Consolidated Kansas

[TaraBellaBirds]

Hello all! It is turning into a hot humid day here. I am ready for the cooler temps of fall. I am anxious to be able to turn off the fans and store them away for the winter.

My juveniles have all started crowing!!! I am so disappointed that they are all cockerels. I drove 3 hours one way to get lovely birds and now all I have is 7 horrible sounding birds. They are so pretty though, I may have to keep part of them if they stay friendly. I have no hens of the same breeds so they will have to really nice to convince me to stay. Do Swedish flower hen, speckled Sussex, and lavendar ameraucana rosters get mean? Maybe I can find someone who would like to trade me for some hens. I love the quality of these birds but they are of no use to me. They were sold straight run but it was evident even to this newbie that a couple of them were cockerels which was fine with me as I was holding out hope for some pullets. Just my rotten luck. Lol

Where did you get them? 7 out of 7 cockrals is more than just bad luck, it is likely that you were scammed! I would give the person you got them from a call, if they can't make it right I would tell them they will be getting a truthful review on BYC! Hopefully they will just be willing to make it right.

 

[HEChicken]

The building company is sending me a contract and a color chart so I can make my final selections and sign the contract.

Yay - how exciting!

 

[TaraBellaBirds]

Anyway, since I don't know if any others will hatch with it, I decided to pull it out and let it sit with me for awhile for company. They seem to like that but yell if left in the incubator. So I was sitting here browsing the web and drinking my afternoon cup of coffee. The chick was sitting on my chest, the coffee sitting next to me on the bed. You know what's coming. The chick tries to walk, loses balance and rolls down my torso - landing head first in my hot coffee! Of all the luck - it could have landed next to the cup but no, it has to land right IN the cup. I immediately fished it out and it was yelling up a storm (can't blame it) and in doing that, I was so focused on the chick that I didn't pay attention to the cup and left it on its side on my bed. It had been almost full so now my bed is a mess. The chick, amazingly, seems to be fine after its shock. It was only in the coffee a split second. I decided it is safer in the incubator so it is back in there now but I can hear it and it sounds normal. Incredibly, it doesn't seem as though it inhaled any liquid.

OMG what terrible luck. I bet that little one will have a repulsion to coffee for a lifetime!

Wow HEChicken, I can just imagine how frantic you were. Poor little chick. That sounds like something that would happen to me. A hundred to one chances and it will take the worst route. I have accidentally sucked a duck up in the vacuum cleaner before trying to clean out a bin. I make sure they are far away from the nozzle but one seems to think they have to break free at just the right moment to go up the hose!

Did the duckling make it? That sounds like something I would do, try to save time by not removing the little ones, thinking "there is no way they will come NEAR the big noisy thing!"

 

[chicken danz]

Actually the vacuum cleaner thing has happened more than once. I've had some chicks or ducks make it and some not so lucky. Now when I do it I put my other hand in front of the hose so they can't get in but I've still managed to catch a foot or something. I use a big shop vac with a big hose so they go right up it. It's the landing that can be hazardous.
Yes, HEChicken, it is exciting and scary too. I am right now about $10,000 over budget. Amazing how all that adds up. I am hoping that the building itself adds property value. I plan to build the pop doors so I can add some rat guard later on and close it back up if I need to, so the building can be used for other things in the future....like after I am dead or too old to get out there and take care of chickens. I think it will be so great to finally not have chickens and incubators in the house. Another 10 years I might finally get all of the chicken dust out of here. I'm also hoping this will eliminate some of the mouse population. At least the stuff won't be so close to the house. Since the floor will be concrete at least mice won't be able to bore up through it. I need to figure out a way to raise and lower all the pop doors at once without going to the expense of buying automatic doors. I think I'm probably dreaming though. There is going to be about 70 feet with at least 15 pop doors in it. That's a lot of distance to deal with. It would make life so much easier if I could put them on an automatic opener. I might actually be able to go some where some day without worrying about the birds. Ideas welcome.

 

[HEChicken]

I need to figure out a way to raise and lower all the pop doors at once without going to the expense of buying automatic doors.

It seems like you should be able to have a guillotine style door on a rope and have all the ropes lead up to tie-in to one main rope that is at the end. You pull on the main rope and all of the doors open at once. I can picture it but don't know if that description makes any sense at all.

