Consolidated Kansas

[pikeman94]

Pikeman, looks like it's pretty much done!! You have moved fast on this one!! Bravo for such an incredibly cute coop!! Great job, it looks really well made and well thought out. I'm really loving it!

I did have much of a choice. The other coop has run it's course and I needed more space. The design was well thought out to begin with. I just added a few things to make it more sturdy and to allow for the modifications I put on it. I am totally digging this design from the standpoint that it will winter well and have a good amount a ventilation. I may add a window later, but for now I just need to get the coop rebuild across the finish line. If anyone ever wants to come see what I did or has question on how I built this thing, let me know.

 

[lizzyGSR]

I agree with Hawkeye, Lizzy. That yellow one looks like a goose.
I can't tell from your pictures if your new ducks are brown or black. That makes a difference. The duckling looks like it could be an cayuga except for the white marks in the feet. I would assume if the parents are brown it is what they are or a mix.The white duck could be an Ancona. They often have colored speckles on their beak and the top of their head along with some colored marks on their body. Wish you had close ups. Any of them of course could be crosses which changes everything.

The information I have on these ducks:
- They came from a hatchery, probably a mail order one as we don't have anything like that close by.
- My DH's uncle got them for my DH's grandma. She didn't order them and doesn't know what they are.
- They are a little more than a year old.

Do hatcheries sell crosses?

On the duckling... I'm no expert on ducks, but I'm guessing that the majority of DH's grandma's ducks were swedish. She did have two white ones and one of the females is NOT a swedish. My guess is that she's a rouen, though I'm not 100% sure on that one either. I have no way of knowing which duck hatched the duckling or which one the father was (Out of 20 ducks, only 5 were females). I'm pretty sure that one of the females pictured below is the mama duck, I just don't know which one.

I went out last night and tried to get better pictures. They have never been handled very much and so are scared of me. They wouldn't let me get very close so these are the best I could get. I'll post pics, describe them, and tell you my guesses. You can tell me if you think I'm right or wrong.

Here are the new ducks (from left to right):

• The one in front is grey with a large white patch on its chest. I'm guessing this one is a swedish.
• The next one in line is brown. My guess is a Rouen.
• The third one is the white one with the black spots on its beak. I thought this was a pekin, but when I brought it home and compared it to my pekins, I no longer think so. This one is smaller than my Pekins and the bill isn't nearly as bright of an orange.
• The last one in line is grey with some darker speckles on its back. Most of the ducks my DH's grandma had were black or grey with white chests. Because of that, I'm guessing this one is also a swedish, even though it doesn't really have the large white spot on the chest. I didn't really notice that any of the others had darker flecks, though, so maybe this one is something entirely different.

Here's a close-up of the white one and the one I believe to be a Rouen.


Here's the best picture I could get of the two grey ducks.


And here's one of all of the adult ducks together. The two at the bottom of the pictures are my Pekins. The new additions are at the top.

 

[Hawkeye95]

Ivy-- HAPPY EARLY Birthday!!

Lizzy, can't help you identify your ducks, I have no clue what breeds there are. But even if your grandma bought the ducks from a hatchery-- they would at that point be pure bred, as I don't believe they sell mixes. However, are these the original birds straight from the hatchery? You have some babies there-- in which case could be mixes from whatever bird decided to breed the other.

Pikeman, can't wait to see it all finished, and yes, you did have a well thought out design to begin with, but this larger version is so nice! I think you're just going to be so thrilled to have a bigger coop for the girls.


Okay, and for those of you who don't know-- I've been toying around with the idea of building a greenhouse for a couple of years now. At first I was looking at kits and realized they are EXPENSIVE. wow. So then I was looking at smaller builds, and more lately, more DIY greenhouses. Of course, right now, I'm just dreaming because it would be pretty dumb to build something right now and then have to sell our property next year. But I guess that gives me a year to think about how or what I want to do. The other day-- this was posted on the coop section-- they had a greenhouse that was partially deconstructed, but the COOL thing about it is that it was all made out of glass doors! And how cute would that look??

