Consolidated Kansas

[Hawkeye95]

Well I had a puzzling but gruesome discovery yesterday and am very confused about what transpired. I had a mam Phoenix that hatched 10 chicks the day before. We had actually rescued two of them from the top of the barn. They had been hatched up in the ceiling space and the others had managed to jump down to the Mom. But the other 8 were under her care. Yesterday DH couldn't find the chicks anywhere . When I was out feeding I found some feathers (but not excessive amounts) and the mama hen's head only. Everything else was gone. It was right in the center of the yard where the dogs should have absolutely stopped any ruckus going on. I assume whatever it was had grabbed the chicks and the mother had died trying to defend the babies.
I am very confused about what it could have been. We have had some predator owls steal a few birds recently but never found any body parts or feathers. Do you think an owl might have snatched her head off and took the rest? There is no way any kind of ruckus could have occurred that at least one of the dogs wouldn't have intervened. DH was out last night every couple of hours and the only thing he saw was an owl which he frightened off with shot in the air.
I've been shutting up most of the birds at night because of the owl and hawk activity but this girl was staying in the barn with her chicks. I can't figure out why they would have been out in the yard unless they got chased out of the barn and I am just not sure if it was a owl or what. It really bothers me that my dogs didn't prevent this and what for sure the predator was.
I may borrow a couple of game cams from a friend and focus on that part of the yard. I need to know what is going on.
At least I have two of her babies. Maybe I should have taken them all and they might all still be alive.
I lost one of my new Swedish flower hen chicks this morning to pasty butt. I never had a single case of it in the last hatch. I'm not sure why there would be any difference this time. I found 3 others that were getting it so I need to watch them really carefully. I guess I've been gone too much the last couple days to notice it.

Wow, wonder what the deal is?? We've had a couple of odd things around here. First of all-- not really quite so odd, but to me it is.. We were having dinner the other night and my DH looks out the window and calmly says there is a hawk in your chicken pen. I looked at him a second, because he just continued to eat. I jumped up, looked outside and ran for the door, grabbing garden shoes on and ran as fast as I could out there! I was waving and yelling at the same time. The hawk was intent... he ignored me until I got REALLY close to him. He was trying to decide which of my fat layers he wanted. He took off and I counted all of my birds-- all there, and I've been really jumpy since then. That has NEVER happened before. All of the girls were far under the coop hunching down and quiet as a mouse. So at least they did know they were in danger. The hawk would have had to go under the coop to get one. But I'm sure that is exactly what he was thinking.

The other thing was that my mom spotted a Civet Cat slinking through the back acreage on her property down by her pond. She was out there in her garden and it surprised her and at first she thought it was as skunk, but said, Nope! It was definitely not a skunk! I have personally never seen a Civet Cat in person, but she has when she used to live in SE Ks. With our crazy weather patterns, I'm becoming less surprised at the animals I see here. We've had badgers and armadillos lately. I believe civet cats are from Mexico-- isn't that bizarre?!?

I think a game cam would be a good idea if the predator comes back. Figure out what the heck is going on.

Wow! I missed a ton of posts! Hate when that happens.

Yesterday, I did one of the dumbest things of my entire life. I swear I am the most disorganized people on the planet. Just before slamming out the door, I sent a paypal payment for some hatching eggs and then blasted off. I drove 3 hours, waited 1 hour, drove 3 hours back home with no eggs. Before writing the person in a cranky manner I checked my paypal history and my payment not only didn't go through, it was non-existent. What? I couldn't believe it. I didn't have a phone number for the individual so couldn't call. Heavy sigh. $50 for gasoline, $12 for tolls and not one egg to show for it.

I've decided I'm too incompetent to purchase hatching eggs and meet up with someone. Sheesh, what a bummer. I've tried to contact the person but I'm sure she just thinks I tried to cheat her when I'm just truly that much of a dingbat.

That's one weekend I'm best off wiping from my feeble memory!

For the record, I would LOVE to have a small milk cow like a Dexter or mini Jersey. DH is not in the least bit interested in cows or goats. That's fine, but it's a bit of a buzz kill.

Sunflowerparrot, where do you go to church? Just curious. I have a Derby address, even though I live on 5 acres and am closer to Rose Hill.

I am planning to attend HEChicken's get together, looking forward to seeing you all. Hope Shana can make it!

Have a good one!

