Cream Legbars

[ChicKat]

I think my temp must be high since I hatch at 20 days sometimes. I tried lowering it a tad and had a bad hatch.

kden, Puhi

So interesting that you say that I have hatches at 20-days - and I also have a friend that has hatches at 20-days.....(not all the chicks though)

 

[ChicKat]

I'm about twenty minutes from Raleigh, NC.
I honestly haven't kept many cockerels long enough to see spurs grow out that long, but it'd be pretty nice if he were a little younger. My roommates are convinced he's going to end up eviscerating me, so I suppose I'll have to have do something about them soonish. He's surprisingly non-aggressive though. Is that typical for the breed?

The hen is pretty dark, and I haven't seen any eggs out of her yet. If I'm lucky, she'll lay tomorrow, but after a long day at the auction, she's probably pretty stressed out.

And thank you!

My despurring wasn't that easy--- there was more blood than advertised, and the detachment was more difficult.... One thing that helped is to wrap the rooster in a towel and cover his head so he thinks it is dark outside. LOL My concern was for the hens he was breeding - he did have to walk a bit strangely too to avoid the spurs.

Here is a video of 'how to'

Here is my result:

I also think he hasn't forgiven me for despurring -- I have subsequently purchased some blood-stop-powder....we used it when dehorning cattle, and you can get it at feed store and TSC as well...different animals/chickens may have different amounts of blood I suspect..my guy had a lot.

ETA - Should you decide to despur your rooster, if the stubs that remain do get covered with a lot of blood-- you will want to keep him away from hens until he heals a bit IMO.

 

[lonnyandrinda]

So, what you're saying is, it may be causing the male chicks to just die...not turn all eggs into female chicks? The whole thing was just a desperate idea anyways. We've finally got our hatch rate back up, and the number of males hatching is crazy. On another odd note, our sex-link Cream mix eggs, never develop. Not this time, and not last time. I'm guessing that has something to do with the sex-links?

Exactly. I would not mess with the temperature. Just as more men father more sons than daughters or vice versa, some hens have more male eggs than female. In chickens it is the hens that determine gender. So if you are repeatedly having more male hatches it is something your hens are carrying.

It sounds like you are saying the sexlink eggs are infertile. How many hens are you using for sexlinks? If it's just one or two I'm guessing they just don't "like" the rooster or are avoiding him because he has enough other hens he's missing them when he makes his rounds. You could try penning them alone with the rooster for a little bit, and crack their eggs open each day until you start finding fertile ones. Sometimes a hen and rooster just aren't compatible personality wise and it just ain't happenin'! Could be if he IS mating them that he isn't making contact- you can trim the hen's butt feathers to help with that.

Rinda

 

[keket369]

Got an egg this morning and the picture doesn't do it justice! It's the bluest egg I've ever seen up close, and absolutely huge (I'm probably too used to silkies, haha).

A day late, but into the incubator it goes!

 

[TherryChicken]

Is there anyone else having issues with their cl egg production?

 

[GaryDean26]

Last year I despurred my CL rooster---and the spurs were 2" long---and he was around 2-years old....

Liam got de-spurred two days ago. It cut them back quite a bit to where they were only about 1-1/2" long with an exacto-knife about a 9 months ago and they have grown about an inch since then. This time I got the pliers out and did twisted them off. I would guess 2 to 2-1/2 years old on Keket's Rooster.

Note: The first spur came off with out any blood at all. The 2nd was not as clean and bleed a lot. Next time I will try the potato method to see if I can get both to come off with out any bleeding. Yes, I have him isolated in a rooster hutch so that the hens don't hinder his recovery.

Is there anyone else having issues with their cl egg production?

Yes, I was getting and average of 3 eggs a day from my breeding pen of five (5) hens until I left town two weeks to go to the Western Regional CLB Club activity. When I got back I was down to one egg every other day. I am not sure what is going on. I would suspect that they went into a forced summer molt due to change in feed or lack of water one of the days while I was gone only the two Black Copper Marans hens in that pen are still giving be 10 eggs a week between the two of them. I am not too worried though. They are all healthy and proven layers. I am sure they will be back on line in 4-6 weeks and should be laying well at the end of the summer when some of the other flocks decide that it is too hot to lay eggs and take their paid vacation. I have 5 CLB hens laying flocks, and they are all still laying great.

Raising (or lowering) the temperature does nothing to affect the sex of a chick. That is determined by the genes of the bird and not the temperature. However, there was a published study that indicated that raising the temperature by a degree did affect the hatch rate of males (in a bad way). It was meant for commercial hatcheries hatching millions of commercial lines of poultry. So if you are trying to prevent males from hatching, you could try this. But the sex is determined by the genes just like with humans.

My last hatch (and last of the year...yeah). Had incubation temperatures of 104 degs during the day and cooled down to 99.4 at night (it is in an out building that is not cooled and gets really hot during the day with 2-3 incubators running as well and a wine cooler for storing hatching eggs and heat lamps for a few brooders. The hatch resulted in a 50/50 split between pullets and cockerels (at least for the Cream Legars and black-sex links, I am not sure what the one Blue Breda that hatched is). The hatchrate was fairly decent too, so I don't think that the high temp was much of a problem for the hatch (not that I could have done much if it was since I agreed not to hatch in the house any more).

 

[ChicKat]

Got an egg this morning and the picture doesn't do it justice! It's the bluest egg I've ever seen up close, and absolutely huge (I'm probably too used to silkies, haha).
A day late, but into the incubator it goes!

Congratulations!!

 

[ChicKat]

Is there anyone else having issues with their cl egg production?

My 2 1/2 year old CL is still giving me an egg a day. I don't know how she does it. The eggs are generally about 1.9 ounces though so they are just short of size large. My preference is for a daily egg even if it is smaller - rather than every-other-day -- very large egg. One CL is about an every-other-day layer now thought - she will be 2 in October.

But now that GaryDean26 mentions molt...my roosters seem to be depositing their wing feathers on the ground - so perhaps it is a molt in your flock.

Talking about molting -- isn't a fast-feathering chicken considered more productive because she goes through the molt faster and gets back to work? Would this have anything to do with the K gene? If you want to have super neat/tidy barring - then you want slow-feathering - am I right? But if you want a get back to work quick hen- you want fast feathering....
any viewpoints on this?

 

[GaryDean26]

Here is an article on culling for production (see Page 10). It goes into detail on molting. The way I understand it is that fast molting hens don't have to grow feathers any faster than slow molters. They just have to drop all the feathers at once rather than dropping one feather at a time over the period of a couple of months.

 

[Ashdoes]

Aloha, Why create sex-links?  Why not breed your CL roo to your CL hens and make auto sex chicks?  Does your roo not have enough sperm to go around?  Whatever pure colored male youʻre using perhaps is not getting the job done. Ahem.

I think my temp must be high since I hatch at 20 days sometimes.  I tried lowering it a tad and had a bad hatch.

kden, Puhi

I'm not trying to create a sex-link, I was just adding a couple of my red sex-links eggs to the hatch, only have the Cream Roo. When we eat their eggs, they are always fertile. I just thought it would be a nice mix, for egg production and color, but doesn't seem meant to be.