Consolidated Kansas

[ashncarson]

Checking on the chicks this evening I noticed one little one (they are 4-5 days old) is already trying the whole chest bump thing to the others.....so little for such attitude. do both hens and roos do it this young?

 

[Deerfield Acres]

I am sorry but I had to laugh at this Good to know!

I did too, once the crisis was over!

And, yes, the girls do the chest bump too, so no worries.

 

[chicken danz]

Reminding me of mother's day brought tears to my eyes again. It's only been a couple weeks since the anniversary of her death. Her birthday was the month before. I wish some of these things were spread out a little further.

@Deerfield Acres , thanks for sharing about your mom. I am sorry she is not with you in our earthly home anymore. I am 36 years old, and I still call my mom "Mama." It just slips of the tongue so easily still. My mom is a retired home economics teacher with tons of energy. Everything she touches with her presence or skills becomes "home" and/or welcoming and warm, for lack of adequate words to explain her special touch. She taught me to love flowers...in particular, perennials. She helped me re-learn how to sew when my husband and I bought our first house 12 years ago and I couldn't afford to dress the windows in our house with curtains and drapes. I still call her for advice on parenting and cooking. And I still want her when I'm sick. We talk several times a week, and she calls me every Sunday afternoon just to check in if I don't get her called first. Now that I live only 4 hours from her, we see each other much more often again. I love that.
I called my Mom mamma until the day she passed. She was 83 years old and I was 59. She was a remarkable woman as well. I just nevered learned how to be as put together and organized as she was.
Sooo...this morning I spent 45 minutes unclogging our light brahma chick's vent. I'd never seen anything like it. This was more than just the common pasting problem. I was checking them all for pasting and noticed that light brahma had some. So, I cleared it, only to discover a bright red and swollen vent. I did a little research and found out the poor thing was probably poop stuck. I manually expressed its bowels. [GROSS

], gave it a little sits bath in epsom salt, and then gave it a warm blow dry. It LOVED that part! Then I put a couple drops of lavender essential oil on its vent, along with some bacitraycin. It is successfully pooping on its own now, because it pood several times as I was blow-drying and doctoring her up. I put her back out under the warmer.
Not to disagree but that isn't a light brahma. A light brahma is a white chick.
We saw Mrs. Foxy Loxy and her pups around lunchtime. We love our foxes, which is why my husband was kind enough to make a secure chicken run for our chickens so we can all live in peace and harmony. They are beautiiul creatures.
I hope she leaves your chickens alone. They can be pretty sneaky when they have kits. I had a fox that lived on the hill behind me when I lived in town. She always came in to have her babies and raise them, then would move back out when the kids were old enough to do okay. I used to leave her kitchen scraps and she knew exactly where to go for them. She and my cats used to play together just like normal cats would. The only time she got grouchy with them was if they got near her food. She lived there for many years. The nice thing was we never had squirrels or mice or rabbits bothering things around home.

It's been another non stop hardworking day. Again I'm a long ways from getting things done I wanted to. I still have to go out to the building and water the babies out there one more time.
I had a couple little goslings that were born unable to stand up and/or eat or anything on their own. I've been trying to keep them alive with poultry cell and sugar water that I had to use a dropper to get any down them. Yesterday I started them on vitamin E. One of them was a white and the other one is a buff. The white one which actually acted better than the other one had died during the night. So I was down to just the buff baby. DH had wanted to cull it two days ago cause it couldn't do anything include swallowing without choking. Today I gave it some more vitamin E and every trip in the house I would give it water. I propped it up with a towel which kind of forced it to stay in an upright position rather than falling over. I have my hopes really high now. She is standing, eating, readily drinking, and although stumbling is actually able to slowly walk a little. Praise the Lord! The last time I put her back in the bin she even tried to climb up the towel to get to me. That was super encouraging. However that also means she has probably imprinted on me. It's good for now but I really really don't need another house pet.

 

[Grain Gypsy]

Checking on the chicks this evening I noticed one little one (they are 4-5 days old) is already trying the whole chest bump thing to the others.....so little for such attitude. do both hens and roos do it this young?

Ashley,

We have two roos in our 3-week-old brood; a bantam buff brahma, and a barred plymouth rock. The little buff brahma started showing his prowess the first week! I still can't tell the barred rock roo from the two hens at this point.

 

[Anderson Lowe]

Been several days since I have been on, wow lots happening.

I feel like I been having a Danz week....drain line plugged, water line broke...the type of busy, busy, busy and not feeling like I'm getting anything done.
Did take the day off work today and got the water issues finally fixed as well as taking time to start getting the pool set up for the boys so it can start warming up.

Everyone that's giving me heads up about the Cornish needing to be dealt with around 8 weeks is dead on, planning on butchering this weekend but moving that to tomorrow evening as i have one of them already having leg issue with weight. (The one closest to the water)

I did get the wife to come out to the run last Sunday after church and she got me meet Henrietta...don't think she thought it was as funny as i did.

Been reading and watching butchering tips and tricks, have most everything i will need to get the 2 done.
One of my Americanas and one of the Bantams are Roosters, which I'm waiting to see how long i can get by before the City squawks about Roosters in town...
The Bantams hasn't even tried to Crow but the other one is working on it.

