Illinois...

[megpie021]

I havent gone out this morning, but husband has and said he is sitting more normally. Not standing, but not flopped to the one side. We will see. We are gonna give him another round of flushing water and keep the tylan going.

We find 2 eggs most days. But still only know for sure Peaches and Licorice are laying..Husband is glad they are starting to pay rent haha.

 

[Faraday40]

DS's chicken( "Chizzy") laid her 2nd egg today. She was rewarded with some extra snuggles.

 

[Junibutt]

Was someone here looking for LF Cochins. Someone near Indianapolis has a pair partridge male and white female. Please message @kittydoc in case you are interested for pics and pricing.

 

[Hannah_123]

I have a 6 week old duckling that I had hatched as a project and had plans for him to go to a family friends farm but am now looking at other options as I am very attached to him. I live in Chicago and I am just not at a point where I think building a coop and having a bunch of ducks is an option as I do travel a lot. I would love to rehome him or have someone foster him where I would be able to still see him. I would offer to pay for feed, vet appointments, and also help with maintenance of the coop in exchange for housing my duck. If this is something anyone is open to or knows someone who is, I would love to get in touch.

 

[chickendreams24]

A weekend of ups & downs. Sold lots of chicks & my fav Spitzhauben Pair. (Yes, my sweet Drumsticks went to live with a very nice couple. We kept one female, but will still need to get the number down by fall.) The sad news is that the chicken number went down by one today. My beloved Bielefelder "Hen Solo" died. The best I can figure is that she got into my garden by jumping the shortest section of fence by the gate. Perhaps she followed my intelligent lightweight athletic hen. Hen Solo probably couldn't find her way out. I do not want chickens in my garden, so I do not have feeders & waterers in there. Bieles don't do well in the heat. Being stuck in direct sunlight on a hot day with no water probably gave her a heart attack. I feel terrible. The fence is suppose to keep the chickens OUT not IN. I found her around 1pm.

So sorry to hear about Hen Solo I know she was special. This heat has been awful. We lost a rock cockeral overnight a while back just fell off the roost. I was extremely worried for our flock after losing him.

Just ran out & took some pics.

I'd love to hear opinions & gender predictions:

Black Lavender splits
#1 had an injury/cut. It healed up well but I believe it's a little slower growing because of it. OR It could be a male. Both have the same size comb & wattles. #1 is more feisty due to daily disinfectant.
View attachment 1077564
#2 has more feather growth. Pretty sure it's female.
View attachment 1077565

Blue Laced:
This darker one always looked gray brown to me. Now it's getting spangling?
Slowest on feather growth & no real tail yet. No comb or wattles yet, but I wonder if it's male only because of the lack of feathers.
View attachment 1077566

The lighter blue laced chick
View attachment 1077567

BLue Buff Columbian:
Still a puzzler, but I like the color. It's the biggest chick from @Junibutt 's eggs
View attachment 1077568

Gold Laced:
Sadly Grumpy (1st chick hatched & DD's fav) died at about 5-7 days old. The other GLO was born with a closed eye. Still looks strange but she's the 2nd biggest & very friendly. HUGE tail
View attachment 1077569
Silver laced:
#1 is the one I said was male when only 2 weeks old. The comb looks pink too.
Niether SLs have tails.
View attachment 1077570

#2 looks more feminine, but I could be wrong.View attachment 1077571 View attachment 1077572

Omg yay! I just went to let the dogs out and she was suddenly just standing there in the middle of the garage! I have no clue where she was, but I feel 1000 percent better. Thanks guys for the support!

I wish I could share one of mine but DD's too much in love -- with BOTH. I fear I'll be singing the broody blues just like @ChicagoClucker next summer.
View attachment 1088206

2 of my 7 week old chicks scalped a 5 week old orp yesterday.

Brought her inside to protect from flies.
Applied Neosporin (which I believe I shouldn't have since there is no skin). What can I do for her? I heard mixture of sugar and turmeric is good for healing. Any other suggestions? She doesn't seem too uncomfortable at this time and is eating and drinking. Hoping she survives especially since its a mystery chick, possibly from a choc laced project.

View attachment 1089491

@Junibutt so sorry to hear about this chick. Poor baby. I can't say we've had too luck in this department, with scalping. Last week we had to put down a quail that had been scalped. Somehow the lock on the quail run door came loose and all the quail were out in the back side of the coop. The chickens in there attacked and on of the quail was scalped all the way from behind the eyes down the back of the neck. In spite of the horrific injuries the quail was alert and eating and drinking on its own, this is the only reason we kept it alive. It recovered well for a week but then in spite of all our efforts infection set in despite oral antibiotics. We then decided to humanely put the quail down. I hope you have better luck with your chick. Please keep us up to date. I think in the house honey may be a good idea. I wish I had thought of it.

Sold some of my lav orp hens (Marshmallow & Muppet) to a 4H kid from Iowa. I really need to get the numbers down by winter, but I already miss them. My family will miss the eggs, but the March 4th pullets will be starting up very soon. I may have gotten an egg from my blue orp Jewel. It looked just like one of Oopsie's eggs, but Oopsie is currently broody.

The big news is that DS's pullet Chizzy just laid her 1st egg. It's so cute!
Here it is next to an orp egg.
View attachment 1095556

Yay for Chizzy! ...when did her name change? LoL

Below are some of my current babies.