 

[chicken danz]

That is exactly what I was thinking. I just wasn't sure if they would all lift in that distance. I wonder if I divided the space in half and had two ropes that intertwined together, one from each direction it it would work. I could put a low gear ratio motor in that would open them on a timer but not sure how I would stop it after it actually opened the doors so it quit cycling. How does your auto door opener work so it only opens and doesn't keep operating after the doors open and close? I've never had an auto opener before but I sure would like to. It's not a matter of security as much as it is a matter of keeping rodents out at night and conserving energy in cold weather. I figure during a major winter storm I can just keep them closed cause the birds won't want to be out anyway.

 

[Trish44]

danz you take your chances when you buy chicks straight run. Even if you hatch your own you can end up with 3/4s roosters, it happened to me. I don't seem to have the luck HEChicken has with ending up with all pullets & none or minimal roosters. It's just the luck of the draw when the chicks are too young to tell sexes. I have picked out roosters in a bin of supposedly all pullets as well.

Well today is supposed to be the last really hot day & then it's supposed to cool off. The prediction is for rain for a couple of days, I'm hoping not all day both days because we sure need to work on this fence & make more progress. My DH was gone to Missouri for two days so that took those days out as work days. I sure would like to get this fence in before it turns cold.

 

[cherwill]

danz you take your chances when you buy chicks straight run. Even if you hatch your own you can end up with 3/4s roosters, it happened to me. I don't seem to have the luck HEChicken has with ending up with all pullets & none or minimal roosters. It's just the luck of the draw when the chicks are too young to tell sexes. I have picked out roosters in a bin of supposedly all pullets as well.

Well today is supposed to be the last really hot day & then it's supposed to cool off. The prediction is for rain for a couple of days, I'm hoping not all day both days because we sure need to work on this fence & make more progress. My DH was gone to Missouri for two days so that took those days out as work days. I sure would like to get this fence in before it turns cold.

You take your chances buying out of the pullet bin, too. 40% of the chicks I've bought out of the pullet bin were roos; the one I got out of a straight run bin was a pullet!

Dwink, 7 out of 7 seems like too much to be a coincidence or just chance. Sorry you got so many roos.

Speaking of roos, DH has heard one recently. Sounds like someone in town got unlucky with this year's batch of chicks. Wonder how long before they have to get rid of it? Roos were only outlawed here last year, after 3 complaints were filed (probably by the same friend of the mayor or something), so if no one complains, maybe they'll just keep it.

 

[HEChicken]

I haven't bought chicks at the feed store for quite awhile but I did love the time they had Black Sexlinks for sale at TSC at the cheaper price because they were straight run!!! It was quite easy to pick through and pick out the pullets - that was back in the days before they had them all fenced off (though I'm glad they do that now). One of the pullets in the bin had got its food completely stuck in the hinged feeder. I couldn't figure out how to open the feeder to free it, so flagged down an employee who came and opened it and the chick limped away. DD was with me and begged me to get her because she felt so sorry for her. I did and we named her "Footy". She grew into a marvelous big hen who laid huge eggs and was my very first broody (go figure). Her limp must have been temporary as she never did have any further foot issues.

I haven't had any more chicks hatch yet. Two are internally pipped and peeped at me when I candled this morning but no further progress from them. I pulled the one little chick out and set up a makeshift brooder in a small box with an EcoGlow, just until tonight, when I will give the chick and the two eggs (whatever stage they are at) to a broody hen.

It is hot and humid out there! I had to do laundry to wash the coffee-soaked bed sheets and they are now out hanging on the line. At least I know they will dry fast in this heat and wind.

DH is still enjoying his blacklight and goes out every night hornworm hunting. The sad part is he continues to find them, but his haul last night were really small. I've never seen any that small before and my guess is that normally you wouldn't even find them that small because they camouflage so well they just blend into the foliage. It is only with the blacklight that he finds them at all, but it is very gratifying to feed them to the birds knowing they will never get big enough to destroy a plant in a single night like the monstrous ones can. Strangely, we went up to my neighbor's tomato patch and found none on hers. I guess our garden is just more appealing to whatever moth lays those eggs.

 

[morgangirl1]

You take your chances buying out of the pullet bin, too. 40% of the chicks I've bought out of the pullet bin were roos; the one I got out of a straight run bin was a pullet!

I know! The pullet bin this year for us was nothing but roos I swear. We originally bought 3 leghorn pullets, 2 ended up being roosters. Then we planned on having a speckled sussex pullet but he ended up being a roo and our silver laced wyandotte, rooster.
But that wyandote that my friend named "Okie" Has the ugliest face ever. The poor thing has a twisted face that criscrosses. Is this a condition? We've had a buff Orpington from our first batch ever girls that has had a crooked beak. I'm wondering if this is just a hatchery breeding deformity.