INDIANA BYC'ers HERE!

[atrueb00]

Got to do some catching up again cause I spent the whole afternoon into evening at the ER. I have a broken leg 4 dead LF, 2 injured Silkies and 4 total Silkies with feathers glued to them by dog slobber.
When I went out to spend some time with my critters yesterday I saw a strange dog was in my pasture attacking my range chickens. I went running broom in hand ( they can do some damage when swang right ) I was chasing the dog trying to get him out of my pasture when he turned the wrong way and headed towards goat pasture. He ducked under the picnic table, I went to kick him and missed and hit the bench instead. Broke my leg! Went down crying. Just then DS was coming back from taking the LGD's to get their yearly's. At that point all he saw was a dog attacking me. So he turned the LGD's loose. I wont go into that.
So DS gets me to the gazebo and starts the hunt for dead and or injured chickens. I cleaned the mauled and injured and DS started burying all the dead while I went to the ER.
I absolutely hate Mondays, and I had such a great week last week, guess you have to expect bad after good.
As of right now 1 of the injured Silkies is still just sitting around, I have her food and water and Suite cake close by. The others are ranging in the back yard. no more pasture ranging for them. While I was in the ER DS and DH found that the dog had chewed his way through the welded wire at the back of the horse pasture, JUST put it up a couple weeks ago, and the patched that and put up a new fence up separating the horses and the goats, now my LF can only range in the goat pasture, which is closer to the house and the LGD's. My LF girls and boys are not real happy about that either, they cant scratch around in the horse poo no more.
We found out who's dog it WAS cause 1 of the neighbors that knew the dog saw the whole show. The dog owner called the police and the showed up her bright and early. So me and my crutches had to take them out to where the Dog and my chickens were buried. I asked him if he wanted me to dig my chickens up, cause he was almost calling me a lair as to the reason the dog was dead, and was blaming my LGD's, wanting vacation records and all...... and EXCUSE me but MY PROPERTY is where this all took place not down the rd. I am the one down 4 hens, and maybe 1 Silkie ( ???)
Cops are just plain stupid now days!! The law is protecting the wrong and prosecuting the right. What is up with that.

Hope ya'll had a better start to the week then I did.

I am so sorry to hear this. I hope your leg heals well and that your silkie makes it. Had to look up LGD, it wasn't on BYC list of abbreviations. Does it mean livestock guardian dogs?

Welcome. Your friend was amusing and brave yesterday. I did not realize until right before you were leaving that she was afraid of chickens. When you come back, she is welcome to come and hold any of our chickens. The smallest chicks typically get the most affection. But our largest rooster is by far the friendliest.

My rooster is the best with kids too, so strange isn't it?

 

[atrueb00]

Here are the chick's one week photos.

Here's their one day photos from last week:


Also got a cool pic of a bumble bee on a cosmo flower right by our tomato plant. Would love to keep some bumble bees one day.

 

[EurekaChic]

Here are the chick's one week photos. Here's their one day photos from last week: Also got a cool pic of a bumble bee on a cosmo flower right by our tomato plant. Would love to keep some bumble bees one day.

I love that your are documenting the growth of all your chicks this way. It reminds me of the opening to The Brady Bunch show where all the family members, plus Alice, are all shown in the checkerboard, looking at each other. So cute!

 

[Leahs Mom]

So another crazy question. Can chickens carry lethal genes. I have been mating my white crested polish rooster with a polish/bantam cross hen. I do not know their linage because I bought them at an auction. My problem is that although almost all the eggs hatch and seem to do okay, they are starting to die off. I have other mutt chickens that are bigger in size that seem to be doing fine, but these smaller ones keep dieing. Could there be something in the genes of the parents that is causing this. Yesterday they all seemed fine. No pasty butt or anything, this morning 2 were dead, in different brooders and different ages. What could cause this? I have never hatched any eggs until June. I hatched 5 silkies and they are all doing great, it's just these polish crosses that I am having trouble with. Any suggestions or comments

Need more info:

-What age are they?
-What symptoms do you see before they die? (Staggering when walking, not much activity or depressed acting, etc.)
-Do you have a place in the brooder where they can get away from the heat?
-Had you observed them all eating and drinking?
-Any other info that may give more information.

 

[goatluver20]

I'd be making persimmon pudding out of them and canning them.

Yeah. I'll also do that. But is there anything in them that would harm the chickens If they ate them?

