Illinois...

[Justjered]

Been a while since I posted on this thread.

Been an exciting year so far for us.

Set 14 eggs (8 silkie and 6 serama), messed up my humidity and lost all but 4 silkies and 1 serama.

Set 12 Serama and 3 silkie eggs from california (very long shipping and took a day longer than hoped in the cold and heatpack was done), 1 single serama made it (the rest quit at various stages of incubation). So I called a breeder who I got chicks from before and after a 4 hour round trip, had 2 brooder mates).

Wishing I had more room for more coop/run space so I could expand to a couple more breeds I've learned about since starting... However I guess I have to just be happy that my town allows me to have chickens in town at all.

You can check out a page we started on Facebook for people in our area. "Galesburg illinois backyard chickens"

 

[chickendreams24]

Chicks are still in incubator at the moment, but we got several early birds. These were the 1st 3 chicks. Pic taken about 3pm This was around 5:30pm. Hard to see from the lighting, but the darker gray chicks is "Oopsie"'s baby (I think) It could be a dark lavender- if there is such a thing..... or my 1st blue. Here's another fav. chick. This little black orp has a mask by the eyes like a super hero. Two silkie eggs have pips. (One has had the pip since 9am this morning...) They are getting kicked around a lot. I may move some of the chicks into the brooder tonight. * Any tips for shipped eggs? I read that they'll do better on their side, but I'm tempted to set them sideways into the egg carton for support. The quail eggs are upright inside a strawberry container, so at least they're safe from soccer-playing chickens. No quail pips yet, but they were started on a different day. I'm not too concerned that they have no pips. The other time we hatched quail, we went from nothing to a peeping incubator in about 6 hours.

Congratulations on the Chickies!!! Loving the probable blue little one!!! Keep me up to date on that one please. Also my fingers are crossed for the silkies! I think I've figured out what caused our last quail egg hatch to take so long. Because we only have the one hen we have a wider age of the eggs and I've been reading that can affect their hatch day.

OK. The incubator was looking crowded, so I moved 6 of the 9 chicks into the brooder. I also took a quick orpington pic of 2 lavs, a black, & a blue(?) What do you think? Is the 2nd one a blue orp? Mom: I believe the chick came from Oopsie (who should be a mauve orp, which means she has some blue orp genes). If not from her, then the egg came from my lav orp pullet & it's just a little darker shade of lavender. Dad: ???? No barring/head spot, so Brick's out. Also have a lav (moose) & a blak/lav split (Mr Dummy). So, 25% chance black orp & 75% chance lav orp.

Does any one have chickens for sale near Freeport. We are looking for a few months to a year?

We are near Janesville WI and will be hatching and selling this year. We have a few pullets that we would consider rehoming. We also have three straight run 14 week old SLW mixes I believe there are two females and a male in that group but they are giving me trouble sexing them.

Welcome to BYC. I am on the north side of Chicago and raising some Orpingtons.

Do you have more chicks right now?

First of all, congrats on the beautiful babies. You are right, the 2nd chick looks blue and the feet should really tell. If its Oopsie's egg then it cannot be lavender. He/she seems very curious (like Oopsie) and I say its a keeper unless it turns out to be a boy. On the other hand, it might be useful as well because if its a boy, it will be either split for chocolate or possibly split for lavender as well. So you can breed with lavender, blue as well as chocolate hens to get all sorts of fun colors at the same time. Oopsie just became more precious!

I can't wait to hatch some of Oopsie's sisters eggs!!

@chickendreams24 sorry to hear about everything that has been going on with you. You just can't get a break, can you? Very nice pics of the boys. Can you get close-ups of the black boys if possible, especially their eyes?

