Consolidated Kansas

[cherwill]

I've seen the Chicken Poop at Cook's Nook, but not in that display!

We went to Orscheln's to get some crumbles and scratch and somehow came out with these:

They were the last four, or else they only had four in the first place. DH muttered some unkind things about me, but he didn't try to stop me.

 

[Trish44]

cherwill, oh my what cuties! You did what I so wanted to do when I went to Orschelyn's, but had to tear myself away from those bins. I already have chicks coming on two different orders so I really have to stay away.

 

[HEChicken]

Too cute Cherwill!

I see that Chicken Poop lip balm every time I go to Atwoods but didn't realize it was developed right here. I seem to remember one time seeing its sub-title was something like "It won't cure your dry lips but it sure will make you stop licking them". I thought that was hilarious but I haven't seen it on the packaging lately so maybe not enough people got it. I know I quoted it on another thread one time, and someone responded quite seriously, informing me it wasn't ACTUALLY made from chicken poop. Some people just don't have a sense of humor.

Or maybe mine is too dry. I was at the Park City Atwoods the other day and an employee was hanging around me while I was trying to hang around the chick bins, telling me about his experience with ducks and geese. He told me all of their names (which were weird) and then apologized for the weird names saying "that's what you get when you let your 6YO name the animals. She named the dog 'Broccoli'". I agreed that was a weird name and he went on to say "She's like a 1-pound chihuahua" so I said "Yes, but she's green, right?" (ya know, Broccoli is green.......) and he looked at me like I was some kind of idiot and slowly said, "No, she's brown". Oooookkkaaaayyyy then....guess we don't have much else to talk about. Or like I said, maybe my sense of humor is just too dry.

So we closed on our new house today. Its kind of an anti-climax because we won't be moving out there for awhile yet. As part of the agreement, the sellers are staying on in the house and leasing it back from us for the first 30 days so we don't even have keys to it yet. But as we were leaving, they said in reality they are moving out next week and will just have some of their stuff there through the month so I'm planning to get out there and start building in the next couple of weeks - can't wait.

Oh yeah - took DD to a physio appt and the Physio asked about our plans. I mentioned buying the house and how busy I'm going to be, saying "I'll be setting up vegie gardens, and compost bins and building chicken coops and that sort of thing". He just kind of looked at me then said "I didn't understand ANYTHING you just said". I guess I get so used to talking to like-minded people on here, that I forget not everyone composts and grows stuff and raises animals. It was actually quite an eye-opening moment for me.

 

[checoukan]

They really are!! look like they may be ee's, of some sort. Wonder what color they will be, I think I see some lavendar, or blue?

 

[ChooksChick]

Ivy, I keep forgetting to tell you I'm sorry about your doe. It's never easy to have a loss, and you guys have had it pretty rough lately! I pray the road smoothes out for you.

Danz, do keep us updated on your folks- I'm still keeping you all in my prayers.

Okay, Wichita trip retake: I'm looking at Thursday, I think.

 

[WichitaKidd]

Just over a week into my new adventure with chicks & I'm already stressing about, of all things, the sex of my chicks. I ended up buying out of the straight run bin simply because the pullet bin that had 'sexed' birds didn't have any breeds I was looking for. So I decided to try my hand at sexing them myself; ambitious for a total amateur right?

Checked the wing feathers at a couple days old, 2 of the chicks definitely showed 2 different lengths of feathers (my 2 unknown mystery chicks). From what I've read, this is supposed to mean they are female. The other 2 chicks (the australorps) feathers weren't as defined & kind of iffy so I tried another test.
Read somewhere that if you hold a chick until it calms down & flip it over on it's back, if it doesn't fight to flip back over it's a good chance it's a female. 3 out of the 4 chicks were comfortable on their back; the 4th one freaked out.
Only other method I've read about is 'vent' sexing which sounds too dangerous if you're not an expert at it. Not even going to try it.
Anyone have any other 'tests' to determine sex that I can experiment with?

Hoped that between the 2 tests I'd end up with mostly females, but now that the chicks are starting to get their feathers in I'm beginning to think that my first attempts at sexing were way off & I have all roos. So far in my search to determine the breed(s) of my 2 mystery chicks, people keep suggesting they are both roos & these are the 2 birds that tested 'female'. Uggh! Probably still too soon to know for sure, but since my goal in getting chickens were for the eggs roos aren't going to help me meet that goal. Time will tell & if it turns out they're roos, I'll be looking to get rid of them; first dibs of course to my BYC & KPS peeps.

So far I'm having fun with this new hobby. Chicks are doing great, eating well, growing fast & NO PASTY BUTT!

 

[averytds]

There were a ton just like that here at Orscheln's. DS and I wondered at the color too. Would have taken some home, but they were the "fryer special". Don't have the time or room for them right now.


Before you order antigen again, next time see if you can share with anyone. Also buy from whoever has the latest exp date if there's a difference. I would buy some from you. Ever get to SE KS?

 

[tntblake]

Just over a week into my new adventure with chicks & I'm already stressing about, of all things, the sex of my chicks. I ended up buying out of the straight run bin simply because the pullet bin that had 'sexed' birds didn't have any breeds I was looking for. So I decided to try my hand at sexing them myself; ambitious for a total amateur right?

Checked the wing feathers at a couple days old, 2 of the chicks definitely showed 2 different lengths of feathers (my 2 unknown mystery chicks). From what I've read, this is supposed to mean they are female. The other 2 chicks (the australorps) feathers weren't as defined & kind of iffy so I tried another test.
Read somewhere that if you hold a chick until it calms down & flip it over on it's back, if it doesn't fight to flip back over it's a good chance it's a female. 3 out of the 4 chicks were comfortable on their back; the 4th one freaked out.
Only other method I've read about is 'vent' sexing which sounds too dangerous if you're not an expert at it. Not even going to try it.
Anyone have any other 'tests' to determine sex that I can experiment with?