Oh no!! That sounds awful! I can't believe it didn't go thru. Maybe you didn't click on a button to finish sending it. So sad. Have you talked to Shana?? I sure hope she can come down too! I love her blog and meeting her at your place was so much fun!

 

[HEChicken]

Well I had a puzzling but gruesome discovery yesterday and am very confused about what transpired. I had a mom Phoenix that hatched 10 chicks the day before. We had actually rescued two of them from the top of the barn. They had been hatched up in the ceiling space and the others had managed to jump down to the Mom. But the other 8 were under her care. Yesterday DH couldn't find the chicks anywhere . When I was out feeding I found some feathers (but not excessive amounts) and the mama hen's head only. Everything else was gone. It was right in the center of the yard where the dogs should have absolutely stopped any ruckus going on. I assume whatever it was had grabbed the chicks and the mother had died trying to defend the babies.
I am very confused about what it could have been. We have had some predator owls steal a few birds recently but never found any body parts or feathers. Do you think an owl might have snatched her head off and took the rest? There is no way any kind of ruckus could have occurred that at least one of the dogs wouldn't have intervened. DH was out last night every couple of hours and the only thing he saw was an owl which he frightened off with shot in the air.
I've been shutting up most of the birds at night because of the owl and hawk activity but this girl was staying in the barn with her chicks. I can't figure out why they would have been out in the yard unless they got chased out of the barn and I am just not sure if it was a owl or what. It really bothers me that my dogs didn't prevent this and what for sure the predator was.
I may borrow a couple of game cams from a friend and focus on that part of the yard. I need to know what is going on.
At least I have two of her babies. Maybe I should have taken them all and they might all still be alive.
I lost one of my new Swedish flower hen chicks this morning to pasty butt. I never had a single case of it in the last hatch. I'm not sure why there would be any difference this time. I found 3 others that were getting it so I need to watch them really carefully. I guess I've been gone too much the last couple days to notice it.

Wow - so sorry, but you beat me to it - I was going to suggest a game cam. That is very puzzling that all of that happened with three LGD's not knowing a thing.

Yesterday, I did one of the dumbest things of my entire life. I swear I am the most disorganized people on the planet. Just before slamming out the door, I sent a paypal payment for some hatching eggs and then blasted off. I drove 3 hours, waited 1 hour, drove 3 hours back home with no eggs. Before writing the person in a cranky manner I checked my paypal history and my payment not only didn't go through, it was non-existent. What? I couldn't believe it. I didn't have a phone number for the individual so couldn't call. Heavy sigh. $50 for gasoline, $12 for tolls and not one egg to show for it.

Oh my - so sorry for the wasted time and money on that one. I bet what happened is you put through the payment and it came up to a "confirm" screen and you had to hit one more final confirm before the payment would go through. I had that happen to me one time at Walgreens. I had uploaded some photos I wanted printed out for a specific purpose, and it gave me a time they would be ready. I waited until that time, drove to Walgreens and - they had no trace of the order. Feeling very disgruntled, I let the photo manager know what I thought of their service, only to come home and realize I never got a confirmation email either. That's when I realized I had never fully confirmed the order. Ooops.

 

[HEChicken]

Hawkeye, I'm glad I went back and read because you posted the same time I was writing. I had never heard of a civet cat so I had to google it so I'd know what it is if I ever see one. According to the first Wiki entry, civet cats are native to Africa and Asia and it didn't have any reference to them being in North America, so I went to the second Wiki page and it said there are a number of animals that are mistakenly called civet cats, that aren't. The one that seems most likely is what Wiki calls a Ring-tailed cat, and says it is related to a raccoon. Interestingly, it looks quite a bit like what we call possums in Australia (once again, a totally different animal to the opossums we have here), except that our possums do not have that ring-tail. Is this the animal your mother saw?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ring-tailed_Cat
Here is what it says about it:

Quote:

 

[chicken danz]

Oh Karen we are such a mess. I do stuff like that all the time!!! It's got to be an age thing. Did you at least get time without the kids or did they go too?
I'm so glad you are going to Heather's! It wouldn't be the same without you!
Well here is another puzzling thing. It looked like the head was pulled off, cause the neck bones were still attached, and there was no blood whatsoever any where. At least a possum or coon would leave bones. And the feathers only looked like a small struggle, not enough to indicated the hen being torn apart.
Even if the dogs are out chasing a predator at least one of them stays home. I don't think I've ever seen all three of them leave the yard at once when they were pursuing a predator. Do you think an owl could pull a chickens head off? I'm just not sure.
Karen, my ultimate goal is to get a Highland heifer and eventually have her bred so I could milk her. I love those cattle. I would spend a fortune for fencing but it would be worth it. I'd like a young one I could halter train.
Josie I'm thinking you should sell those RPs to Hawkeye now that she is staying!!!

