Poor little girl looks 1/2 turkey. Is she molting or did a roo get rough or hen pecked? I have an ee who always gets her muffs & beard plucked. I have no idea why? I think we have hen in the flock who has muff envy.My handsome mottled cochin bantam spends most of his time by himself. This is one of the 2 that have been fighting. Feel bad for him. Perhaps he needs his own girls all to himself. And the other pic is my poor frizzled pullet who is now bald needs a wig.
Loving the pictures!!! Can't wait to hatch my own littles from Oopsie's sister. Hopefully I get blue too!!! Sorry I haven't been on. It's been crazy around here and after days of going and going I'm ready to just lay down with a cup of tea. This weather is nasty. We got the bad storm all the way up here! Some branches down but what's the worst is the wind!!! The weather says we're gusting up to 50 mph I wouldn't be surprised if it was more like 60 or greater! Everything is blowing away. We've had some massive tumble weeds go through the yard and I just giggle and think hmm I should take a picture for all of you down there.I took some pics today of my recent hatch. Quail @ 2 days old. I have 3 yellow & 1 brown, but trying to photograph all at once would be difficult.They're already bigger than a quarter!
The 3 silkies hatched on time Sat. morning. Also 2 days old. One on left has a beard & big head dome. DD's in love with all 3, so I must assume I have 3 males. LOL
Below are the 2 on right - close up. I read somewhere that looking at the shape of the head dome as day old chicks could help determine gender. (oval vs. round, but I can't remember which is which) Probably an old wives' tale, but I can no longer find where I read that. If anyone knows of it, please share.
Most of the orps hatched on Fri, so they're 3 days old. Here are Oopsie's 3 chicks. Blue one is in middle. The blacks have nice dark heads, but their bodies are slightly gray rather than black.
One of her blacks has a mask
Left to right: a black, a lav, & the blue
I'm currently impatiently waiting on the quail hatch. 9 eggs in lockdown today is day 17 so not quite yet but I did expect an early birds or two. Last hatch we had almost done by day 18. Hopefully they start popping like popcorn soon. I'm not sure the air cells are large enough it's hard for me to tell with such tiny tiny eggs. We need to get a kitchen scale so I can weigh eggs. Last weekend we got the other coop from Mike's uncle's and moved the grow out boys out for some grass and sunshine. Hopefully this wind dies down and we can get some birds processed this week-weekend. We tried to put both groups of cockerals out there as it's quite a large coop but the fights were so nasty we moved the others back to the run in the outbuilding. With the attached run it's awesome! I can't wait for the boys to all be processed and we can make it into a coop breeding group. We now have breeding group one set up. Hopefully they'll be ready to start breeding soon. I wish we had moved them earlier. It's our project breed pullets with a SLW cockeral and two SLW pullets. Next group set up will be orps. This wind is just whipping through our house and I'm chilled to the bone after chores even with my thick chore hoodie that kept me pretty warm all winter. For the most part the flock don't seem to mind. They do seem to stay in the less windy areas on days like today. No losses thankfully. Still finishing the cocci treatment of course for the juveniles. I'm thinking they probably had cocci although we never did see any signs. We lost two birds from that group last week. The one that couldn't stand-up which I can't imagine cocci would cause and the one that had no symptoms at all and we found had passed three hours after our last check. I don't have the answers, which is frustrating but the others are all doing well. I did discover one of the boys in the group(a buff silkie) that's a couple weeks older has started trying to breed the others. Namely the oldest chick in the group, the juvenile lavender, that was injured by the rat. Unfortunately this has made the lavender a bit more unsteady on his feet. The silkie was of course removed from the group immediately and placed with the breeding group on the other side of the fence separating the grow out run the chicks are in from the rest of the coop. As they're used to seeing him for several days he isn't getting bullied much and I hope they put him in his place. The injured girls all seem to be healing amazingly well and quickly. The one girl that had gotten an infection for sure didn't much care for it being cleaned out. But she did great! Lol mostly she just watched us and snoozed. Peroxide softened the pus(in chickens it is of course solid) and allowed me to pull it out of the wound a little at a time with tweezers and qtips. She didn't like the peroxide but it was such a great help and she did really well. Poor baby. After I removed all the pus and flushed it again with peroxide we dabbed it and then flushed it with gentle iodine. Packed it with Neosporin taped gauze to the bottom of a chicken saddle over the wound and put on the saddle. It's a bit of gross task and I worry about hurting them any time they need any kind of care(especially bumble foot surgeries) but it's also kind of fascinating. As I want to become a veterinarian or vet tech and am considering specializing in poultry it's kind of cool. I love being able to help them and have learned so much through trial and error. Chickens are so captivating! Also @faraday40 I'm pming you. Hoping the new coop doesn't blow away lol although I doubt it will. With this wind I'm not saying anything is impossible.I'm so sorry you're having a tough time with the chicks. Cocci is a tricky thing, but since it can go quickly one way or the other, it's often a 1st guess with chicks. I think I had it here once last summer but also never saw blood in their poop. (But did see some watery droppings) I gave Corid & 1/2 a day later, the few lethargic chicks perked up. I have learned via friends on this thread how devastating it can be and always keep Corid powder on hand. You already have a well stocked chicken 1st aid kit, so that saves time when emergencies pop up. If you own chickens, emergencies WILL pop up.