Hoped that between the 2 tests I'd end up with mostly females, but now that the chicks are starting to get their feathers in I'm beginning to think that my first attempts at sexing were way off & I have all roos. So far in my search to determine the breed(s) of my 2 mystery chicks, people keep suggesting they are both roos & these are the 2 birds that tested 'female'. Uggh! Probably still too soon to know for sure, but since my goal in getting chickens were for the eggs roos aren't going to help me meet that goal. Time will tell & if it turns out they're roos, I'll be looking to get rid of them; first dibs of course to my BYC & KPS peeps.

So far I'm having fun with this new hobby. Chicks are doing great, eating well, growing fast & NO PASTY BUTT!

Boys always seem to stand taller and feather slower than the girls. I have also heard that the females will hunker down a little if you reach in for them quickly and surprise them and the boys will look up and not cower. I don't know if that really works though. I think the best thing is watching for comb development. I can usually tell my sexes on most single comb breeds pretty accurately by a 3 weeks and usually have a pretty good guess around 2. I think you are just going to have to wait for them to feather/grow a little more. I know the wait is hard! I hate that waiting game!

 

[cherwill]

I have no clue what these little girls will look like when they're older. It amazes me how much different they look when they grow up. This will put us at 10 birds, which is just about as much as we have room for. I'm really enjoying everyone's stories of hatching chicks and your mail order eggs and birds! All these ways of trying to sex the chicks are interesting. We have held all four of the new girls (being optimistic) and they will lay on their backs in our hands without a struggle. I hope that means something besides just that they're tired! They came from a pullet bin, so at least two should be pullets, right?

Ivy, I'm sorry about your doe. Surely you're due for some good luck soon.

Tweety, we haven't been to Inman for a couple of years since DH's parents moved here to McPherson and the last nephew there graduated. We'll have to take a drive sometime and look for that house; it sounds cool.

HEChicken, I think your sense of humor is fine. You just ran into a couple of humorless idiots! Some years ago I was talking with some friends and one said he wanted to build a tower to live in. He thought he'd have teflon walls for easier cleanup and I said, "But how will you know when the spaghetti's done?" (because it won't stick to the walls, is what I was thinking). He started laughing like crazy and everyone else looked at us like we were both escapees from the mental hospital. To this day we don't know whether or not it scares us that we both understood each that quickly. LOL

I understand that exchange with the physio, though. That's why I'm so happy to have found you all, people who enjoy talking about and doing those kinds of things. I count myself lucky to have a couple of neighbors who enjoy talking food and cooking as much as I do. They tolerate some garden discussion since they used to garden a little. My mother-in-law had to scale back her garden a lot when she moved here to town, but it's still much bigger than most town-dwellers. Other than those people, I usually get a blank stare, "uh huh" and a change of subject when I bring these things up.

 

[Ivywoods]

Wichitakid-the best way to tell roosters and pullets apart is the roosters lay eggs and the hens crow. No wait, maybe I got that wrong. Anyway, I've found a lot of these early "sexing" techniques as unreliable as my first statement. If it's not a varieitey that you can sex by feather color, it is easy to get fooled. I had an ameraucana rooster last fall that was at least 6 months old before I was able to tell he was a roo. The worst part of that was that he was "spoken for" as a pullet. I had to sell one of the pullets I had planned to keep in order to make the situation right.

Hawkeye-Glad your eggs arrived in good shape. Keep us posted on your hatch. I hope you get a good hatch. They will be awesome.

Danz-How's your mom? Britt is doing great. She is such a sweetheart. I just love her happy dog look. I didn't see Runt or Buddy when I got home, but I could hear them down in the woods to the west doing some pretty ferocious barking.

HEChicken-Oh, my. Yes some people just have no idea why anyone would want to do anything with animals that POOP or in a garden that is DIRTY or anything like that. I'm like you. No one I work with has any interest in a lot of the things I am interested in. I guess I'm kind of an unusual girl. I grew up on a farm and I started driving a combine at the age of 13 every summer on a custom harvest crew until I went off to college. I've done a lot of things that most people never dream of. I love just about anything that is outdoorsy. Besides chickens and farmlife I LOVE to hunt. I have to be very careful about talking to people about hunting. Some folks are not only not hunters but very anti-hunting. For me, it's like raising a garden or raising your own animals for meat. I eat what I hunt. Maybe that's part of the reason I love this forum. There isn't anyone I associate with regularly that gives a rip about a lot of the things that interst me, such as chickens. I guess we will just have to help each other in respect to "talking chicken."

Chooks-With some of your articles we could get this wiki thing going pretty quickly. I have an article in mind that I want to write, but I'm just waiting for the right circumstances for pictures to accompany the article.

Trish-Glad you got you hen out of the rafters. It makes me think back to when I was a kid and one of the varieites I had were some beautiful silver spangled hamburgs. Those crazy things would fly up to the rafters and I'd be darned if I could ever catch them. They flew like sparrows. They were top quality but they drove me nuts. Maybe your new hen could take up company with your crazy lakenvelders and you could call them the 3 stoogesses.

Bama-Thanks for the offer. That is so nice. Mike has been doing fairly well about doing what he is supposed to , but on the days that he feels good he does try to push it too far. As far as his diet, though, I've been happy about how he is handling it. He is doing much better than I thought the old hardhead would.