They didn't take the best pictures of it, but it gave me a really good idea! Wouldn't that be cute to do a greenhouse like that? And then if I built it so that all the doors could open, that would be great ventilation when needed!

This one-- a DIY'r built out of storm windows, the metal kind. I thought this was neat too!

 

[JosieChick]

Hawkeye- That is really cool! You can find old storm windows and doors on craigslist all the time, most of the time for free!

Karen- Happy belated birthday and congrats on the blue egg!! I love my blue eggs, they are so much fun!

Ivy- Glad you are well, we were starting to worry about you! Happy Birthday and hope you have a fabulous day.

Danz- Hope all goes well with Miss Marshmallow today. I would think swelling on the gosling was more of an injury. Is this the gosling that had trouble hatching? I wonder if it has a small deformity and now that it is getting heavier having a harder time walking with it? I think it would be worth trying antibiotics and pain meds to see if that helps. I believe you can use Tylan in geese pretty easily and maybe your vet would give you some metacam? My vet gave our goose injectable metacam. DH had a duck that was attacked by a dog that he saw at the clinic the other day and he said he gave it banamine for the pain because that was recommended for pain and inflammation in waterfowl. That would be easier to get from a large animal vet that might be closer to you? Poor little goobie, I hope it is ok!!

Just had some folks out for the last 2 hours to look at my lease mare. I think they really liked her which would be great because she needs to get to work and lose some weight. I have to get these darn trees in today, they are starting to look parched. Thank heavens it is a bit cooler today!

 

[lizzyGSR]

Lizzy, can't help you identify your ducks, I have no clue what breeds there are. But even if your grandma bought the ducks from a hatchery-- they would at that point be pure bred, as I don't believe they sell mixes. However, are these the original birds straight from the hatchery? You have some babies there-- in which case could be mixes from whatever bird decided to breed the other.

The adult ducks that I got from my DH's grandma are the original ones from the hatchery. The duckling I have is offspring of the ones that originally came from the hatchery, and I have no way to tell who the parents are. However, most of my DH's grandma's drakes looked like the same variety to me. She had one drake that was white, but the rest looked like swedish to me. 2 of the ducks look like swedish to me, and a third might be. So, while the duckling could be mixed, it could also be a pure bred.

 

[cherwill]

Busy day! Because...

It's my birthday and yes, I think D-Day is appropriate for my arrival on the planet. No, no, not the same year just month and day!

Okay, so the very best thing I got for my birthday today is my very first egg!!!!!! It's one of the EE's eggs and it's a chalky blue/green -- so pretty!!!! It just doesn't get better than that for a crazy chicken lady!

Not a good picture, but you get the idea. It's so cute!!!!!!

Congratulations and happy (late) birthday!

So then I was up at 6:30 this morning again. I've got to get Marshmallow wrangled and get her ready to go to the vet for her spaying after bit. I didn't try to pen her last night like I did the first time. I just removed the food bowl from all the dogs about midnight. I think it will be easiest to just get her to come in the house, give her her pill when the time comes and then handle her from there. DH is home this morning so he can help me get her in the truck. Wish I could count on her staying in the back. I know she would be much more comfortable riding in my car. I just can't have her crawling in front of my face while I'm driving.
I'm not even going to try to put her in the dog crate. It will just upset her worse.

Good luck!

I folks! Sorry I've been missing in action. I've just been SUPER busy, and really preoccupied with some projects going on.

Happy Birthday Karen! Today is my oldest son's birthday, too! AND TOMORROW IS MY BIRTHDAY! But don't look for me on here.... I've got plans for sure. Also, I think it is time I start counting birthdays in REVERSE.

Wish I had time to reply to everyone, but gosh, the coop builders are doing great jobs, and congrats to all on the new hatches, newly aquired birds and first eggs.

