Consolidated Kansas

[sharol]

Looks like my littlest Marans pullet is determined to hatch eggs. She's been on the same nest for 2 days and growled at me tonight. I gave her 4 eggs to add to her 2 (hers probably won't hatch -- they usually have blood spots). Sigh. I love the babies and watching the moms raise them, but they are liable to be cockerels, then what do I do?

 

[TheDownyChick]

My Dh is in the hospital again I had to take him into ER last night I thought he had a stroke. Slurred speech, left side face droopy, drooling, couldn't move left My Dh is in the hospital again I had to take him into ER last night I thought he had a stroke. Slurred speech, left side face droopy, drooling, couldn't move left arm. But neurologist said it was a seizure. Going to keep him one more day to increase seizure meds. Sense Feb he has been admitted 3 times

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Oh dear! I hope and pray that he has a complete and speedy recovery. That must be very scary. I hope they can figure out what is causing the seizures so they can be prevented.

Danz - I hope you did not get a concussion! Stairs scare me. When I was about 13, I was carrying my infant sister down our basement stairs. My brother turned out the light as a joke, and I missed the 2nd stair from the bottom. We tumbled down the stairs, and when we landed, I had her head cupped against my chest. Thankfully she was not injured, but I sprained an ankle. When I was 30, I fell down the two stairs at the skating rink going to get the boys from the video games so my son could open his presents and we could serve the cake & ice cream. Instead, my son had to see his mother being carried away on a stretcher for his birthday. :s Two metal plates and three screws later, my ankle and I still hate stairs!

 

[TheDownyChick]

My blue and black copper marans babies with their black orpington surrogate mother! Pretty soon they will be her size!

 

[spree56]

michellemi
I hope your DH is doing better today. Sounds like you are doing the right things. The symptoms you described sure sounded like a stroke.

 

[HEChicken]

I thought I'd stop in and say hello. This has been about the busiest spring I can remember and I'm not spending near the time online that I used to over the winter…..

Danz sorry to hear about your fall - your head is not the place you want to keep your goose eggs (tee hee).

Michelle, I'm so sorry to hear that your DH's health continues to decline. I can only imagine how wearing it is on you dealing with this and worrying over the frequent admissions to the hospital.

Let's see….I feel like for as busy as I've been I don't actually have that much to report. I have multiple broody hens. I had two that I "broke" while trying to move them to a broody coop. They were determined not to brood there so after a week I let them out and a week since then they still haven't resumed being broody. I'm sure they will eventually though. The other four are continuing to brood in the nest boxes and the rest of the hens squish in around them to lay their eggs every day. One of the broodies would win competitions for her screeches - I've never heard anything like it before. All I have to do is look at her. Heck, all I have to do is walk into the coop - and she starts swearing at me.

I also have at least one broody turkey. Well, I have one who is solidly broody and dedicated to her task. I gave her 9 eggs out of the incubator that had already been incubating for 6 days so she got a head start. Her first day sitting she wasn't really in the swing of things and got off in the morning when it was still pretty cold, and stayed off for so long I worried and caught her and put her back on. As soon as she saw the nest she started murmuring and rearranging the eggs. But since then she has really settled in and I didn't even see her off the nest to eat yesterday, though I'm sure she must have taken a break at some point. I have two others who are acting "pre-broody". The crested is one of them, Danz! And, I watched her lay her egg yesterday. I've seen plenty of chickens lay eggs but never a turkey but I got lucky and walked in the coop right as she was at the pushing stage so I got to watch her lay it. However then she settled down on the nest and stayed there the rest of the day so I finally had to reach under her after dark to retrieve the egg.

Most of what has been keeping me busy is my veggie garden. I'm determined to try and make it a success this year. I have a ton of seeds started but have had multiple set back with them. I finally have some that are starting to look like the plants they will eventually be - much later in the season than I would have preferred. Meanwhile I'm preparing the bed they will eventually occupy. My neighbor tilled it a few weeks ago and now I'm trying to spend several hours a day weeding to reduce the number of weeds I'll have to deal with during growing season. I planted potatoes, onions and rutabagas out there already and yesterday I think I might have seen a rutabaga sprout. I'm not sure since I've never grown them before, if it was that or a weed - I'll have to keep an eye on it.

