Heritage Large Fowl - Phase II

[hellbender]

since you don't own a gun, since it seems to b a puppy, try and call it see if it will come to you and transport it to animal control.

If you're going that route, and again not knowing the laws of your state, it might be wiser to 'detain' the dog and call animal control. Put the onus and any liability on them.

 

[ocap]

good idea hellbender

edited to add:
I did catch a dog last summer, nice dog that was walking around my chicken pen, I walked over to it and picked it up put it in a cage and transported it to the nearest city hall where the cop did not want it because I had caught it in another county. Have animal control come to you.

 

[bnjrob]

Have animal control come to you.

Animal control....is that something you city folk have?

It takes a half hour or more to get volunteer fire department out here, animal control out here would be me.

 

[Beekissed]

Animal control....is that something you city folk have?

It takes a half hour or more to get volunteer fire department out here, animal control out here would be me.

Yes. It's sort of like the wild west out in the country, where one has to take the law in one's own hands. We don't give much leeway to outlaws here either.

 

[MagicChicken]

Quote:
My county does have an Animal Control department and they used to come around on a regular basis. When the economy went to pot their budget was slashed. The last time I "detained" a loose dog I was told it would be 2-3 days before they could get out to pick it up. I don't bother calling them any more.

 

[gjensen]

Guess, I would have to start putting up fence. Even if it is just a few strands of electric fence around the birds.

I almost have a perimeter fence up. I have 7/8 complete.

When I first got started here, I caught the devil. Put a couple dogs in a hole, accidently got another, a couple left with animal control (here they will leave you a trap), and finally left one of them in the owners drive way. I was not digging anymore holes.

I tried with owners a few times, and nothing changed.

There was a pack running through that were all owned by the same owner. They were hitting lot of people's places. As many as I got rid of, there is more than before.

What bothered me the most is that I like dogs. It hurt my feelings every time. I was put in a situation where I had to.

Here it is legal to defend your family, your property, and yourself. Regardless of what it is. Animal control will also bring you a trap.

 

[gjensen]

This has been my first season attempting to breed anything, other than random hatching. I started last January with 25 chicks. It has been an eye-opening learning experience and I am reorganizing my breeding priorities for next year.

The first issue was humidity problems in the incubator. In my test runs the incubator had been half full, and humidity was within bounds. Hatch rates of fertile test eggs were around 90% so I thought all was good. Once I had the incubator full it was a different story. The humidity spiked, and it stayed high. It took two weeks to straighten out my full-incubator technique and the high humidity adversely affected two batches of eggs. Finally got the humidity stable when the latch broke on the incubator door. Sigh. The bungee cord closure I've got on it now is working fairly well but it took another couple of weeks to tweak the system and stabilize things again. Now my hatching season is winding down, because I need to have the chicks out of the brooder before the heat hits in April. The 100 degree heat seems to come earlier every year. I've managed to hatch out only 16 chicks (not counting two culls), and have two more sets of eggs in the incubator. Next year I will try again with a different incubator.

I had set up individual breeding pens so I could breed complementary pairs and keep close track of who was producing what.

The hen I most wanted to breed from because of her size and her long, straight back turns out to lay one egg a week if I'm lucky. Plus her eggs are so small I have to put a narrow collar around them to keep them from slipping through the holes in the turner. And 3/4 of her eggs were clear. The eggs that did develop have not succeeded in hatching. She is no longer considered my "best" hen. Unless she starts laying more soon she will be on the cull list.

My next-best hen in terms of conformation to Standard lays reasonably well. 4-5 eggs/week in winter with no lights. Her eggs develop and some of them have hatched. Her chicks are large and some have had trouble getting out of the shell. A couple of them got themselves mostly unzipped but stayed in the egg. They were clearly struggling to get out. After several hours I broke my own rule and peeled them out. Those two chicks seem fine. I've got them tagged and will keep an eye on them. I don't want birds that have to be helped out of the shell, so these will be back-up birds at best if I don't cull them before next breeding season.

