Dixie Chicks

[minihorse927]

@Alaskanone is super black but has a pink and black spotted tounge. That will be the one I use with my svart hons pullet. The other 2 have a few white toenails and have red just barely showing in the comb and wattles.and earlobes. I've got projects for those.

 

[Alaskan]

@Alaskan one is super black but has a pink and black spotted tounge. That will be the one I use with my svart hons pullet. The other 2 have a few white toenails and have red just barely showing in the comb and wattles.and earlobes. I've got projects for those.

sounds like fun!!

 

[Amberjem]

 

[vehve]

Interesting duck projects... Although I find it confusing that there's also a chicken breed called Ancona.

I've been lazy collecting eggs apparently. We only have the one layer at the moment, and most of the attention is directed towards the chicks at the coop, I did the morning clean up today and found 2 green eggs in the nest where the broodies also keep their chicks. And the eggs looked pretty nasty, all covered in feathers and poop. I need to switch out the straw in there ASAP. I also need to start reminding myself to collect the eggs from there. For some reason, Töyhtis is laying in the evening at the moment, and most of my chicken attention is concentrated in the morning and afternoon.

The chicks are 2½ weeks old now. Until now I haven't seen any change in them since they've hatched, in my opinion they haven't grown at all, but now I'm starting to see winged feathers and they've also gained some size.












The mommies are going through some sort of mini molt. Emma's back has been bald for months due to Eemeli favoring her a bit too much when he was still getting the hang of his romantic advances, but now she's finally starting to put out new feathers. Looks like a porcupine. At the same time, both mommies are dropping feathers like crazy, and the coop looks like a bomb has exploded in there.

All the plants are doing nicely, I can't believe how quickly they turn towards the light when you rotate the pots. We turned all the pots on the windowsill last night, and 3 hours after sunrise this morning they had all turned to face the window again. Most tomatoes are looking good, but the Green Envy seems to be a bit slow. I'm hoping that means it will just become a strong little plant, able to support a lot of berries. I'm still a bit overwhelmed by the fact that we haven't lost a single plant yet, I'm going to have to re-home some tomatoes before they have to be re-potted. Luckily our neighbor is happy to take any plants we offer them.

Hilma is doing well, but she's very hungry. When we got her, the breeder said we should give her half a cup of pellets and a carrot or half an apple, and keep her on a free feed diet of hay. But now that she's got a litter to care for, we've been giving her as much food as she wants. At the moment she's going through about 2½ cups of my own feed formulation per day. This morning I gave her a carrot about ten minutes before I took her some feed, by the time I brought the scoop of feed, she had already finished the carrot. I think she's also started to feed the babies three times per day now, at least she's changed her rhythm a bit. We still haven't seen the baby bunnies though, they should be about a week old now. In a week or two when their eyes have opened she's probably going to start taking them out of the nest a bit.

 

[Outpost JWB]

Nice updates vehve. What breed is the red spotted hen? Is that your SS? Very pretty! Even with the molt. Well, I am headed to the coop before I get ready for work. Last night I went out to lock them in the coop and the chickens were in a huge clump SOAKED! Since I had to work, DH was suppose to let them out at 1pm. Instead, Little girl let them out when she got home from school around 4pm. She didn't prop open the door. SO, the chickens couldn't get back in and it poured down rain. Poor chickens. No eggs for us! Have a good day.

 

[vehve]

JWB, yeah, she's the SS. I think both of our SS's actually look pretty good, too bad they're siblings so I'm not too crazy about hatching any of them. Also, from my experiences with these two, they're absolute wimps until about 16-20 weeks, after which they're absolutely horrible, and at around 10-12 months they actually become quite nice.

 

[vehve]

Here are some pics of the chickens the breeder they came from keeps.

http://www.anvianet.fi/tottefjader/suomeksi/suo_index.html

*Edit* Click the "Kanat" link on the left, I can't seem to link directly to the right page. */Edit*

Those Icelandics she's got look interesting too. I didn't know they had the fluffy heads too, or then these aren't pure. She charges 2 euros per egg for her hatching eggs, but fertility rates didn't seem that high when we ordered from her. The first batch was 6/6 duds, and those two Sussexes we have are the only ones that hatched out of the 6 we got as replacements. I think both times one egg was cracked during transport too, but I don't remember anymore.

 

[Outpost JWB]

The rooster in the pic looks like a CCL. I have been in search of SS hens for 2 years now. Got 6 chicks last year. Some died, some got ate by DHs dog. Poor Sue. He is still waiting for a mate. But he does rule the roost back there. He is the best rooster we have ever had. And we've had A LOT OF ROOSTERS!

 

[vehve]

Eemeli has grown to be quite a good rooster too, he's very mellow, and due to his slight clumsiness, he doesn't go outside the fence. I didn't like him at first though, he was SO clumsy in the beginning, and a complete wimp, until he started mounting the girls, which took him very long to learn to do properly due to his clumsiness, the effects of which you can see on Emma's back in the pictures above. But no that he's about a year old, I really like him. And strangely, I've started liking Emma too. I don't know if it's because we lost Virpi who Emma mainly bullied, or what it is, but she's not at all aggressive towards the other birds in the coop anymore. So maybe she gets to stay. A few months ago I was still going to send her to freezer camp once we get some new layers.

 

[vehve]

Oh JWB, apparently that link doesn't go to the image page, you need to click the "Kanat" link on the left to see pics of her breeds.