Danz, the little cockerel I got from you started to crow this week. He has grown a lot lately but at 4 months is still….a cockerel. So his crow surprised me. Not only did I never hear him do the screechy, teenage, practice crows, but he has the deepest voice I've ever heard in a rooster. If you heard the crow with your eyes closed, you'd never guess it was a 4-month-old cockerel making a sound like that!!! Its only a couple of weeks since he stopped peeping too (or so it seems). He seems to be maturing into a nice boy, and I kept back one of mine so for the first time will have a "back up" rooster.

 

[chicken danz]

Looks like my littlest Marans pullet is determined to hatch eggs. She's been on the same nest for 2 days and growled at me tonight. I gave her 4 eggs to add to her 2 (hers probably won't hatch -- they usually have blood spots). Sigh. I love the babies and watching the moms raise them, but they are liable to be cockerels, then what do I do?

Curious, why would blood spots keep an egg from hatching?

Danz I hope your okay

My Dh is in the hospital again I had to take him into ER last night I thought he had a stroke. Slurred speech, left side face droopy, drooling, couldn't move left arm. But neurologist said it was a seizure. Going to keep him one more day to increase seizure meds. Sense Feb he has been admitted 3 times

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Does anyone have Cochin for sale I would like to get 2 or 3 pullets but I know that will be hard to find. My poor buddy needs some friends

Michelle, I am so sorry you are still going through this. I admire your strength. Remember feel free to vent any time you need, to me.

It is Friday!!! Yay! But the bad news is I have 2 sick staff out and 1 is the back up for the other to do the late night/early morning software update this coming Easter Sunday. So I will be doing it myself instead. Bummer...

My office is about 1/2 empty since tax season is over and people started taking time off after the heavy tax season. Parking lot sure looks a lot emptier and easier for me to find a parking spot. Granted, I almost always park far away since I enjoy the longish walk to the office.



My flock has gotten much smaller now that we have processed quite a few roosters. I think I'm all set for a while now. Tomorrow is supposed to be very warm (upper 70s) so I plan to do some major cleaning of the main chicken coop. Since I've converted from sand to DLM, it is time to get more shavings in there. I should have bought more from Atwoods last Saturday when they had their no sales tax event. I normally just dump 2 new bags in there and let the birds scratch it around. I also need to rip out the netted area where I usually keep the baby birds till they can hang out with the big birds because the net was torn and I don't want the big birds' claws got caught and hung upside down on it. Plus, I am thinking of putting hardware cloth over it vs. regular netting. It will certainly last longer. I need to reinforce my coop a bit more since I converted it from a horse stall to a coop and had no knowledge that chicken wire is useless against any predators. It is all a learning process for me.
I just keep putting off processing, myself. I have got to get some drakes done. My girls are getting bare. Not sure about you guys but we sure didn't get but 2 drops of rain from this last "supposed" rain storm. We need the moisture desperately. The weatherman is now saying rain most likely on Easter Sunday afternoon. Hope the kids who are going Easter egg hunt get it done before the rain comes. With each "rain is coming" forecast, I get my hopes up and then dashed. My pear trees seem to have survived the freeze from 2 days ago but did suffer some blossom drops. Fingers crossed that I'll have some to eat this year. The 1st year we bought this house, I had so much of those pears that the chicken got pear treats daily! They sure enjoyed eating them. I didn't even have to slice them any more. Just tossed them in their pen and they went gaga with it.
Enjoy the warm day everyone!
We got rain the other day but it was more like a sprinkle off and on most of the day. It only wet the ground enough to evaporate off the next day.