I was in a panic yesterday. Had my brinsea all set up and running so I could put my eggs in afterletting them rest for a day. Went to put them in and noticed temp was at only 92 degrees so tried raising it and the small adjustment spot seemed to be stripped. I couldn't raise the heat and then noticed the light kept going on and off. So I had to go to my Styrofoam bator. Of which I tripped up the stairs and cracked and broke the bottom piece. I was in a panic! No broody, no incubator. This is what I ended up with. Ran to the dollar store and bought some aluminum pans. I have a hydrometer with a temp reading perfectly. Also the reading on the lid of the incubator reads the same as the inside thermometer. I ordered a new incubator but I think this will work great till it gets here.
I think your chances of hatching would improve under a broody - especially if she's a proven one.
I heard Orps are very good mamas so good luck with Oopsie. The only hen that has actually hatched chicks for me has been an Australorp (3 times) and she gets better every time.I think your chances of hatching would improve under a broody - especially if she's a proven one.
I don't remember how close we live to each other, but if you want to borrow my Hovabator until your new one arrives, send me a pm. (It's an old still air to which I added a computer fan. Kind of a franken-incubator, but it has a turner. I use it as a back up if I have a staggered hatch.)
Meanwhile I had an impulse. I purchased some penciled rock hatching eggs. Here's how they arrived:
5 were smashed & gooey
5 = I had to rinse off to clean away all the slimy egg
2 were reasonably OK.
What's strange is that only 1 of the smashed eggs had a scrambled yolk. The other 4 were definitely fertile. They were all cracked along the equator
I candled the remaining 7 & the air cells didn't look too bad. Has anyone successfully hatched eggs in such a condition?
Anyway, they're in my good incubator. The recent silkie eggs looked worse when candled & even got frozen along the way. If I can get 1 penciled rock female, I'll be very happy. Of course I could set just penciled rock eggs, so I added a bunch of choc cuckoo (Godiva xBrick), B/B/Mauve (Oopsie's), black, & lav orp eggs. I thought I saw some bulls eyes in Cookies' eggs, so I set 3 bantam eggs as a test. Due to the rooster size diff, I've never been able to hatch any of my own bantam eggs. Perhaps little Brick is more active than I had thought.
Oopsie's been thinking about going broody for the past 2 weeks. Two days ago, she finally took the plunge & started sleeping in the nest box. Poor girl kept getting kicked out by the dominant hens, so I moved her to a nice broody apartment- giant dog crate. She's sitting on 2 eggs, 2 fake eggs, & a golf ball. She didn't like the box I provided, removed all the eggs, & moved them to the shavings. If all goes well, I'll be playing "chicken mind games" on her. She'll sit & hatch the 2 eggs, but then I'll slip about another 20 chicks under her. In the past, placing a broody hen into the brooder helps make sure all the chicks are eating, drinking, etc. & the chicks that can't fit under mama have a heating pad. Her number goes down as chicks get sold & if we decide to keep any, the flock intros go smoothly. I've never had a LF orp go broody before. I was beginning to suspect that only bantams go broody. Hope she does OK.
@Junibutt
How did your orps do with broodiness?
