used to them being around & it's just like losing any other pet then.

Wichita folks do you know if I need to call the post office about my chicks that are being shipped on April 3rd? If I do need to call would I call the local substation or the main one at the airport? Or will they just call me when they come in? I am not sure how it all works since it is my first time dealing with shipped chicks.

I have always gotten a call from the post office here whenever the chicks arrive. One time they came in late in the afternoon after the post office closed & they just had me go to the side door to get them, there is a bell there.

Phew, I am yet again a million miles behind you guys! Sigh.

Hope everyone is well. We had a bit of a disaster here last night. I left the house at 6 PM to meet DH to pick up a couple dressers at his parents and to pick Lucie up at the clinic who had her leg amputated yesterday. Everything went really well with Lucie's surgery and she is doing very well at home. She even walked this morning with just a little sling support which is impressive. I think she will do really well once she is healed up.

Anyway, back to the disaster. Got home at 8:30 and we ate dinner, got the dog settled into her crate and at 9:30 I went out to hay the horses for the night. The gate was hanging wide open and the horses were GONE! In a frenzy DH and I started walking around with halters and buckets of grain calling them. We followed their hoof prints on the road north for about a mile and then DH went back for his car to start driving. We called the Sheriff to report them missing and called his parents who came out with spotlights. After about 35 minutes of me walking with grain, DH and his parents driving with spot lights and no sign of them the three non horse folks were ready to call it quits. So I told them they could stop looking but I was going to keep looking until I found them. I lost their trail heading east on the road and assume they left the road and went into a field. So I started driving around with my car and spot light. I tried to be very careful to only shine the light into fields and clicked it off when I drove near folks houses but I alerted one of the neighbors who happens to be a police officer and he chased me back to the house in his truck thinking I was a robber only to find a sobbing pregnant girl who had lost her horses! So he went back to his house gathered supplies and helped us start looking! He also recruited a sheriff friend who was on duty to help and DH made a sign to put out front of the house. Luckily enough another neighbor heard their dogs going nuts and went out to see our horses in their yard! Phew, we went up and gathered them up and I walked them two miles back to the house and we finally got to bed at 2 AM. We had snaps on the gate but now there are snaps and new chains around the posts with pad locks! If they get out of that I don't know what to do with them!!!

Danz- Are you sure one of those darling goslings are grey? They both look white to me? I will post pics of my grey babies later tonight when they were goslings for you to compare.

What a fiasco, I'll bet you were just exhausted! I'm so glad you found them & got them home, wow. I had one years ago that would break down the fence & go a mile down the road to where there were other horses & go into their field & eat with them. I got so I knew where to look.

And then there were 5! Yes we had to go to the"O" store the night after a new batch of babies came in. See the problem is the brooder box is just too big and looks empty!

Look !!! Look!!! They are tearing up that FF now!
Actually don't think we have any Ferment going yet. Just finally found some UP/ACV today. Bought a small bottle of it & a gallon of plain ACV to make more with.

Keep it up & you will be like the rest of us! Aren't they the cutest things though? You can now buy the ACV at the Walmart in with the regular vinegar. I've been so happy they started carrying that. I buy some every time I go to get groceries so I have extra.

Whew, I was really behind on reading too just in a day, it's been busy here! I went out today & made a little toy for the goats to play on with a couple of pallets. It's just two pallets sitting up in the shape of a V & hooked together so they can climb on it. I spent the rest of my afternoon cleaning up tree branches around the area where I'm going to build my next hoop coop & around the pens. There really were a lot of branches that had fallen down & I already had a pile I had collected out in the front of the hoop coop aways. I ended up burning the pile & it got really really hot. The wood was really dry & it just became an inferno. I tried to get close enough to keep the brush in a pile raked up & got a little bit of a red face out of it. I did get all the one area all cleaned up though, so that was an accomplishment. I went around & picked up a whole trash bag of trash the dogs had strung around too & we got a load of trash picked up that has been sitting out by the horse shed for years. I've been trying to get my DH to haul that off for so long & finally today he took the truck in there & we got it all cleaned up. The electric company sent out some tree trimmers to cut out all the trees under the lines so there is now an alley through there all the way to the next road & you can see clear back to our shed. I'm so glad to have that pile of junk picked up. The dogs are carrying over all the trash from the dump next door. All the neighbors are complaining about that trash over there & now there are rats & mice in the old trailers that people have picked things off of & they are falling apart. That place is really a mess & the lady who owns it isn't going to clean it up unless she is made to or fined. In the meantime we are hauling away the trash from there because my GPs keep bringing home gifts for us every day. I go around almost daily & pick up trash out of the yard, it's just maddening.

