Illinois...

[chickendreams24]

@ChicagoClucker Any idea what your chick from @Junibutt is yet?

here's a pic of all my babies sorry about the quality. Still can't decide on colors of a couple of them, one in particular.

Thanks for the support. Cuddles refuses to eat egg (tried cooking them many ways) & soaked layer feed. I tried offering other soft protein treats, yogurt, baby food, & oatmeal, but she simply dislikes soft foods. I've been avoiding feeding hard foods like dry pellets, scratch grains because I don't want to add to impaction. I've tried stool softeners, olive oil, Corid, yogurt, electrolytes, Exact (baby bird hand feeding formula). Also warm baths. Most of her food has been via tube. She's been pooping & drinking more today & searching for floor crud to eat. DD gave her a couple mealworms & tiny pieces of bread crust. (Her 2 fav snacks) She actually ate! I know it's junk food & perhaps hard to digest, but any food via the beak seems less stressful than crop tube feeding. At this point, I'd prefer her to die happy than slowly starve to death. So, that's my tiny ray of hope. I'll let her eat a little more bread tonight & see if it can pass through by morning. * If anyone knows something I'm missing, please let me know. ie- If bread causes constipation, then please let me know.

Idk if there is anything detrimental about that and I think her wanting to eat is a good sign. I know it's hard to hope and I know you won't give up on her but try to have a little hope for her.

I don't know, it looks like your yellow chicks with light brown on head and wings. My guess would be mauve cuckoo, but I have to wait til they feather out to see if I am right. I am not an Easter egger lover, but that chick I bought to keep the orp company, is so **** cute! @Faraday40 glad to hear Cuddles is hanging on, I would give her something to eat too. Hang in there Cuddles !

Okay one of the light chicks in my pic is actually the white sport legbar that Junibutt hatched. It seems to be doing well but is wearing some fancy footwear to try and align a crooked middle toe. The last pair of shoes managed to fix the other foot so I'm hoping this one can too but if not that's okay. It could be me imagining it but I swear the little things head/crest/vaulted skull is beginning to look more normal. *fingers crossed* it's healing... Idk if it can do that but I hope so. It's gender has been "clouded" by its head distorting it's sexable markings but I swear it's looking like a pullet more and more. It has way more wing feathers than the other chicks of course they're different breeds, in two layers too. It also is getting tail feathers, which none of the other chicks are getting, not even the oldest three. Because of all this and partially my wishful thinking I'm guessing pullet but not really sure. Other than the two chocolate pullets the jury seems to be out sill in the case of the rest of them. I will say that I can only see barring on the wing feathers of the chick Junibutt thought was a double cuckoo chocolate. Can't wait for us both to see! I also love your EE chick! Gave you ever owned any? Our EE are some of our favorite birds and some of our more friendly especially after they started laying.

 

[smprn76]

Hi my family and I are from Central IL (20 minutes South of Champaign), nice to meet you. /img/smilies/hugs.gif

Where are you located? We live in Mattoon

 

[ChicagoClucker]

Idk if there is anything detrimental about that and I think her wanting to eat is a good sign.

I know it's hard to hope and I know you won't give up on her but try to have a little hope for her.
Okay one of the light chicks in my pic is actually the white sport legbar that Junibutt hatched. It seems to be doing well but is wearing some fancy footwear to try and align a crooked middle toe. The last pair of shoes managed to fix the other foot so I'm hoping this one can too but if not that's okay. It could be me imagining it but I swear the little things head/crest/vaulted skull is beginning to look more normal.
*fingers crossed* it's healing... Idk if it can do that but I hope so. It's gender has been "clouded" by its head distorting it's sexable markings but I swear it's looking like a pullet more and more. It has way more wing feathers than the other chicks of course they're different breeds, in two layers too. It also is getting tail feathers, which none of the other chicks are getting, not even the oldest three. Because of all this and partially my wishful thinking I'm guessing pullet but not really sure. Other than the two chocolate pullets the jury seems to be out sill in the case of the rest of them. I will say that I can only see barring on the wing feathers of the chick Junibutt thought was a double cuckoo chocolate.

Can't wait for us both to see!

I also love your EE chick! Gave you ever owned any? Our EE are some of our favorite birds and some of our more friendly especially after they started laying.

I did have an easter egger when I first began keeping chickens. I bought my first 4 chicks at the feed store and were suppose to be all pullets, the easter egger turned out to be a cockerel. So he was rehomed. I did love his coloring and personality. But if I had a list of my favorites, they would be about #10. I have also wing sexed these 2 current chicks, and the EE looks like a boy again and the other looks like a pullet. And the little yellow chick has some primaries coming in and they look white, which happens with primaries sometimes when they are young. Its kind of fun, waiting, guessing, speculating.