 

[Leahs Mom]

That was weird.

What was weird?

So, I'm contemplating adding a herd of rabbit some time down the road. They'll be for feeding my family, and donating to extended family and such.

I know I can feed some parts to my chickens - liver and kidneys and heart. My question is, what else is okay for the chickens to eat? Can I just throw everything I don't want in the run, and rake up the skulls later? Should the chickens not be fed the bowel or intestines?

Along the same lines, if I shoot a squirrel in my back yard, can I throw its carcass to the chickens? Should I skin and gut it first?

Thanks in advance for answering gross questions.

You can feed them just about everything. Just be sure that you don't put more out than they can eat at one time and store the rest in the fridge or freezer. You don't want it staying out and getting rotten or the possibility of botulism. Otherwise it's all good. It's best for them raw like they'd get it in nature.

I usually try to chop things up small enough that they can eat it. But they can pick it off the bones too. It's a great animal source of protein...your birds will look like piranha's as soon as they figure out what it is!

 

[chick rookie]

I don't think I've posted pictures of my babies here in a couple weeks so I thought I'd stop in and post their most recent pictures here.

These are from yesterday when the little ones turned 10 weeks old.

Elda the cuddly Silver Gray Dorking:




Kit the talkative SGD:




Gotta have my cuddle time with Elly.

Kit-kit joined in as well (she was just peeking in the first picture

). Elly's such the cuddler, I'm barely seated before she's in my lap. Kit-kit takes her time, but she always joins us eventually, and she makes this adorable trilling sound when I hug her.

Love my Dorkings!






Georgette the clumsy Black Copper Marans--she is such a klutz! And she tries to eat the velcro off my clothing if there is any.

Louise the dainty BCM, always the lady. She has the most soulful, deep eyes and such a dignified personality!




Mabey Mabel the Welsummer:




Mabel was being so photogenic yesterday.

She's the worrier of the group, so it was nice to see her relaxed for once.




Here are my babies from Brad, about 11 weeks old. Poppy the Cream Legbar. She is so pretty in person!

She's the shyest of the bunch, but still comes over and lets me pet her sometimes.




Violet the voracious Bielefelder:



Grumpy face

Vi always looks so severe. She's such a sweetie, though! BUT, she can be a bulldozer sometimes, too! If she wants her lap time, she will get her lap time! She practically knocked Elly off my lap earlier today when she decided it was her turn.

And their 'big sister' Tilde the Swedish Flower Hen. I think she's around 10 months old now, but I don't remember for sure. She was grumpy because it was rainy.

Beautiful birds, and I agree with you on Louise's soulful, deep eyes.

OK here's pictures of the milk house. Pardon the trash. That will be the first thing to go lol.






Inside. That's where the milkbcans used to go. Now I think it would make good nest boxes.





And my lavender silkie hen

looks like a nice start to an Awesome coop, and love your hen.

Thanks, the cops went away without much of anything to say after DS came home and told what he saw when he got here.

Found my first secret egg stash:



This is one of my newly-laying hens, a RIR. Possibly two hens - some of the eggs have a distinctly rosier tint. I have a black Orp who is a serious nest hog, bordering on broody, and the others are too dense to realize that there's more than one nest box. So she found a nice spot behind the dust bath box.

I have found some of her eggs in the coop, and possibly one or two in the nest, last week. Obviously I don't know how long she's been doing this... no more than a month for sure, and I'm guessing around two or three weeks.

This morning I'm going to move everything non-essential out of the coop to clear all the corners, and fill in the space behind the dust bath with litter. I'm hoping that if the nest boxes are the only dark place in the coop, they'll get used. If not, at least the eggs will be where I can see them.

So the question is, can I still eat these eggs, or should I toss them? I know eggs are often kept on the counter for several weeks, provided the bloom hasn't been washed off. I'm fairly certain these haven't been sat upon for any length of time beyond laying the next egg.


I have another question for the group, while I'm here. Right now 1/2 of my kinda small (108sqft) run is covered by a tarp. My thought was they'd like to have some shade outdoors. However, I never see the chickens in that part of the run - they're always in the coop or in the sun. The coop is 144sqft, so there's plenty of room in there for everyone to hang out. The question is, should I just ditch the tarp, so they have more sun? Does anyone else here have a totally unsheltered run?

