Illinois...

[ChicagoClucker]

I love hearing about your Mickey and Minnie you should keep them.

Plus they're beautiful.

x2!

love the laced birds

I love them too. Well at least Minnie right now, Mick is not happy with me and I am not happy with him at the moment. I have had to put Mick in a holding cell (XLarge dog cage) in the garage for the last 3 days and he is not happy with me. I had moved Coco and Francesca over to the garage to get a rest from Mick. Poor Coco is bare back and tail is gone, seems like it is taking forever. She does have some individual feathers here and there coming in, but wish it would come in faster. I wanted to remove their aprons and give them some healing time. Well he saw her walking down the drive and has been jumping the fence every day, picking on poor Clyde who is a sweet heart and on that side of the house. So now when I try to feed him, he tries to come at my hand with his claws, the little ****. I might be afraid to let him out, not really, but he is MAD at me.

 

[ChicagoClucker]

Hope everyone had a good long weekend. I just wanted to share a picture of the egg I found under my broody bantam tonight. Apparently, someone snuck into her nest when she was out for a bit today. I had to hard boil it right away cause I slipped it into my pocket and dropped the next egg on top of it and cracked it a bit. Its a little more than 3 in long and about 2 in wide. I am going to let the grandkids peel it open tomorrow and I will cut it in half. I think its just a double yolker but will be fun to watch the boys amazement.

 

[Junibutt]

@Junibutt

Did I do that correctly? (the @ + name)

I ended up selling the brown mottled orp with a black orp & a choc orp male. (One way to reduce the number of males is to package them with females.) We still have too many chickens, but thankfully no additional predator losses. The boys have been crowing A LOT & I see hawks daily. Whenever they crow mid day, it's usually a hawk (or lawnmower) nearby. We've had chickens & been free ranging for 4 years & this was our 2nd loss. The 1st was a 20wk old pullet who didn't stay near the flock. A hawk picked her off. That was 2 yrs ago. What's hard for me is not knowing what happened with the mauve-white chick. I suspect a large hawk was able to carry her off. The only 2 chicks we have are a CCL & the other white-mauve orp. I'm pretty sure both are females. They are rather tame for broody chicks.

We still have "Brick." Boy is that rooster beautiful! He's so magnificent I'm in no rush to get rid of him. Because his temperament is fine, There's no need to rehome unless we have a problem. For now the 3 males get along well, so we'll see how they do when Brick hits that 6-8 mo old stage. The lav roo has yet to crow. He's #3 of 3, so perhaps he'll always be quiet. The lav is also a little skittish, so there's a chance he may not work out. I don't want to keep one roo, so a back up is a good idea right now..... especially with all the hawk sightings! I can use all the predator protection we can get.

BTW- Trouble went broody -AGAIN. I've gotten a few calls asking about lav orps, so I let her have a couple eggs. (DH doesn't know.

) I gave her some orp eggs & 2 Spitz-Orp eggs. I'd love to see an orp with a mohawk. LOL Of course I won't want to keep any of the chicks, so if you're going through chick withdrawal just let me know.

@Faraday40 , both the @sign and the user ID must be in blue for it to work properly. The trick is that once you type @ start typing the user id and it will become kind of an autofill/dropdown and then you can pick from that.

Would love to see Brick's latest pics.

BTW I have a 7 week blue cuckoo legbar x orpington hybrid that started crowing 3 days ago and has been doing consistently in the morning. Strange since the mama broody is still taking care of them. I thought I would keep him so see him grow out for 4 months or so but now I will have to re-home him. @ChicagoClucker do you still want the blue cuckoo?

 

[ChicagoClucker]

@Faraday40 , both the @sign and the user ID must be in blue for it to work properly. The trick is that once you type @ start typing the user id and it will become kind of an autofill/dropdown and then you can pick from that.

Would love to see Brick's latest pics.

BTW I have a 7 week blue cuckoo legbar x orpington hybrid that started crowing 3 days ago and has been doing consistently in the morning. Strange since the mama broody is still taking care of them. I thought I would keep him so see him grow out for 4 months or so but now I will have to re-home him. @ChicagoClucker do you still want the blue cuckoo?

I have too many roos I am also going to have to rehome, but have decided to try and wait a bit to see who I will be keeping between the black orp or the mottled orp. Mottled boy isn't crowing yet, but the other 4 are. Clyde and Mick are definitely going. I have noticed how calm the girls are without Mick in the yard.

 

[chickendreams24]

If anyone has any blue English Orpingtons that they are looking to rehome including cockerals or a well mannered roo please let me know. I have still been unable to find any near me that I like or can afford.