 

[lizzyGSR]

We've had a couple of odd things around here. First of all-- not really quite so odd, but to me it is.. We were having dinner the other night and my DH looks out the window and calmly says there is a hawk in your chicken pen. I looked at him a second, because he just continued to eat. I jumped up, looked outside and ran for the door, grabbing garden shoes on and ran as fast as I could out there! I was waving and yelling at the same time. The hawk was intent... he ignored me until I got REALLY close to him. He was trying to decide which of my fat layers he wanted. He took off and I counted all of my birds-- all there, and I've been really jumpy since then. That has NEVER happened before. All of the girls were far under the coop hunching down and quiet as a mouse. So at least they did know they were in danger. The hawk would have had to go under the coop to get one. But I'm sure that is exactly what he was thinking.

I have recently noticed a hawk hanging around a lot. I've also noticed that my flock spends almost all of their time hanging out underneath low hanging objects. Yesterday, our dog (a chocolate lab) was chasing a baby hawk. After rescuing the poor bird, I noticed a large next at the tops of one of our old pine trees (roughly 40 feet tall). I think we've got a hawk next in one of our trees. It's neat to see but rather disconcerting with my birds.

 

[Trish44]

Josie, how many guineas do you have, what colors, & how old are they? If they're adults they would have to be penned for quite awhile or they will just take off if they're moved. Yes, Hawkeye, you need those RPs now since you will be around. I don't need any more since I have my trio & I have no more free pens at the moment.

Danz, do you have any more baby guineas? If so, what colors? That's terrible about your hen & chicks, I would want to know what was going on our there too. Maybe a game cam would be good to put out there for awhile so you can figure it out. My dogs do an awful lot of barking at night around here, so there must be a lot of critters out there. I just don't think I could keep chickens or any poultry for that matter without them.

Sunflowerparrot, I hope you get your new water heater installed this afternoon so you can have water again. Those little EEs you got are just beautiful, I love the color of them! They do seem to be getting big awfully fast, I hope they don't turn out to be all roosters because they're too pretty to eat!

checoukan, that is just terrible behavior for adults, that's no way to teach the children. I can't believe they would even do something like that.

 

[sunflowerparrot]

Sunflowerparrot, I hope you get your new water heater installed this afternoon so you can have water again. Those little EEs you got are just beautiful, I love the color of them! They do seem to be getting big awfully fast, I hope they don't turn out to be all roosters because they're too pretty to eat!

I will not be happy if they are roosters because Orshlens had them advertised as pullets and I paid pullet price - not straight run. I'm hoping I didn't make a mistake.. at what age can you get an idea if hen/roo?

 

[JosieChick]

Josie, how many guineas do you have, what colors, & how old are they? If they're adults they would have to be penned for quite awhile or they will just take off if they're moved. Yes, Hawkeye, you need those RPs now since you will be around. I don't need any more since I have my trio & I have no more free pens at the moment.

Danz, do you have any more baby guineas? If so, what colors? That's terrible about your hen & chicks, I would want to know what was going on our there too. Maybe a game cam would be good to put out there for awhile so you can figure it out. My dogs do an awful lot of barking at night around here, so there must be a lot of critters out there. I just don't think I could keep chickens or any poultry for that matter without them.

Sunflowerparrot, I hope you get your new water heater installed this afternoon so you can have water again. Those little EEs you got are just beautiful, I love the color of them! They do seem to be getting big awfully fast, I hope they don't turn out to be all roosters because they're too pretty to eat!

checoukan, that is just terrible behavior for adults, that's no way to teach the children. I can't believe they would even do something like that.

They are about 4 months old, there are two purple and two lavender and I think 2 are males but don't quote me on that. They are used to being cooped at night. They go in with all the other birds. I have never had any problems with them running off and they just follow the chickens right back in. They know the food and water is in there and have always hung right around. In fact, they stay closer to the coop than my chickens do. I just can't afford to feed over 100 birds and still manage to work on projects too. If they were penned for a couple weeks I am sure they would be no problem to free range.