Gotta run. I'll have to catch up later.

Happy birthday, Ivy!

Ivy-- HAPPY EARLY Birthday!!

Lizzy, can't help you identify your ducks, I have no clue what breeds there are. But even if your grandma bought the ducks from a hatchery-- they would at that point be pure bred, as I don't believe they sell mixes. However, are these the original birds straight from the hatchery? You have some babies there-- in which case could be mixes from whatever bird decided to breed the other.

Pikeman, can't wait to see it all finished, and yes, you did have a well thought out design to begin with, but this larger version is so nice! I think you're just going to be so thrilled to have a bigger coop for the girls.


Okay, and for those of you who don't know-- I've been toying around with the idea of building a greenhouse for a couple of years now. At first I was looking at kits and realized they are EXPENSIVE. wow. So then I was looking at smaller builds, and more lately, more DIY greenhouses. Of course, right now, I'm just dreaming because it would be pretty dumb to build something right now and then have to sell our property next year. But I guess that gives me a year to think about how or what I want to do. The other day-- this was posted on the coop section-- they had a greenhouse that was partially deconstructed, but the COOL thing about it is that it was all made out of glass doors! And how cute would that look??

They didn't take the best pictures of it, but it gave me a really good idea! Wouldn't that be cute to do a greenhouse like that? And then if I built it so that all the doors could open, that would be great ventilation when needed!

This one-- a DIY'r built out of storm windows, the metal kind. I thought this was neat too!

That's a great idea; I wouldn't have thought of doors. Maybe I'll get a greenhouse one day ...

Lizzy, I don't know anything about ducks except yours are sure pretty.

My niece had her adenoids removed yesterday so we spent some time visiting her. Didn't get much else done except harvested what will probably be the last of the chard. Today I need to cut lettuce and some of the herbs. We never got out to pull any of the beets, so that's probably part of what we'll do tomorrow, as well as what is probably the last of the peas. They're starting to go brown since it's gotten hotter and I don't think they'll last much longer.

 

[chicken danz]

I'm starting to get worried. Marshmallow went in for surgery at 10:00. They said they'd call when she was out of surgery. No call yet and it is nearing 1:00 PM. Makes me a nervous wreck. They were going to do a check on her skin and see if they can find what causes her allergies and scratching, and give her her rabies booster too. I am hoping to get her on some medication for her itching. Things went pretty smoothly with her being medicated this morning. The trip was not bad at all this time.
I've been washing eggs to take to town. I must have broke 2 dozen while I was at it. I have no idea what I've going to do with all the extras I have. I only have orders for 16 dozen. I took a picture of what I just washed. You can see my unfinished back splash behind the counter. See why I need to move some excess chickens?

 

[Trish44]

IVY, Happy Birthday early! I have been wondering where you have been also. I hope you have a great birthday tomorrow.

Hawkeye, I absolutely love that greenhouse with the doors, who would have thought of that! I'll bet you could do that pretty easy with your talents. Hey, I'm going to send you a PM about your trip to Lawrence. My spider bite got worse yesterday, it's the weirdest thing. I made the bad mistake of putting on my garden shoe & I guess it caused the poison to get distributed more around the area by putting pressure on it. I ended up with two more areas that almost look like burns. They were really painful last night when I came in from working on my turkey pen. It took me until dark last night to get the pen finished & get the birds moved out. I didn't even get all of my chores done so I had to finish them this morning. Anyway, I came in & the foot was just hurting terribly, so I got some really hot water & epsom salts & soaked the foot first & then later I iced it. It's not hurting so much today, but now I have 3 spots to deal with instead of 1. I guess I can't put a closed shoe on that foot for now. It's hard to find something to wear on it.