Thank you @junibutt. No it doesn't seem like it in the last week. More bad news and some good news to for all of my Illinois friends. Yesterday morning the little downed juvenile chick gave up fighting and passed away. She was a beautiful little girl (I believe she was probably Brick's via Hen Solo-biele right?) Although she ate and drank constantly and she was going potty and her crop was emptying she never did recover the ability to stand without assistance. Though her legs were very strong. She didn't seem to be in any pain at all. I only wish I knew what happened. I am glad that she will not linger unable to live a normal chicken life. Still I feel rotten. Then last night I looked in the brooder to find one of the five bantam chicks gone. Unknown cause it was active less than an hour before and although smaller didn't seem to have trouble at all. I think that's the worst when we lose them and don't know why. Tonight at bed check there was another juvenile gone. Our last pure black Orp pullet. She was fine at 6:30 gone at 10. Idk what to make of this as they show no symptoms of anything. They seem perfectly healthy and are eating and drinking well. They don't have bloody diarrhoea and have had no diarrhoea at all. This chick was not down like the other. They were out on grass several days in the last two weeks but were given the preventative dose of corid at 6 and 8 or so weeks. They're 14-15 weeks now. We have started treatment and hopefully this is the answer. If not I'm at a complete loss. If this continues we will find a way to send the bird(s)-God forbid to the state get for necropsy. Cocci is such a terrible and hard to diagnose thing sometimes. I had no idea until I started researching it more heavily last summer just how many kinds there are and how bad it can be. I do know not all the strains leave visible blood in the stool. Ugh I have this part of raising chickens. Losing any of them is so hard. This last week has been especially hard and has shaken me. While I wouldn't get rid of the whole flock I could see myself letting the flock age out and retire, living out their lives. Still I love chickens and their antics too much. There were a couple times this week where I wondered. I also catch myself on weeks like this wondering what you all must think of us. Sorry hopefully that fear of you guys thinking we're poor flock keepers has no merit. Sometimes I wonder myself. The rest of the flock seems good all the juveniles are seeming healthy and active. No one has ruffled feathers or is reserved or any other warning signs that I've come to recognize. We do have two pullets in the main flock that each have a cut on their backs I'm sure from the overzealous cockerals. Somehow yesterday the door between the main flock and the cockeral group in the back open which is odd BC it doesn't naturally swing open even when it's unlatched as there's a spring. Anyway our double barred and a lavender pullet ended up on the backside and three of the cockerals ended up in the main flock. Needless to say anarchy ensued and there are a few scratches and a couple bruises, both of the physical nature and of the ego. Lol The lavender pullet is one of the two girls that has a cut and hers is pretty nasty. She got to come in the house for some tlc and doctoring. She did not like me debriding the wound with peroxide in a syringe but it was looking kind of awful and I felt it was necessary to keep infection at bay. The cockerals also made her aspirate slightly from their overzealous advances(most of them have been separate from the flock for three or so months) so we are monitoring that carefully. Poor baby got hell from them. She sounds a lot better today though. So while I was cleaning her wound hilarity ensued BC the sting of the peroxide made her bite DH2B and me lol I think it more startled him than anything BC she didn't hurt me but once maybe. Lol he decided he didn't like the vicious chicken. Lol he understood why she bit lol but said he liked when we had to do surgery on Hope much better and she just layed there and let us work. Of course Hope was wrapped in a towel. The lavender did very well really looks like a boy's toe went right in under her skin by her hip for about and inch, so not as bad as Hope's injury last summer which we thought could be from a hawk but have always wondered (we can now not see where the injury was on her btw) The little lavender finally started attacking the paper towels instead and settled when I got through to the next part which was gentle iodine delivered the same way. She did great with that but kept trying to clean while we irrigated the wound. We/I-with my great assistant DH2B, then packed the wound full of antibiotic ointment-without the pain relief of course- and I do mean packed. Lol I stuffed a sizeable glob in that dime or nickel sized hole(you could see exactly how her skin tore). I then taped gauze to the bottom of a brand new chicken saddle and we put on her pretty new dress

she took to it quite nicely. All of our girls that are getting overbred are getting them. Some of them so far do better than others. Our salmon favorelles pullet has the other cut. Not bad though and she just got a layer of blue kote and a saddle. The next set of quail eggs are in lockdown(9/10 made it to lockdown one was a very early quitter-barely had blood) and we set one more group before the Easter hatchalong. We also moved that coop from DH2B's uncle's place today and will be placing it tomorrow and setting up a breeding group or two Hopefully no more bad news... Ever if I get my way. Thank you all for the support. I'll keep you up to date. Idk what's going on with the juveniles. Anyone ever feel like sometimes you're just bashing your head on a brick wall?

 

[Faraday40]

Hatch tally:
5 Black Orps
3 Lavender Orps
1 Blue Orp
1 - Light black with headspot (May be a mistake Biele mix or Brick's offspring)
3 Black silkies from the shipped eggs
4 quail (3 yellow & 1 brown)


Experiment results for DD's 2nd trial:

Quail eggs
Backyard Eggs

Farmer's Market (car ride, fridge, & washed)

from Grocery Store
60% hatched

20% hatched

0% hatched
Have not done egg-topsies yet, because I'm giving them an extra day

Chicken eggs
Backyard Eggs

Farmer's Market (car ride, fridge, & washed)

Store (shipped, fridge, & washed)
75 % hatched

50 % hatched

37.5 % hatched *


The backyard & farmer's market eggs included some of the infertile Oopsie's eggs, so the hatch % is much lower than normal.

* No fertile chicken eggs in store, so we washed some shipped eggs. 6 out of 8 developed. 3 were fully formed & even absorbed all the yolk sac, but malpositioned. They never externally pipped, so perished. Two hatched normally & the last required an assisted hatch. I must add that these 3 chicks must be very tough to have survived all that. I only wish I could have helped the 3 malpositioned chicks. All had detached & strange shaped air cells.