Had a scare Friday. Was working on one of the chocolate orp pullet's feet from @Junibutt, she has some minor bumble foot, and went to look at her vent- which looks like she could be laying. However during the check to our horror we found a rather large wound that was infected just below and in front of her hip so under her wing tip. We have never seen anything like this and it could be from a cockeral or a hawk. We never saw any blood or symptoms bless her heart she hid it so well it may have killed her had we not seen it. We worked tirelessly for hours until well after midnight, we had to trim up a bunch of her feathers.(anyone know if these will have to be pulled when she molts?) We trimmed the feathers and soaked and cleaned and gently peeled away the dried pus and dead tissue(very little dead tissue thankfully) and no flies/maggots despite the rain lately causing a fly explosion. Using qtips soaked in iodine we gently soaked and worked out the solidified pus lining the whole wound. It took us longer than we had hoped but we wanted to be as gentle and as thorough as possible. She was also given two breaks during the process. It seems as though something tore her skin crumpling it downwards it is now stuck there and I don't believe will be a problem as it seems all the feather follicles point outward. The wound extends under the skin forward and down and at its deepest point in, its about 2-2.5 inches deep just under the skin and subcutaneous tissue. After removing all the pus and debris from the wound it was flushed with peroxide and no sting iodine as we wanted to be sure the infection was removed. She was an amazing patient through all of this and absolutely knew we were trying to help her. There was almost no bleeding what so ever, not even a drop's worth, despite being able to see some of her muscles. After thorough cleaning and disinfecting we packed the wound with neosporin(without pain relief) and iodined and bluekoted the whole area. She is separated with her sister and will remain so until the majority of the cocks are separated for finishing out, or she is healed, or both. She has also been placed on an antibiotic shot nightly to help her fight the infection. Oddly though we have no roos or cockerals that have spurs so I've no idea who/what caused this injury. We have a few really stupid cockerals but I'm not sure how they would do this without any spurs. We have been checking the other hens/pullets and none are showing any injury except the one chocolate. She has now been named although I will keep it to myself until I'm sure she will pull through. She is being checked two or three times a day and is doing amazing. I'm still a bit worried but the wound is still looking just as clean as when we did it. We did not cover it as we didn't want to stop any drainage. We are also looking into some chicken saddles including and extra wide one for her so that she might be able to go back with the flock sooner. For now she is calm and happy with her sister. She is also acting great she even has decided that she's tired of these check-ups lol and has started jumping a bit more again, something she didn't do after the wound cleaning for the last two days. She also no longer smells which is a wonderful sign.

Hope all is well with everyone else. Been a long but good weekend. We did lose our last white Rock pullet to a predator on Saturday while we were working out at my grandparents' place, so both of those boys(the stupidest cockerals we have) will be heading to freezer camp since we've no reason to keep them. I don't really think we would have kept them anyways.

 

[emmalouhof]

We let one of our frizzle hens sit on her eggs earlier this summer, and one hatched around middle of July. We are thinking its a hen which we are very excited about! I wanted to share a picture, she is just so funky looking. Frizzle hen crossed with white crested polish rooster.

 

[ChicagoClucker]

We let one of our frizzle hens sit on her eggs earlier this summer, and one hatched around middle of July. We are thinking its a hen which we are very excited about! I wanted to share a picture, she is just so funky looking. Frizzle hen crossed with white crested polish rooster. Love her crest.

She is adorable but if she is only 2 month old she has some red comb and wattles for a young girl. Although I am not familiar with polish chickens, but I do know I love her crest!

 

[Faraday40]

@Junibutt
Brick is a real sweetie but does crow. His "voice" is rather high-pitched & he wants to show it off in the daily crow off contest. Thankfully it only last about 10 min. when I 1st let them out. Mr Dummy doesn't crow as much. He's too busy each morning making up for lost time with the hens! Moose (the leggy lav) just finally started crowing. He hatched in May, so he's a late bloomer. It's such a pleasant low "coooo-coooo" noise. Very infrequent & sounds more like an owl. I wish it could stay that way.

Here are some Brick pics from today. It was bright & sunny, so I took a lot.

walking


checking out the garden



running across the yard

Under the pine trees


standing alert (gotta keep a careful eye on that shadow that's been following him around!)

Godiva & Brick


Moose



The chicks below are still the most spoiled. They share Princess's high pecking order & think they own the place.
CCL pullet doing ballet warm ups (chick from MeepBeep)


Mystery orp chick (still looks white) I love the dark eyes & light gray legs

 

[Faraday40]

We let one of our frizzle hens sit on her eggs earlier this summer, and one hatched around middle of July. We are thinking its a hen which we are very excited about! I wanted to share a picture, she is just so funky looking. Frizzle hen crossed with white crested polish rooster.

Your chick & its expression made me laugh.

 

[Faraday40]

@chickendreams24
What a scare! I hope your choc pullet is on the mend.