Cubalaya Thread For Sharing Pics and Discussing Our Birds

[cubalaya]

one of the hens that i got from gallorojo has been laying pretty good. i went to get one more egg for the incubator yesterday and she bristled up at me so i think she wants to sit some eggs. both asils from carr are laying now too.

 

[saladin]

That's possible. Some seem to want to sit at the drop of a hat. I usually don't have that problem though until warm weather.

 

[Jungleexplorer]

I know I started late with my AGs last year and did not do well at all. Especially when it comes to my broody hens. I tried using hens to raise some chicks in april and may. They hatched about 30 chicks out of 60 eggs and only four of those survived to adulthood. Half of the hens I used to hatch and raise the chicks have died since then. They were older hens and I think the stress of incubating eggs in the heat just wore them out. It is just too dang hot here in Texas in the summer, and with this horrible drought even the wild animals cannot make it.

On the other hand, those Welp chicks I have been raising over the winter are doing just wonderful.

 

[saladin]

My philosophy is this: wherever there are fire ants, raising chicks naturally is just too risky.

 

[Jungleexplorer]

I do have fire ants, but not a single one of the chicks were killed by fire ants
It is just the heat here and the drought conditions. I raised hundreds of chickens naturally in South America for over a decade where the fire ant comes from. Fire ante were never a huge problem, although they did account for some chick losses. I would venture to say that fire ant problems are probably contingent on regional conditions. That is to say that they my present more of a problem in one region then another. All I know is that millions of chicks are raised naturally every year in the Amazon where the fire ant comes from.

 

[saladin]

I hear you. All I know is that on my place I better keep the barrel circled with sevin or the fire ants will rush in as soon as they hear the first pip. It is an aweful thing to see them kill a chick while still in the shell. We do let all the Muscovy and Geese hatch their own, but we ring them with sevin too.

 

[Jungleexplorer]

They must be really bad where you are. In south America I used to use a powdered laundry detergent called OMO to kill out the mounds. Really good stuff, even got your clothes clean. Lol! I doubt any of this environmently friendly biodegradable HE junk that passes for laundry detergent in the US would work on fire ants (or get your clothes clean).

 

[4hmom]

fowlseed i would suggest useing malay or bantam cubalayas.(mine have a little bit of malay in them) one thing though about using a breed larger thatn them is the size. the bantams are suposed to be:cock 26oz and hen 24oz. im using black modern black ag white cubalayas and bbred to create bantam blacks. i just set 1 spangled egg 1 bbrd and 3 black modern crosses today.

 

[cubakid]

Doc's bantam Malays, moderns and old English, maybe a red faced Sumatra bantam.

 

[fowlsessed]

Thanks for sharing. So old english bantam wouldn't be bad. I was talking about "switching" colors 'over there', would the same combos work crossing different breeds? Like, crossing my white stag with a black cuba hen to start getting blacks. Same thing with a BB red hen or brown red. Would that work using an OEGB hen?