I think my incubator was running a little hot. Hatch day was Sat, but we got chicken egg pips starting on Thurs & they mostly hatched on Friday night. The 4 quail hatched on time = Sat morning. It was funny how they all hatched between 11am-12pm. There are 3 quail eggs still in there that looked promising at lockdown. I doubt we'll get any more + no signs of hatching, but the kids want to keep them going until tonight.

The kids are busy bonding with the chicks. DD has already taught the blue & the 3 silkies to come running to her clucking noise.

 

[ChicagoClucker]

@chickendreams24 I am so sorry, you and your chicks seem to be having a rough time. Sending hugs

@Faraday40 Congrats on the hatch!!!!! If you happen to have a pure cuckoo orp, let me know. I think I need to add one

 

[Faraday40]

@Faraday40 Congrats on the hatch!!!!! If you happen to have a pure cuckoo orp, let me know. I think I need to add one

Sure! I feel the same about your silver laced orps!

I tried to set only orp eggs, but my biele's eggs have gotten lighter. (I could have accidently put one in.) So, I can't tell about the one chick that recently hatched. Godiva only mates with Brick. If I set her eggs (which I did not for this hatch), I'm pretty sure to get a choc cuckoo orp. I'm surprised that I didn't get more cuckoo orps. When the eggs were being collected for this hatch, Mr. Dummy was still the head roo & allowed the others to mate. Moose is no longer bullying the other 2, but he does try to stop them from breeding. The exception is Godiva. Brick & Godiva have always been an item; where one goes, the other follows. I have seen her angrily peck & chase Moose off after he took advantage of an opportunity.

@Junibutt I'm very, very excited about my blue orp. 3 of Oopsie's eggs hatched. One blue & 2 black. One of the black chicks has a very black head but lighter black body. Yet, I still think it's a black orp. Does this means that Oopsie is genetically a mauve orp? Dummy or Moose had to be the father.

 

[Faraday40]

@chickendreams24
I'm so sorry to hear about your losses. With all the crazy weather, yes, it could be cocci. The weather is probably also to blame for the aggressively mating cockerels. You've read about all my troubles with my usually docile roos.

We also have a cooper's hawk hanging around. Last month it was the giant red-tailed hawk with a daily fly-by. When near, all the chickens hid inside the coop. However, recently, I have seen the smaller cooper's hawk hanging out in front of the garage, while the chickens are happily enjoying the yard out back. I think it's trying to catch them off-guard. I certainly hope it never works & I'd feel a lot better if they hid inside the coop when it was near.

 

[Junibutt]

Here is the suspicion we had about Oopsie:

• She was mauve splash- Not possible because either both the parents needed to be mauve or one mauve and 1 blue. My mauve hen has not laid since Feb of last year. Also if she was splash, she could not have black chicks, all the chicks would be blue. Sp this possibility is ruled out now.
• She was mauve just washed out version of it. Very much the possibility since one of the chicks is blue. Now what happened to the choc in her. Well all the boys whether black or blue will be split to chocolate, some of the boys would also be split to lavender.
• There is another rare possibility that she is mauve but masked/diluted by recessive white. Its highly unlikely unless she came from my choc cuckoo girl Dove who possibly has recessive white in her. Can you check your record to see what was the egg marked as?

 

[Janie hall]

Hello I'm from southern Illinois Shawneetown to be excat. I have 2 crested ducks female 2 khaki Campbell Drake's 1 Muscovy hen all hens r laying free to a good pond

 

[Faraday40]

Here is the suspicion we had about Oopsie:

• She was mauve splash- Not possible because either both the parents needed to be mauve or one mauve and 1 blue. My mauve hen has not laid since Feb of last year. Also if she was splash, she could not have black chicks, all the chicks would be blue. Sp this possibility is ruled out now.
• She was mauve just washed out version of it. Very much the possibility since one of the chicks is blue. Now what happened to the choc in her. Well all the boys whether black or blue will be split to chocolate, some of the boys would also be split to lavender.
• There is another rare possibility that she is mauve but masked/diluted by recessive white. Its highly unlikely unless she came from my choc cuckoo girl Dove who possibly has recessive white in her. Can you check your record to see what was the egg marked as?

Oopsie & the 2 other female mauve -whites came from eggs you marked "D" The mottled chocs came from eggs marked "DO."

I agree that Oopsie's not a splash because her color is completely even. It's not technically a white, but kind of a pretty cream.

 

[Faraday40]

Hello I'm from southern Illinois Shawneetown to be excat. I have 2 crested ducks female 2 khaki Campbell Drake's 1 Muscovy hen all hens r laying free to a good pond