 

[HEChicken]

Well, we had a kind of busy weekend. Our neighbor down the road came over yesterday and brush hogged our upper pasture for us, it looks so much better. Now we just need to spray for weeds and we should be in good shape. It was looking like a jungle up there. I pulled the horses off of it a few weeks ago to let the grass recover much to their chagrin.

I am selling my royal palm turkeys and guineas if anyone is interested. I need to lighten my feed load and concentrate on my birds that I am trying to breed seriously.

I am getting my neighbor to brush hog our pasture soon too. I just talked to them about it this weekend. When you say spray for weeds, are you spraying individual weeds, or spraying the whole pasture with something that only kills weeds?

How many RP's do you have, and how old are they?

Poor broilers - they just aren't even cute. I just provide feed to them 24/7 and when it's empty, I refill it. I am giving them a mix of my friend's feed that I use for my hens and adding about 1/4 of game feed to up to the protein content. They drink a lot of water it seems - more than "normal" chickens.

The 7 little hens (3 RIR and 4 EE) that I got from Orshlens sure seem to act like older roosters. They run and jump and kick at each other like they want to fight - at what age can you tell if RIR or EE are hens or roos? These little ones are just maybe 3 weeks old.

FWIW....I've heard it is better to raise broilers on a lower protein to prevent some of the issues they can have when fast growing, like legs breaking from being not well enough developed to carry their weight, flip etc. For the same reason, it is better to limit their intake to 12 hours a day rather than providing it 24/7. Mind you, all of this is only from research I've done. So far I've only had one little Cornish X and I raised him with my layers. Trying to keep up with them kept him from getting too big too fast and I think he was a lot healthier because he was out ranging with them rather than sitting in front of the feeder all day long. DH and I would like to raise some broilers sometime and plan on a tractor for them so we can move them every day to new graze. We just need to set up our outdoor kitchen so we can process them when the time comes.....

Both pullets and cockerels will do the chest bumping thing to determine pecking order, so don't worry too much about that. I would sure hope that you got what you paid for - all pullets. Unfortunately mistakes do get made and sexing is only about 90% accurate. I know Cherwill has had some bad luck, ending up with about 40% cockerels from the sexed pullets bins.

RIR you can tell fairly early because they have a single comb. Any sign of a comb getting large and/or pink, or wattles developing at an early age, is an indicator it could be a boy. I've seen wattles appear as early as 2 1/2 weeks, and a red comb by about 3 weeks in obvious boys. EE's, can be tougher since they don't have a single comb, but again, getting pink/red at an early age is not generally a good sign.

Josie, the chicks I got from you are doing great! This morning while weeding I found some caterpillars (the bad kind from my point of view; good kind if you are a chicken) and took them in to offer to the brooder. The little white Serama was the bravest and the first to grab a caterpillar. A chase ensued of course, but she got to eat her prize and came back for another, even though none of the others dared take a wriggling one out of my hand!

My hatch is over and it was my first 100% hatch

There was one that I thought had died in shell as it had pipped around 5:30am and by the time I checked on them last at 10pm, it hadn't enlarged the hole and I could see no signs of life. I decided to deal with it in the morning, went to sleep and was woken at 11:50pm by frantic peeping. I ran in to see what was going on, and it was the last chick. It had just hatched and was lying looking worn out, recovering from the effort. I guess once it got started, it zipped in a hurry. By morning, I couldn't even tell which one it was as it was fluffed and dried out, so I transferred them all to the brooder.

 

[JosieChick]

I have four RPs, they are about 4 months old now I believe. I am not sure on males/females yet. They all look the same to me! One has a slightly longer snood but who knows....

We are going to spray the entire pasture with something that kills weeds. The neighbor said when we go to buy it ask at the farm store and they will know what to get us. Our pasture is very weedy right now! It was a brome hay field before so the horses just mow it right down everytime we put them up there so they are off it for a while!

I am getting my neighbor to brush hog our pasture soon too. I just talked to them about it this weekend. When you say spray for weeds, are you spraying individual weeds, or spraying the whole pasture with something that only kills weeds?

How many RP's do you have, and how old are they?



Josie, the chicks I got from you are doing great! This morning while weeding I found some caterpillars (the bad kind from my point of view; good kind if you are a chicken) and took them in to offer to the brooder. The little white Serama was the bravest and the first to grab a caterpillar. A chase ensued of course, but she got to eat her prize and came back for another, even though none of the others dared take a wriggling one out of my hand!