The turkeys seem much happier in their new pen & now have decided that their house isn't so bad after all. I didn't close it in the front, I just made a box with the front open into the pen. It has a lid that is hinged so I can get in there if I need to & then there is a gate at the other end of the pen for me to get food & water in to them. It's not any beautiful piece of work, but it's functional. I'm still using the wood I salvaged, I just had to go & buy the hardware cloth & hinges & all for it. I still need to get two more safety hooks for the box lid, I only got two & I used those for the gate. I found that the hardware cloth is cheaper at Atwoods as well as chicken wire is also, it kind of surprised me that they were cheaper on those things than at Lowe's. There was an $8 difference in price for a roll of chicken wire from Lowe's to Atwoods, so that's quite a bit of difference. I only used the chicken wire on my pen inside the run, the one outside is all hardware cloth & some small gauge fence I had around for the top. I just overlapped the fence to make it more secure since it is only 24 inches wide & the pen is more like 36 or 38 inches wide.

Pikeman, good job on the coop, I can't wait to see it all done!

Lizzy, there's not a lot of difference between the Rouen ducks & Mallards, I used to have some of both years ago. I was wondering if the chocolate colored ones are Khaki Campbell, I used to have some of those too. The black & white one looks like a Swedish, but I'm no duck expert.

I have chicks hatching today. So far I have two lavender Orpingtons hatched & one that looks more like a buff Orpington, so the people I got the eggs from must have had both & gave me the wrong egg. It sure doesn't look like a lavender to me. I had a really odd looking Welsummer chick hatch last night, it's blonde with carmel colored stripes, almost an albino looking Welsummer. I got the eggs from a friend who only has Welsummers & it came out of a Welsummer egg. I will have to take some pics later & show you the two that hatched so far side by side. I read on the Welsummer thread that sometimes they can have a white gene. Has anyone heard of that before? I'm so thrilled that some of my Orpingtons are going to hatch at least, I have 4 more eggs that haven't pipped yet, but I can hear peeping in a couple of them. I have one more Ameraucana pipping down there & I can hear another one peeping too. I got my other batch of peacock eggs this morning & they arrived in fine shape, I have them resting now on the counter. I think I'm going to try incubating them in the Brinsea just to see if it makes any difference since I put the others in a large egg tray in the cabinet incubator. I can lay them down in the Brinsea & turn them by hand like I was told to do & just compare the two batches to see which is more successful, it should be interesting. I managed to get the eggs in the house without my DH seeing them since I was outside doing chores when the mail lady came. I also had another batch of Welsummer eggs come & 3 were broken & boy was that a mess. They had packed the eggs in a big 18 hole carton in what looked like kleenex & after the 3 eggs broke the yolk just spread all over the other eggs sticking all of that tissue all over all the eggs, it was quite a mess picking it off. We'll see if any of these eggs hatch if they had that much shaking around. I emailed the person telling them how they arrived. I don't expect any replacements, but I do think they should know that their packing wasn't very good. My peacock eggs on the other hand were packed very well & arrived in great shape.

Danz, Oh my gosh, I can't imagine having that volume of eggs to gather, you truly do need to cut down on some of your birds! Wow is all I can say.

 

[Kansaseq]

Ivy, it's possible Marshmallow's surgery got pushed back for some reason. But if you're worried, call them. Clients call us all the time to check on their pets.

 

[pikeman94]

I'm starting to get worried. Marshmallow went in for surgery at 10:00. They said they'd call when she was out of surgery. No call yet and it is nearing 1:00 PM. Makes me a nervous wreck. They were going to do a check on her skin and see if they can find what causes her allergies and scratching, and give her her rabies booster too. I am hoping to get her on some medication for her itching. Things went pretty smoothly with her being medicated this morning. The trip was not bad at all this time.
I've been washing eggs to take to town. I must have broke 2 dozen while I was at it. I have no idea what I've going to do with all the extras I have. I only have orders for 16 dozen. I took a picture of what I just washed. You can see my unfinished back splash behind the counter. See why I need to move some excess chickens?

All I can say is - ****!