One hen went broody last fall and raised a random batch of eggs I gave her. She was a great mom. She started laying again when her chicks were about 8 weeks old. She is a sturdy bird and lays 5-6 eggs/week in the winter with no lights. I had not originally intended to breed her because she does not conform as well to the Standard as some of the other hens, but after the trouble I was having getting eggs from former Hen #1 I decided to breed this bird anyway. She is a vigorous, productive chicken and I want to maintain those production and broody characteristics in the flock. Her eggs have had the highest hatch rate of any of the hens I've had in the breeding pens. Most of the chicks that successfully hatched were from this hen, regardless of which cock she was paired with. Her bloodline will continue. Type may go backwards for a while. I hope the two cocks I paired her with this season will help correct some of those type issues in her offspring. Only time will tell.

Now I am hoping that some of these chicks turn out to be pullets. Most are clearly cockerels, which makes it hard to improve the flock. I have yet to cull a hen because I only got 8 hens out of the original 25 chicks. The five I haven't tried to breed are in the layer flock as backups.

Just discovered a loose dog - looks like a young Rottweiler - who must be the varmint that removed my main rooster's tail the other day. Today it killed a mourning dove inside my hoop coop. I caught it inside the coop with a face full of feathers. I threw rocks at it and it left the yard - THROUGH the fence. Not over, not under. The fence is made of remesh and that dog went through one of the holes, which are six or seven inches wide. Am now in the market for a pellet gun after I reinforce the fence with smaller wire and plant a bunch of cactus along the fence line. Grrrr....

Sarah

I get the challenges. It always seams like something. With the rare breeds, it seams to be more.

Maybe she will produce a couple better than herself.

Vigor, hatchability, and livability is number one. Some of those traits that have an actual value.

I can have all of the nice birds in the world, but if they will not produce, hatch, or live . . . . I can't do anything with them. Have a hard enough time otherwise.`

 

[Lacy Blues]

If you can make Greek lemon chicken with potatoes in the oven good yell be happy

Would you send me this recipe via PM?

I just put 3 roosters in the fridge in the last 24 hours. Two of them had very beautiful carcasses and I'd like to roast them in the oven but don't want them to be tough and dry. They were about one year old so still fairly young but probably old enough to be kind of tough.

Here's the best looking one... just turn your head to the side a little and it'll be perfect!

 

[Beekissed]

Guess, I would have to start putting up fence. Even if it is just a few strands of electric fence around the birds.

I almost have a perimeter fence up. I have 7/8 complete.

When I first got started here, I caught the devil. Put a couple dogs in a hole, accidently got another, a couple left with animal control (here they will leave you a trap), and finally left one of them in the owners drive way. I was not digging anymore holes.

I tried with owners a few times, and nothing changed.

There was a pack running through that were all owned by the same owner. They were hitting lot of people's places. As many as I got rid of, there is more than before.

What bothered me the most is that I like dogs. It hurt my feelings every time. I was put in a situation where I had to.

Here it is legal to defend your family, your property, and yourself. Regardless of what it is. Animal control will also bring you a trap.

I feel the same way....I hate shooting a dog. I used to have a dog that would run off any dog that came on the land but she got old and had to be put down and now my second in command is too friendly to dogs, so that leaves me having to shoot strays. I'll return them if they have a collar, but if I see them a second time they are gone for good. I'm the only person with chickens in a two mile radius and I live back in the middle of the woods...if a dog is roaming here it's expressly for my livestock and for no other reason.

A person just gets tired of the same old problem...just wish folks loved their dogs as much as they say they do and kept them at home.

 

[brahmabreeder]

Would you send me this recipe via PM?

I just put 3 roosters in the fridge in the last 24 hours. Two of them had very beautiful carcasses and I'd like to roast them in the oven but don't want them to be tough and dry. They were about one year old so still fairly young but probably old enough to be kind of tough.

Here's the best looking one... just turn your head to the side a little and it'll be perfect!

Andalusian?