Tomorrow I plan to haul up a little pen I have out in the horse shed to put my 4 older chicks in & put them in the run. I hope they will be OK in there, they're pretty feathered out now. They just need more room, they're really crowded in the crate they're in & they're just making a heck of a mess in my sun room. The crate they're in is sitting on top of my GQF incubator & even though I have a piece of plastic taped over half of the door, they're kicking shavings & feed out on the incubator & all over the floor, I'm going to have to clean out brooders tomorrow & rabbit cages, so it's not going to be a fun day. It needs to be done though.

 

[mrsdanamiller]

I tried to be very careful to only shine the light into fields and clicked it off when I drove near folks houses but I alerted one of the neighbors who happens to be a police officer and he chased me back to the house in his truck thinking I was a robber only to find a sobbing pregnant girl who had lost her horses!

You poor dear!! I am so glad you found your horses!

 

[RoosterLew]

I only plan on buying the UP/ACV once. Following Beekissed advice, I bought some regular ACV with it and split some UP off into it and plan to keep the mother going into more

 

[HEChicken]

I only plan on buying the UP/ACV once. Following Beekissed advice, I bought some regular ACV with it and split some UP off into it and plan to keep the mother going into more

I've done that and it worked great. I now have a huge gallon container of ACV with the mother growing in it

 

[chicken danz]

I did that as well thanks to Deerfield posting to do it a while back. Be sure to put the gallon you are growing mother in in the dark for a couple weeks. It helps it get established. The other vinegar has been diluted so it takes a little longer to get going. I've found as long as I keep enough feed fermented that I never have to replace the vinegar. If you keep enough for 3-4 days rather than just enough for 2 days the vinegar willl continue to grow in your FF mix.
I have another little Sebbie. I have one more egg that hasn't internally pipped which should be hatching. I'm afraid that the embryo might have died before it got pipped. I'll give it another day or so to make sure before I remove it from the hatcher. I've got several more chicken eggs due to hatch the 31st as well. And several more to go in the incubator when I have room.
It's really wet and misty here this morning. I hope that doesn't mean it is going to rain all day. I was really counting on getting out and getting some more building done.
DH is building a coop in the barn right now. It was his idea although I bought the lumber to do it. I won't question as long as it is his idea. I am actually liking what I am seeing. It is a raised coop but the legs won't be set in the ground like we normally would. I understand that he is going to build an attached pen of some sort as well. I suggested that he divide it in half so I can put two breeds in it. It won't be very large but room enough for a couple small groups of breeders if he divides it. I think it is building is like 4 X 8, and he plans to put a lid on it that opens so I can reach in to get eggs or whatever. I don't really like external egg boxes due to the likelihood they can leak in rain. And I like to have access to clean out coops as well.
I would still rather have a breeders building but I won't complain about anything I get.

 

[tweetybaby2005]

I've done that and it worked great. I now have a huge gallon container of ACV with the mother growing in it

I only plan on buying the UP/ACV once. Following Beekissed advice, I bought some regular ACV with it and split some UP off into it and plan to keep the mother going into more

X2. That's what I did as well. I put like a cup of ACV with the mother and mix it with the regular. Put a paper towel over the mouth of the bottle and rubberband it, let it sit in the pantry for a week or 2. You should see the mother growing nicely. Now I just have a regular gallon of ACV which I add to the "mothered" ACV from time to time. I don't use a whole lot of it so it has time to grow the mother more. Just 1 bottle of raw ACV to seed the regular ACV.

Kuan

 

[tweetybaby2005]

OK. Here is a pic of my (and DS's) favorite rooster. He came with the flock when DH bought the entire flock of 35 chickens back in August. Can someone ID the breed or is he just a barnyard mix? DS really loves this rooster and was heartbroken when his "twin" was killed.

If it is a specific breed, I really would like to get a pair or eggs to breed some chicks for DS.



On a very happy note. The Shockers won the game and advanced forward to the Elite 8!

Hope everyone has a great day. Enjoy the warmth. Forecast said it will be in the low 70s.

Kuan