BTW- The silver laced orps are my favs, so forgive the extra pics of them.
I have 1 male:

View attachment 1096655

Don't you just love his grumpy little face!?!

View attachment 1096656



Here's the female silver laced orp.View attachment 1096654 Both side by side:
View attachment 1096658 View attachment 1096659
Here's the blue buff Colombian orp: Very friendly girl & one of the biggest

View attachment 1096660

Blue laced orp female:
Not sure what she should look like. Perhaps she's a blue laced splash.
View attachment 1096662
Blue Laced orp male:
View attachment 1096663
Gold Laced Orp female (with the blue laced male on right)
View attachment 1096661

Here are the 2 blk/lav split orps. Both look female now.
View attachment 1096682 View attachment 1096683

Here's a lav orp from my birds. I'm planning to keep her.

View attachment 1096686
I have 3 female choc cuckoo orp females at the moment. We simply call them all "Baby Bricks." They look & act so much like their daddy but slightly bigger since the moms were from my giant birds.
View attachment 1096687

Congratulations to @Faraday40 's DD and her amazing showing at the fair!

 

[chickendreams24]

Long time since I've been on. Things have been a struggle here. Never enough time and all.

Been dealing as most of you may remember with rats in the coop since early this year even last winter. They escalated and our flock has suffered. First we had to rebuild our nest boxes two weeks after we had just rebuilt them. The rats getting in and eating eggs was teaching the flock to eat eggs and we are still dealing with that. The new nest box build feature
features roll out nesting boxes and a tray. Which is a Good since our eggs went from about 2 dozen a day to zero. We are now getting more and more each day again but they aren't yet used to the new nest boxes.

We are also identifying positive egg eaters which we will try to rehab. They may have to be processed if they don't stop.

Furthermore the rats caused even greater problems when they(we later discovered) moved in under our juvenile coop which we had surrounded with tin to prevent predators from getting in. This is our only coop or run without a concrete foundation. The rats then began attacking the juveniles in that coop.

The following details are horrific if sensitive please skip down until you see several blank lines...


We began finding chicks(the juveniles) dead or in shock in the small coop. In a matter of only a couple hours we may come in and find a dead chick. Or worse a living breathing chick with a gaping hole where it's vent used to be it's insides literally eaten out of it. Yes that's right we were literally losing birds as they were being eaten alive. Without question all of those with even just their vent missing(some we caught early) were put down immediately for humane reasons. It was incredibly horrible. The chicks themselves began to prey upon their injured siblings. Finding the color and taste to their liking. This has been our first experience with cannibalism and a horrible one it is too. We lifted the tin and found a pair of rats living in tunnels below it. Huge rats!

We had been trapping and killing the rats for months but only made a little headway. Fighting the problem at the little coop we didn't lose any birds from the big coop. Until the last straw. At bed check one night last week we found my beloved EE, Belle and sister to my sweet Pebbles in the corner. Our oldest birds I know their routine well and Belle was not next to Pebbles I knew immediately something was wrong. When I picked her up and saw the massive hole from pelvic bone to pelvic bone I gasped and then sobbed. My poor poor Belle. It was the last straw. We had avoided poison until that night, worried about the possible impact on local wildlife. We couldn't wait any longer. As I said Belle roosted next to my dearest Pebbles. What I didn't mention is that roost is part of the roost ladder and a good four feet off the ground. They also slept in the middle of the roost not on either end. I couldn't believe that Belle had gotten attacked. I was horrified that we had to put down our sweet girl. We layed poison out that night under wire milk crates that only rats or mice could access, one in the small coop one outside the big coop. The next morning 8 total cubes were gone. There was nothing left to pick up. We continued to put out poison and for days there was nothing left each morning. In the last few days we have finally been having to pick up poison in the mornings. We have also found the bodies of 4 massive rats and are sure there are more down in their burrows or even in the walls of the coop.










The fight continues but we no longer see rats hardly ever out there. Thank goodness. We have lost so many chicks and my wonderful Belle. We were able to save one of the fist chicks injured a Buckeye cockeral (some of you may remember that they were DH2B'S birthday gift and we sent out to a heritage breeder for them) up until the rats they were all doing alive and very well. Now we are down to four pullets and a number of cockerals (we had 8-9 pullets to start).

Below is a photo of Belle and a photo of one of the largest rats taken next to one of my reusable water bottles. The water bottle measures ten inches end to end.

 

[BellaKinga]

Help! We have a Polish Rooster 7 months old. Very handsome and nice! We got him as a chick and hoping to have a hen but we weren't so lucky! Unfortunately in our neighborhood, we can't have roosters.

Looking for a good home

 

[NotAFarm]

View attachment 1102037 Help! We have a Polish Rooster 7 months old. Very handsome and nice! We got him as a chick and hoping to have a hen but we weren't so lucky! Unfortunately in our neighborhood, we can't have roosters.
Looking for a good home

LOVE THIS PIC!

 

[Justso]

Yikes Chickendreams- are you in the city?
I haven't seen rats like that since I lived there. Maybe you need a Jack Russell. Or Schnauzer.

 

[Faraday40]

@chickendreams24
WOW! That's some rat! Hopefully you put a good dent into their population at your place.

I'm so sorry the rats killed your special Belle. I know she was your favorite.


Is your grandpa doing a little better? Did his infection respond to treatment?