So sorry about the poor sport legbar. Hope it improves. The legbars feather out quickly, much more so than Orps. Also, just wanted to let you know, when I hatched out my CCLs, the girls seemed to develop faster than the boys. Crests came in on the girls sooner, below is a pic, the lighter colored are the boys and the girls are darker and you can see the crest on that pullet. Just to help you out since the head spot was clouded.

 

[MeepBeep]

Well after all my chickens decided to take an egg break for the last month or so for who knows what reason, they are starting to snap out of it finally and not being freeloaders... I'm only getting about 4-6 eggs a day now from 50 some odd chickens but that is far better than the zero I have got over the last month or so, not counting the out of sync guinea fowl that is laying...

Still trying to figure out what caused them to all stop laying but I'll likley never know as I pretty much overhauled every aspect of the coop in the last few weeks, plus the weather is changing and the brings it's own variables...

Now the wait begins for my Cream Legbars to start laying so I can start breeding my own line of them, and hopefully line breed out my white sport Legbar line as well.. Also working towards my own line of olive eggers and also waiting on the Black Copper Marans to start laying so I can see how dark their eggs are for the olive egger project...

I have some Welsummer, Cuckoo Marans and Whiting True Blues due to arrive 2nd week of April as well to contribute to the olive egger project...

And my peafowl are entering year 2 so I might get some eggs from them as well, if nothing else the peacocks will actually have some feathers to display this year...

PS to Junibutt I know we had talked a bit about your white sports, and the recent talk here popped that memory, for some reason I never saw your follow up PM about that until now, it was marked read but I have no recollection of ever reading it and would have replied if I did...

 

[chickendreams24]

@ChicagoClucker
Awesome thank you guess I may not have to try to torture it's gender out of the little thing guess I'll put away the spot light and knives

****Note please no one take the previous threat seriously of course I would never and of course it also wouldn't work anyway. ****

I just so desperately want the CL to be a pullet well all of them of course but I've been cheering that little one on since before it even hatched so I'm rather attached.

Any idea how old the chicks are in that picture you posted?

Yea I figured the Legbar would feather in much faster problem is I wasn't expecting how slow the orps would feather in as these are my first pure English orps and they are feathering way way slower even than the 50% English I got from Faraday40. Most of them have so few wing feathers still that I can't feather sex them but I'm leaning towards 3 boys and three girls although of course I would really like more girls.

 

[Faraday40]

@ChicagoClucker
Awesome thank you guess I may not have to try to torture it's gender out of the little thing guess I'll put away the spot light and knives

****Note please no one take the previous threat seriously of course I would never and of course it also wouldn't work anyway. ****

I just so desperately want the CL to be a pullet well all of them of course but I've been cheering that little one on since before it even hatched so I'm rather attached.

Any idea how old the chicks are in that picture you posted?

Yea I figured the Legbar would feather in much faster problem is I wasn't expecting how slow the orps would feather in as these are my first pure English orps and they are feathering way way slower even than the 50% English I got from Faraday40. Most of them have so few wing feathers still that I can't feather sex them but I'm leaning towards 3 boys and three girls although of course I would really like more girls.

The one thing I learned about sexing orps is that feather development has nothing to do with gender. In many of my LF chicks, the ones with shorter tails, wings, & slower feather development on shoulder & back end up males. The comb & legs confirm it as they age. Not true with my orps. It's all about comb size & color and that cannot be guessed before 4-6 weeks.

By 6 weeks it's often obvious.

Hang in there.

 

[chickendreams24]

But the suspense is killing me! Lol well I could tell yours by four weeks hopefully it will be the same here, but like I said only the little legbar even has any tail feathers lol okay okay I'll wait I just want to know BC if three of them are cockerals then we'll obviously have to rehome them and I don't want to get attached and then lose them. I'd really really like one of the chocolate cuckoos to be a pullet but I don't really think it is... Fingers crossed I'm wrong but it's been chest bumping a little and running to protect all the others, then again our little sebright pullet loved to spar with a cockeral as a chick.

 

[Faraday40]

Chest bumping doesn't mean boy. My tiny fearless EE chick was the last to hatch. It had a Napolean complex & pecked at the nose of my 100lb dog. (Very funny to see a big gentle dog get bullied by a 3 oz chick!) The feather color pattern said boy, the comb looked wide (but flat & not 3 rowed) & even the tail curved down slightly. I was sure male, but the comb was pale. The little guy was named Tyrion after a Games of Thrones character. (It's not like we were going to keep him....) We decided he could stay until he crowed.

Here's Tyrion just before she laid her 1st egg.


She's our squirrel-chaser & yard patrol. She & the roo once chased away a young Cooper's hawk! She's not the top hen, just crazy fearless. She once jumped into a stranger's lap & stole the girl's sandwich. I keep trying to get rid of Tyrion, but the endless stories & amusement factor always win out.

 

[Faraday40]

OK so maybe this is a better pic. She just has a lot of personality, so it's hard to capture in just one photo.

 

[mothergoose]

I would have to keep her too! She is too cute.