Illinois...

[cavemanrich]

just wanted to share some pics of our girls.
I am in Plainfield, IL. Anybody have opinions and when to move the birds outside. I was intending to do so this weekend - good willing my one brahma starts pooping fine again. They are 6 weeks old now. The weather has been all over lately. They are staying around 65 degrees right now in the garage. It ids supposed to be in the low to mid 50s this weekend. Is that too low still? Would a 10 degree shift in temp be hard on the birds? Night time can still dip into 30s right now. Will they be fine in the coop at these temps? Any harm in waiting 1 mlre week?

If you can, take them outdoors during day and into garage in eve. Observe their behavior. If they are huddling together, that indicates they are chilly. Our weather is going to improve in the next few days.

 

[Faraday40]

We sold most of the orps (kept one to grow out) and kept the 4 wk old silkies. Cookie is now down to 6 chicks, so we let them have some grass time. Thankfully, we finally have a nice spring day!

Melting chicks:

 

[Faraday40]

Correction: We also have one 4 week old orp (from my Colombian Buff)
This chick is about as sweet & gentle as there can be. She sat quietly on my lap for about 30 min while I worked on the computer.

 

[Justso]

This evening when I went to close up with the girls I noticed Peggy, in her separate enclosure, looking agitated. I brought her in for a while and

gave her some treats. She helped herself to the cat food then had a sit for a while in the bowl. When I placed her back outside in her enclosure, she was still agitated. I went to check later I noticed she had busted out and went up with the big girls. I guess she has made herself a part of the flock!

 

[Faraday40]

Those bantams always have attitude. Just wait until she goes broody!!!!!

 

[chickendreams24]

@Faraday40 do you still have the oegb and seramas?

Cute silkies are they all buff?

That little chick from GG is so cute.




Love Peggy in the cat dish lol

 

[Faraday40]

2 seramas (1 is a silkied male + 1 ? gender with pale comb)
2 OEGs (one female + 1 female-looking for far)
5 silkies - all buff of unknown gender
1 buff-looking orp (could be a Buff Colombian) - looks female
1 lav orp (1.5 week old, but looks female)


.....
and 3 incubators with about 40 eggs developing!!! They're due to hatch next week.
Yikes! I think I'm going to be sleeping in the coop when DH finds out! LOL

 

[Faraday40]

@Faraday40
That little chick from GG is so cute.

She looks sort of pale, so I'm wondering if she carries the lav gene too. ??? Sadly this sweetest chick of all has another terrible nickname. (BFO- stands for Big Fat Orpington. She's in with the tiny seramas & OEG, so she really stands out. LOL) At the time I collected the eggs, Dinner (an Isabel Orp) was around & "active." GG's been with Mr Wonderful for over 6 weeks, so her future chicks will likely have lacing.


When those eggs hatched, I sold a bunch of misc. orpington chicks at a good discount since they were not separated by color. It was a test hatch to prep for all the school groups. They're about 4+ weeks old now. I heard back from someone who bought chicks .... WITH PICS!

Both came from potential laced orp chicks. I think the gold is either another GG chick or an incomplete gold laced orp. The gold has been looking female all along. The silver laced orp's gender has always been more ?. Normally by 4 weeks a male's comb is much taller with more color. The woman was ready to give me the SLO as an unwanted male, but I talked her into waiting a bit longer. (If you remember last fall with all my lav orps - so many had little wattles but ended up female. Too many females!) I'd hate for her to give away a perfectly beautiful pullet and at this point it has a good chance of being female. Sometimes I'm just too honest.

To Compare: Here's 'Mr Wonderful' last year at 4 weeks old. He was mostly still chick fluff but had a pink comb already
MALE

Only my females had that much feather growth at 4 weeks old:
FEMALE:

If hers does end up being male, I'll gladly take him back. She's not able to keep roosters and I'm sure I could find a pretty boy like that a home. To top it off, the daddy is either Mr Wonderful (name says it all) or Dinner who grew up to be so big & docile we could not make him live up to his name.

 

[Faraday40]

Today I taught a couple preschool classes. DS was supposed to come along & help. (Besides getting out of school for 1+ hour, he gets to go back to see his former preschool teachers.) Then my poor kids developed sore throats last night. Neither seemed better this morning, so they both stayed home. Boy was DS disappointed! Just got back from the doc's & both have strep. UGH! At least I'm glad they stayed home to prevent spreading.

As you already know, I did a few test hatches and discovered some fertility issues with my orpingtons. So when I loaded up the 3 classroom incubators, I added plenty of extras to make up for all the clears I experienced at home. Teachers/classrooms usually have lower hatch rates anyway, so I set 4-5 doz eggs (expecting only about 1/2 of them to hatch). I just finished candling all 3 incubators. Gulp! There are 42 developing eggs!!! I think I'm going to be sleeping out in the coop when DH notices all those chicks returning here. They should hatch Tues & Wed next week. For the 1st weekend, the teachers fight over who gets to chick-sit. After that the schools return the chicks to me.

 

[chickendreams24]

Hey all

Last week we added some babies from the feed store. After losing my gray silkie hen to the mink. Chicken math at it's finest. Lose a bird add 11 more. Unfortunately three of the chicks were given to us because they had a rough time in shipping and we've lost three of the silkies(two we were given and one we bought)

We also bought 2 Welsummer pullets(Anyone have experience with them?) We still have 3 blue 1 black and 2 buff silkie chicks left. Straight run of course I'm dieing to know what genders I got. I hope I got a few pullets at least.

Of course now we've lost those three failure to thrives naturally we must add more right?

So every year we have a local school that hatches out our eggs and loves it. The teacher picked up 30 eggs yesterday and tonight we are also setting a hatch. The eggs that we want to keep track of the chicks, because of course I don't expect the teacher to know all about incubating and separate or mark the chicks at hatch.