Everyone have a great week

 

[Prairie Fleur]

Hi everyone! Had a busy day today. I got my Ameraucana chicks from Paul Smith today. They're super energetic and rather noisy! I also had a Partridge Brahma from Danz hatch today! I'm in love! It has lovely fuzzy feet already! poor DH is getting a little concerned about all the chickens arriving and is wondering how we'll feed them all and is worried they're going to take over the farm! Lol poor guy! I do need to figure out a way to keep them out of his shop. He'd be a lot happier with them then. I got some pics of my SS today. They were out free ranging and having a Lovely time!!! Thanks, Danz! Any idea if any of these are from your new cockerel? The youngest one was pretty small when I picked them up from you.

My SIL and I ordered Wyandottes together from Chicken Hill and they came in today too. I haven't gotten them from her yet tho. I think she'll bring them over tomorrow.
Ugh! I spent several hours mowing and there's still a lot left to do. Someone remind me why a big yard is nice!?!. A large share of the yard is just 'pasture grass' not all filled in and it's horribly rough. I don't mind mowing if it doesn't kill my back but it was miserable this afternoon. I'm hoping that maybe I got the worst of it done but I'm not convinced that's the case. It did feel really good to get it done tho.
DH has been planting several rows of potatoes every evening. He has quite a bit done now. I need to get my beans and tomatoes planted at least before the sweet potatoes get here. I was determined to do a smaller garden this year so I could hopefullu keep on top of the watering and weeds but DH isn't helping! Problem is we do need everything he mentions so I imagine it will be huge again. I do love a bit garden but last year was pretty discouraging. Deerfield, I need to come take lessons on how you plant a raised bed! I think it'd be easier to manage but I'm clueless how to go about planting it if we actually got them built!

 

[Deerfield Acres]

Prairie, Congrats on the new chicks! I do love those Speckled Sussex. I'm a real Sussex fan, just love their round shape and sweet personalities. I'm getting some Light and Speckleds anytime now and can't wait! My hatch is coming next Wednesday, so I'm really excited to see if I can get anymore Buff/Speckled crosses or Buff/Aloha crosses. The one chick I got from the first hatch is a really pretty girl. If she turns out to be structurally sound, I'm going to cross her with an Aloha rooster. I will be getting some Aloha hatching eggs from AZ sometime in May.

This will be my first year with the raised beds and I'm excited to see how it works out but I'm just a newbie myself. I'm planting vining things and tomatoes on the back row and will add some chain link the length of the 3 vegie beds for them to climb on. I have beans, tomatoes, cucumbers and squash planted on the back rows.Then the middle row I am planting lower growing things, onions, garlic, pepper plants, lettuce, spinach, that kind of stuff. I am interplanting some nasturtiums and marigolds here and there for attracting and repelling the right kind of bugs.

My difficulty previously was that watering is so difficult to keep up with and while we have watered, they don't get a deep watering because the Kansas wind blows half the water away. The watering system ought to solve that problem. I hate all the weeds that come with. So I've done my best to prevent weeds this year with all the heavy mulch between rows and hope to weed diligently this year just in the beds, or I should say any kid that gets overly sassy will find themselves weeding.

They actually tell me that weeding as a consequence is very soothing, which is probably what a teenager needs anyway. During the summer, we typically do our work in the a.m. and then swim, or recover from swimming the day before, in the afternoon. The day after a swim party is really quiet around here. I love summertime.

The new garden area has no raised beds and I'm thinking about growing pumpkins, watermelon and cantelope, even though it's a new area. Maybe the hubs will put in some pipe for me over there. He really wants the watermelon and cantelope. He asked why I would want pumpkins, "For pies" I replied, then I said "Okay, you got me, they're good for the chickens." He just nodded his head.

 

[Momma2bellas]

Hello everyone. I'm in Topeka and new to the group. Have been reading a lot on here before I got my girls. Started with 2 Bantams, now 2 1/2 weeks old then received another one which passed Sun. so as my Dad stated you can't just have 2 so now have another 4 silkies which are 4 days old. Sure hope to learn a lot and make my babies have a great life.

 

[sharol]

OK, gross picture alert.

I did a necropsy on my little white EE. She was clearly egg bound with several eggs and a lot of clear yellowish fluid in the lower abdomen/bowel.

However, that isn't my question. This is a picture of part of the bowel and a captured egg. It is covered with hard white bumps. Any idea what I'm looking at?

 

[MrsProf]

@Anderson Lowe , We just had to fix a giant water leak ourselves. It almost makes me long for the days when we rented, because then we just called and let someone else handle it.

Oh you all have me antsy to get my garden planted. I have 105 plants in the greenhouse that would just love to get in the ground, but I didn't want to till when it was so stinking wet and compact the soil. Now it might be too dry! Just no winning!

12 of the 28 chicks are going to leave us on Sunday, which will be great for the others, it will give them some more room. I told my DH how many we are keeping and he tried to talk me down to a smaller number, but I informed him that if we keep 5 of each breed, knowing my luck we might get 5 hens total! I did tell the boys when we pick which ones stay, that we will choose the smaller slower feathering ones in hopes that they will be pullets. Maybe I just need to learn to vent sex. I could probably make a bunch of money going around and sexing chicks for people! (Like I need more to do!)