Consolidated Kansas

[Dani4Hedgies]

Danz awesome news on the truck and yep who doesn't like playing with new toys

 

[Trish44]

He is actually going to replace the chicks and do things differently. I couldn't ask for much more than that. If they don't make it this time I'll know better but he offered me a refund as a second option. Good guy. Just needs some better experience.

I'm glad that you're going to get replacements, that stinks. I had that one time I got a box full of dead chicks from a person we both know, that was awful seeing all of those little bodies in that box. Then to top that off I had to freeze them till the PO wanted to see them for my insurance claim, ugh.

Hey y'all, my husband and I are constructing our coop. We have less space here in Kansas and have opted for a more compact moveable coop. We only have 6 chicks. Our road block right now is that I want the laying boxes to be bigger so that the girls have room to enter, turn around however they like to lay their eggs. I would also like the sides of the boxes to extend up for privacy.
I have read that you only need one box per 2 hens.
My husband wants to fit 4 boxes along each side 11 inches apart with 2x4s so the walls aren't very high but are thick.
Any experience with hens refusing to lay in a smaller space?
Am I crazy and this is perfectly fine for a laying box? Any thoughts would be helpful! Thanks!!

I have multiple nest boxes in my coop, of course I have a lot more chickens than you, but usually rule of thumb is one box for 5 hens. Mine don't use all of the boxes I have, like HEChicken said they do share but they usually have a favorite box too & get aggitated if they have to wait to get in to lay.

danz that's awesome news on the truck, I'm glad they didn't total it out & you could find parts.

@turboscooby07 those are some cute pigs, what breed are they? So how do you get access to your brooder house?

 

[sharol]

My gummy chick survived the day yesterday, so I gave her a bath last night. She was so stuck, she couldn't move her wings. Warm water in a warmed bathroom with a nice partial blow dry and she is looking better. Her head is still pretty messy, and I couldn't loosed the nasty stuff on her cheek and over part of her eye. I was concerned that the eye was damaged, but she is opening it a little. I put a drop of poly-vi-sol in a tiny dish of water in the hatcher where she is still hanging out (my old incubator), and I'm cautiously optimistic. She isn't moving very well (and she hatched yesterday morning) so that isn't good, but I just put in a new hatchling to keep her company and I'm watching to be sure she isn't picked on.

So far, all but 2 of the Orp eggs have hatched. One died in the shell after pipping -- no idea what the problem was. Another one hatched and had a fair amount of blood on it and in the shell, but it is up running around in the hatcher. One of the two remaining eggs has pipped and the other one show movement when candled, so we shall see.

Looks like a good hatch. Silly me, the one I'm really excited about is the EE egg (green) that hatched. I haven't had any luck hatching the green ones because the are pretty porous. Daddy was a Breda, mom is an EE I got at Orschlens 5 years ago. Now I have to figure out which chick it is. It has the large nares of the Breda, but I think there isn't much foot feathering.

I have 15 chicks hatched (including the weak sticky chick) out of 18 eggs, so that isn't too bad.

@Chicken Danz Is the mottle gene dominant? I have two chicks that look like the mottle chick that became Oreo. With daddy being a Jubilee, how does that work?

 

[chicken danz]

Quote: Yeah I got a couple boxes of dead chicks from that person. No insurance on these. The box was in great condition. Well my last shipment of geese took way too long to get there and one baby died on the way out of 6. I just issued a refund. It's so sad even from on line pictures. So far I've shipped over 40 and that's the first loss. Not too bad I guess. But it still breaks my heart.
My bigger boxes are supposed to be here today so next week I'll try to ship some older goslings for the first time.
I'm down to just one egg a day from the geese. I got all the broodies up except one goose who is sitting in a shelter by herself. Her eggs should be about due. The other remaining three were sitting on air. They have been there for over a month! I think I'm done with letting them sit at all. It isn't productive. There are some random duck eggs in there. These geese may hatch ducklings.
@sharol I think it is dominent when you have two pairs. So I'm thinking since it exists in the jubilee and the mottle it would be. The only thing would be you might end up with a few blotches of red here and there, but watching genetics I think the red will show only on the cockerels. Don't quote me on that.
I had all these other mottle chicks that grew up without mottling ....Grrrrr. I have one of my mottled roos in the pen with these black girls. It will be interesting when they start laying. I wonder if the offspring will be mottled. They are in one of the layer coops right now anyway so it really doesn't matter. They aren't laying yet although they are huge birds. I'm going to empty my mottle breeding pen. I haven't decided yet whether to keep my handsome boy or try to sell him. If I keep him I will have to butcher one of the free range roosters.

 

[Trish44]

@sharol it sounds like your hatch went pretty well, congrats! Yeah for some reason or another sometimes chicks just get to hatch & then die before they get out of the shell. Maybe they're just not strong enough to withstand hatching, it's pretty tiring for them pecking away at that shell enough to get out & then actually getting out. If you notice they just almost always sleep for awhile after that. I leave mine in the hatcher for awhile to rest & get dried & fluffed up, sometimes overnight if they just hatched before I'm heading to bed.

I still have an ongoing hatch that started yesterday, there are still stragglers left. I really hate it when they go too long because they don't tend to do as well if they do hatch at all.

