Dixie Chicks

[Beer can]

Hummmm.... Your wheedling skills need improving.

Like, you build her the window boxes she has always wanted, and THEN say you were wanting to buy the chickens.

I think she might want me to finish the kitchen and bathroom I started two yrs ago...what? they're useable! She thinks I shouldn't spend more on birds than I did the car I drive...what? it runs just fine!

 

[Beer can]

@CanuckBock your runs look like a fortress, you've got a fort knox of a aviary palace!!
Only bird I've lost in the past yr was my best white giant pullet to a hawk in a uncovered run. All runs are covered now! I might attempt free ranging again when I have more than just a breeding trio and quad....and then again I might not...

 

[bamadude]

Howdy Tara. Been a while

 

[bamadude]

Duck folks:
I picked up my muscovey eggs today. I was told there are
probably khaki campbell eggs mixed it. This will be my first attempt trying to hatch anything other than chicks

 

[CanuckBock]

@CanuckBock that's a big post, I will have to read that one again. I love your enclosures! Very pretty! You keep mostly breeding sized flocks, am I correct?

Most posts I make are like War & Peace length, eh.

Conservation Farm...we breed birds and keep the top 3% back as breeding prospects--we breed from proven birds that are at minimum on second year of life...NO pullet or cockerel breedings thanks! Same thing that has been done on many of our lines. Brahmas and Wyandottes have 30 years with same exhibition breeder before they retired and we took what they were breeding from on. Another line of Brahmas trace back to Honest John Kriner, not the Junior, but Senior. Talking 65 years of keeping back the top three percent to go forward on. Add in the 15 years we have had these lines and that's 80 years of putting our selection twists on old lines. At this level, hard not to have nice stocks to work from. We eat alot of chooks, and I just saw chicken, $14 a bird when it use to be $8 a bird...yikes...ever so thankful we grow our own poultry...more worth it than ever before!

Not quite sure by breeding sized flocks what you mean but I like at minimum to have three pairs (even number of males to females) in all breeds and most varieties. Some like my real blooded bantam Chantecler projects, I keep more because it is an undertaking close to my heart and worth more efforts. I am not an advocate of inbreeding but understand that like produces like. Healthy diversity means by keeping three pairs (not like some with trios or quads only), I have AxB, CxD, ExF and can mix up F1's from those matings PLUS ExB, AxD, CxF, for new set of F1's and then next with original stocks to F1's from ExD, AxF, BxC so got THREE unrelated breedings from orginal stocks and those F1's to swap around. As said, not an advocate of inbreeding all that much because I began in purebred dogs with suspicions about linebreeding and the nasty state it has left the registered purebred critters in.

Psycho is an understatement on the numbers here.

Taj Mahal ohh I likey! I think I would made something more along those lines.....looking back but the egghouse is super easy to clean with mostly just wheel barreling in and out n scraping into it...​

Have a gander at the first post in my signature file...

https://www.backyardchickens.com/t/...r-aix-galericulata-mandarin-ducks-mega-photos

All you may ever need to know on how to build the Taj...same principles I use in breeding, Rick uses in construction. Build the barn and paint it...HECK NO! Build the barn (structure is the barn), but if you donna got the right TINT (variety) in yer lines...you are not gonna just change upon a mutation like that!

I am a colour variety advocate...made up lots of colour patterns we done lost or not really got around these days. I will cross varieties, but better be one heck of a good reason to cross BREEDS! Blah!

Wire on roof...here is coupla pics of that.

mandarins perching cause they are TREE DUCKS, eh

Roof without wire on it




Two sections slid on


hardware cloth fastened on​

Tenplast laid over hardware cloth​

Easy of Cleaning in the Taj...you betcha and we recycle all our bedding into our land...AWESOME crops of grass and veg from filthy beginnings!

​

In February, find a good day to haul out the used oat straw off the river sand pen surface...got baby Mandarins to worry about, eh!

Always need dogs to be inspectors of your processes


Inspector



One side clean


Bedding awaiting Rick​

dumping the yuck - total team efforts



Get the stuff back in for the birds in place​

​

Other side​

Always inspected by them dogs




Clean



​

Used Bedding​

@CanuckBock I like the bison fencing too, we did our 4 acres with it. Those big heavy rolls where a pain in the you know what through the bush... of course we fenced in before sheep. 4 sheep and 3 years later it would have been a breeze... only if one could keep livestock without fences. Haha (well, they do and I have seen it in other countries where the animal gets tied out but that's not doable when you would be feeding bears and coyotes and wolves)

Fencing done right the first time is dreamy...then you just reap the rewards of your labours and investments.

Doggone & Chicken UP!

Tara Lee Higgins
Higgins Rat Ranch Conservation Farm, Alberta, Canada

 

[CanuckBock]

@CanuckBock your runs look like a fortress, you've got a fort knox of a aviary palace!!
Only bird I've lost in the past yr was my best white giant pullet to a hawk in a uncovered run. All runs are covered now! I might attempt free ranging again when I have more than just a breeding trio and quad....and then again I might not...

​

Fort Knox got geese,

​

so do weezze!

Even tacky plastic lawn ornament ones​

Major cute...copying DAD​

Howdy Tara. Been a while

You bin by Pear-a-Dice a few times or more...

Here's me quote on building barns and painten 'em.
https://www.backyardchickens.com/t/...r-aix-galericulata-mandarin-ducks-mega-photos:

Later Dixie Chooks,

Tara

 

[Peep_Show]

@Peep_Show I like the way you think.. Wouldn't a 500-700g egg be a dead give away compared to an 80g duck egg? :rofl: I could sneak 3 or 4 babies in when hatching turkeys... and then just separate a couple "baby turkeys" aka emus. You know what I mean.

plus emu eggs are soo pretty!

"But I was told they were Ukranian Goose eggs!"

 

[minihorse927]

@CanuckBock, I absolutely love the water tote cage for dirty straw and hay! I'm going to buy another tote and cut the plastic out of it. Awesomeness

 

[Ravynscroft]

@CanuckBock, I absolutely love the water tote cage for dirty straw and hay! I'm going to buy another tote and cut the plastic out of it. Awesomeness

There's a guy in our area that sells cages similar to those but they have a hinged door on one side and they fold up flat too... they're heavy as all heck, but they're heavy duty and reasonably priced...

 

[Beer can]

@BriardChickens That ad gone, new one 40 minutes away. Can emu that age be unsexable? When do they start laying?