I found a nest of 7 in a pen of 5 pullets, so they started laying before I thought they would and now I don't know how old they are so I have them marked for the dogs. I'm guessing they are 3 -4 days old cause they were all brn eggs and I only have 2 brn egg pullets in that pen. the other 3 are EE and I am really hoping they aren't laying brn eggs.... will be so disappointed.

look who visited this morning:

So pretty

Our coop/shed entry door is about 5 inches above ground level, so I had nailed together a few treated 2x10s cut on an angle as a ramp. That worked great for awhile, but the treated wood gets slick when it rains, and the lawn tractor dislodges the ramp pieces when I mow the grass, etc. We decided to do something more permanent.
Somehow, the words 'more permanent' mean more expensive and more work for me.

We purchased a tumbled stone circle kit from Menard's. 'Kit' is deceiving, because it doesn't include removing the sod, digging down, getting a truck load of gravel, manually tamping it down, getting a truck load of sand, tamping that down, then the HOURS it takes to figure out the 'map' of how to assemble the circle, nor the cost of polymeric sand.

We put half of the circle at the entry gate to the back yard, and are putting the other half as the entry to the shed. The gate assembly went pretty well. It was mostly manual efforts and turned out nicely.


This past weekend, I began the shed ramp. I formed a sloping semi-circle, and poured a sloping concrete ramp. It took 3 trips to Lowe's (I'm very poor at estimating how much one bag of concrete makes), and the loading, unloading of nine 80-lbs bags of concrete. This is a task more suited for a 20-yr old.
Next, I will adhere the pavers to the ramp, and put polymeric sand in the joints. I'm hoping the weather cooperates for the last part of this.

If you plan to do a circle kit, I highly recommend you consider hiring it out. It's way more manual labor than what one would think.

but it so pretty...

Bang bang yum!

Dh says not if he gets there first... lol

Thought I'd give credit for these sweet birds! Sven is from Racin, Rapunzel form jsummers (thru jchny) and Cordelia from Brad. This is not the window they visited thru yesterday. I was amazed that it was like the girls knew where he was (same place they were last week!). I put cardboard on top of the dog cage so Sven could hang with the girls without the wire cage under his feet. He seemed to enjoy his little visit very much!

they are nice looking birds

Thanks. I love his crow too! I slept on our screened porch last night (i love looking at the stars and hearing the coyotes howl ) It was very chilly this morning but it was worth it because I got to hear another one of my roos crow for the first time. I'm not sure which one it was but I was very excited (all this stuff is new for me lol).

I still get excited too...

sorry Chick Rookie - we've had 3 seperate dog attacks on our chickens - it sux

yes it sure does, I cant even get down the back steps to go out with them to check on them today. DS has been a real trooper helping me and going out to bring by injured baby's in so I can check them out and take pi'c for me ect.... Sorry you have had 3... I don't know how you are holding up

I'm lazy; I'd let them fall off and pick them up to give to the chickens. Then you know they're ripe.

I'd also put up a tree stand 25 yards from that persimmon tree, and have a very merry deer season!

x2

I got a few from RK that are very similar to this. They probably are full silkie, just have some recessive traits showing up if you are seeing the straight comb instead of walnut. Can you get a close up of their faces? Stance is pullet but the bottom pic's wattles are larger than what I've seen on pullets. Thing with silkies is sometimes you won't know until they crow or lay an egg unfortunately. Mine started laying right at 24 weeks.

DS got these for me he done pretty good...

 

[Leahs Mom]

Quote:
PS: @hoosiercheetah

Someone that has experience w/this is @ki4got

 

[atrueb00]

I love that your are documenting the growth of all your chicks this way. It reminds me of the opening to The Brady Bunch show where all the family members, plus Alice, are all shown in the checkerboard, looking at each other. So cute!

Thank you! It very much reminds me of the Brady Bunch too!

 

[chick rookie]

Sounds like a couple very eventful days! So sorry for your loss of birds and mobility. Hope your leg heals well! That stray got what it deserved! Your LGDs did good protecting you and their livestock I hope they got steaks for their trouble! Again I'm too far away to help but know that I wish I could. Take care of you and best of luck t your lil Silkie too.

they get that tonight. with the ER no one was home till late to cook. but they are getting dogie cake to. They did do what they were supposed to do. Just wish the vet visit was a different day and they would have been home and this wouldn't have happened... butt..... my Silkie is moving around a little this evening. She had no big wounds, I really think it was more shock then anything, even the birds that didn't have a scratch on them were a little slow about ranging today.