 

[sharol]

@sharol it sounds like your hatch went pretty well, congrats! Yeah for some reason or another sometimes chicks just get to hatch & then die before they get out of the shell. Maybe they're just not strong enough to withstand hatching, it's pretty tiring for them pecking away at that shell enough to get out & then actually getting out. If you notice they just almost always sleep for awhile after that. I leave mine in the hatcher for awhile to rest & get dried & fluffed up, sometimes overnight if they just hatched before I'm heading to bed.

I still have an ongoing hatch that started yesterday, there are still stragglers left. I really hate it when they go too long because they don't tend to do as well if they do hatch at all.

I've been moving them to the extra incubator until they get fluffed and then to the brooder.

The sticky chick is still alive. She lost patches of feathers on her back during the hatch and she is still gummy on her head (couldn't get it wet enough to clean it), but she is trying. I ended up 17 chicks. I actually started with 21 or 22, but there were 18 after I removed the clears on day 10. I helped 3 (the last 3 that hatched). All but the sticky chick had pipped with no action for 24 hours. Both were moving when i checked in the pip hole, so I started chipping away. Both are smaller than their hatchmates, but getting along ok in the brooder.

I'm pleased with them. Now to find someone who wants to buy the 2 (or 3) Jubilees or maybe the possible mottles (3 of them). The others will just be a mix of Jubilee and something else (white, lavender, or black), so probably not saleable.

I love hatches. I just wish I had more room for the hatchlings.

 

[chicken danz]

Yep sharol you have the fever!!! We need to form a Hatchers Anonymous!!

 

[HEChicken]

Danz, I have a question for you since I know you do FF. I tried it once years ago and found it messy. I did it for a few weeks but then summer hit and it was too hot to do it outside and I didn't want it inside taking up a lot of space and making mess dripping. Then I read some more about it and realized it has to ferment for at least 4 days in order to achieve the nutritional benefits, so I decided I definitely didn't have the room to have 4 batches of it going at all times so....I gave it up.

But now I'm looking at all the whey I'm generating and it occurred to me it might be a good medium for FF. What do you think? I'm wondering if the natural ferments that are already in the whey, might speed up the process so I wouldn't have to ferment for the full 4 days in order to achieve the benefits?

I'm thinking about doing a small batch in a bucket and see what happens. Maybe just like one coffee can of grain to 4 cans of whey and see how they like it. Of course, with my gutter feeder, I also don't have a good way to serve it. I have a pipe that leads down to the feeder allowing me to fill it from the feed room and since the pellets are dry, they gravity feed down until they're gone, but usually last about halfway through the day so all the birds get a chance to go in and eat at some point. I don't think I could put the FF down that pipe without clogging it up, so feeding it will be more of a pain, but I guess I could reduce the amount I send down the pipe and put it out in a rubber pan instead. Hmmmm.....to think about.

 

[chicken danz]

Danz, I have a question for you since I know you do FF. I tried it once years ago and found it messy. I did it for a few weeks but then summer hit and it was too hot to do it outside and I didn't want it inside taking up a lot of space and making mess dripping. Then I read some more about it and realized it has to ferment for at least 4 days in order to achieve the nutritional benefits, so I decided I definitely didn't have the room to have 4 batches of it going at all times so....I gave it up.

But now I'm looking at all the whey I'm generating and it occurred to me it might be a good medium for FF. What do you think? I'm wondering if the natural ferments that are already in the whey, might speed up the process so I wouldn't have to ferment for the full 4 days in order to achieve the benefits?

I'm thinking about doing a small batch in a bucket and see what happens. Maybe just like one coffee can of grain to 4 cans of whey and see how they like it. Of course, with my gutter feeder, I also don't have a good way to serve it. I have a pipe that leads down to the feeder allowing me to fill it from the feed room and since the pellets are dry, they gravity feed down until they're gone, but usually last about halfway through the day so all the birds get a chance to go in and eat at some point. I don't think I could put the FF down that pipe without clogging it up, so feeding it will be more of a pain, but I guess I could reduce the amount I send down the pipe and put it out in a rubber pan instead. Hmmmm.....to think about.

I actually stopped doing fermented feed some time ago. It was just too much to keep up with. You don't need 4 different containers though. Just fix one and have enough in there for two days.Once yoru first batch has fermented, just take out enough for one day, and put new feed a water in and stir it well. The fermentation continues once you have it started.
I'm not sure about the whey. I know that @zigzag45 used kefir in his fermented feed. If you can contact him he might be able to tell you how it worked. I have read that it has too high a yeast content to be beneficial and produce the right by products. I really know nothing about whey other than it is supposed to be beneficial by itself. My first question would be, does it sour?
Very long day today while I had my little friend here. But we moved a lot of birds. Nice to have someone to act as a chicken catching helper.

 

[Trish44]

HEChicken here is a link to some reading on FF. From what I've read you can use whey, it sure would be worth a try since you have it. You could do your FF in your room where you keep chicks at times, the sunroom on the back. I only have one batch going for my chickens & like danz said you make extra to keep the fermentation going. I just replace what I use every day & let it sit at least 12 hours for the next day's feed. I use a lot less feed with the FF than dry feed & the birds love it. I feed it to my ducks, geese, & guineas as well.

http://naturalchickenkeeping.blogspot.com/p/fermented-feed.html?m=1