I don't think I got a concussion but I did cut my head and still have a knot on it. I was lucky I guess I didn't get hurt worse. I know if I hadn't hit my head I would have probably broken something when I hit the bottom.
Well I finished my coop yesterday. I slopped some stain on the outside and put Kilz on the floor inside. I did a sloppy job so excuse the paint splashes. I was in a hurry. I also built a ramp that I have to stain yet. It attaches to the front of the clean out door with pull pin hinges so I can pull the pin to remove the ramp when I need to clean out the coop or get inside for some reason.
So here is picture overload. Excuse all the construction mess. I hadn't cleaned up after getting the roof on yesterday. The coop measures about 52 by 52 and stands 16 inches above the ground. It is now too heavy for me to budge. I am going to have to get DH to help me move it.

Starting framework.

More framing

And more as I added detail.

Sliding window and vent. I love this concept. I can open it or close it as wide as I need to let in air or light. I have hardware cloth behind it.
Rear

Nest box I added to the side. I did things a little different. I kept hearing about hinged roofs on nestboxes leaking. So I put flashing on before I put on the siding at the top of the nest box, and made the front open to retrieve the eggs instead.



Front doors. There is a man door for clean out and a chicken door for them.

Inside. You can see my roost and my nest box.

Other side. You can see the sliding window shutters from the inside here.

overall picture. Chicken door closed.
It was a fun project and it didn't take that long. Other than I used dog earred treated fencing and to save fencing I had to make my own dog ear cuts on all the left over scraps so I could double up use on them, I really liked it better without the stain but the only waterproofing I had on hand was colored. I had to treat the sliding window and any white wood and plywood I had to weather proof it. My tin for my roof wasn't new so it doesn't look great. After I get the ramp painted I will take a follow up picture.
So while I was finishing that yesterday I got the Mandarin pond pumped out, cleaned and refilled. I am sure they are happy about that. I also planted my potatoes and onions finally. We need water desperately. Nothing will come up if we don't get some good moisture soon. I still need to plant some more stuff but don't have seed on hand.

 

[chicken danz]

So good to hear from you again HEChicken. I really have missed your input and sense of humor.
I have at least 5 broody turkeys and actually had one bite me the other day when I was stealing eggs. I finally just gave up and added another nest box to each pen. I really don't want them to go broody this early. I need to make some money off of poults before they quit laying.
I have several orders for bourbon reds. Everyone loves them.
I thought I had several people coming for birds today but they have all postponed due to this or that. I do have some coming later in the week though. I'm kind of glad cause I need to get some things done while DH is off today. Like move my coop and transfer some birds to different pens. I have a buyer who is taking a ton of my older birds I hadn't sold on Friday. That should free up a pen. Yay!

 

[sharol]

Danz:

re: bloodspots Hmm. I thought I had read on BYC that an egg with blood spots was unlikely to hatch. Not true? In the case of this girl, almost all her eggs have tiny blood spots (plural). They don't interfere with using the eggs (for me), but I don't include them when I give eggs to friends because I know they will be thrown away. I'll keep an eye on the eggs when I candle next week (if she holds on the nest) and see if they are developing. I gave her some of her sisters' eggs (they were fertile last time) and one EE egg from one of the rooster's favorites. My older (almost 4 year old) hens' eggs aren't fertile for the most part. I've been monitoring fertility every time I break an egg.

That coop is lovely. I wish I had your talent for planning and building.

 

[okjenyp]

Today was a gruesome day. We processed the Cornish cross. If was one of the hardest things I have ever witnessed. I'm not cut out for meat birds. These better be the best chickens I have tasted

 

[chicken danz]

Sharol I see no reason at all a bloodspot egg wouldn't develop. I blood spot is simply a failure of the hen's works to cut off the blood supply quickly enough. It shouldn't have anything to do with development unless the hen is sick with something. I had never heard that theory and I know many of my marans over the years were bad about having blood spots so it doesn't surprise me that you would get some. But like always I could be wrong.
Thank you. I designed this little coop as a breeder coop for a quad or there abouts and tried to build it as cheap as possible. All in all I spent less than $30 for it but that was because I had a $50 rebate certificate and bought the lumber on sale. I can't complain though. I wish all my coops were that cheap.