INDIANA BYC'ers HERE!

well something, i'm guessing a coon has gotten into my chickens. got one yesterday so I set the traps and the sneaking thing ate the marshmallows, and still got another hen. operation coon kill starts back up at my house this evening!!!!!

I was told by a friend who had coon trouble you have to super glue (remember just need 1-2 drops) the marshmellows to the tripping device of your live tap because the boogers he dealt with figured it was a trap and pulled the bait out the sides with their "hands"....
 
ok ill ask my dad if we can go to menards and can I let the rooster and hen run around tell they get a breeding pen?? Or do they need to be locked up plus the rooster is going to be the onlyy rooster tell the babys get bigger and iknow there gender
See now your questions are getting into some more details than I have researched. A rooster is able to mate with a lot of hens but there is a limit on the number of hens he can get to produce fertile eggs. So depending on the number of hens you have, two things could mess up your breading if you let all the hens and 1 rooster mingle. First your rooster may prefer the non breeder hens and not even mate the breeder hen leaving you with no hatching eggs from your breeding hen. Second your rooster could mate with so many of the hens including the one you want to breed and not provide good quality fertility to your breeding hen or even any of your hens. It can happen when a male is mating too frequently. How much is too frequently depends on the male.
Now as long as you don't have any other roosters, then your hen can be in with the other hens while you are not breeding her. Again it is my understanding that during the breeding process, the breeding animals are kept separate from the other animals. If I'm wrong I'm sure someone else on here will let me and you know.
Now as soon as you get another rooster, you will have to keep the breeding hen away from that rooster for a period of time before the breeding starts. I'm not sure how long a hen can stay fertile after being mated. I can tell you roosters do not care about breed, they will mate just about anything so long as they are close in size and things can line up.
Lastly, it is an interesting google search, so you may want to look up chicken mating on google. There is not much to see when they mate and it lasts for about 30 seconds unless a 2nd rooster forces the mating rooster off of the hen. But the details are still interesting and it is not the quite the same process that human have.
I live close to the grain elevator its a couple streets away from me
That sounds interesting.
 
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Just checked the weather forcast, no 50 degree in there until 10 days from now. And what is with this snow??????????

How big are your chickens now, and how many do you have?

Awwww Too fast, don't make me count them pleaseeeeee!!!!!! Lol! Jk.
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I have 12 chickens and boy have the gotten big! The 1st group is almost completely feathered with my Corny (cornish x leghorn) being the biggest. Corny is bigger than my blue swedish ducks and the 2nd group is getting their feathers in. NOOOOO MORE SNOW! I hate snow
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I wish spring would act more like spring than winter. Curse you Punxsutawney Phil
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............ Ok I think I am done ranting. How are your chickens doing? Are they eating you out of house and home like ours? Where are you keeping yours at? We had to give up a whole room to ours
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I will post pics of our chicken-n-duck room later. Oh and one more thing. Does anyone else's chickens go YUP,YUP,YUP? My Corny does! lol!
 
Question for the Indiana chicken folk....

I'd like to plant some forage grasses or wheat or millet, around the edges of my chicken run. I'm planning on it being outside the fence and let the chickens eat at it as it grows up and through the edges of the fence. They will not be able to scratch it all off this way. I need some suggestions on a good crop for them. Some kind of wheat? Chickory? Millet? What would be the most nutrious etc. for them? I'd like for whatever I use to grow up 1-2ft tall, maybe taller.

I have already purchased some 2x4s and hardware cloth to make the boxes for growing grass inside their run. I will most likely put clover in them.

Any help?
 
I'm generally too lazy to post pix, so here are several all at once. Obviously I have trouble placing them on the page!

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On the left is the little polish chick who had the bent head and his silkie friend. On the right is a recent pic of my 2/26 hatch. I don't know why my text is blue and underlined.


This is my 3/10 hatch--3 polish, 1 BCM, 1 cochin, and silkies



These two ran together. The top is the 3/26 hatch at about 3 days. The bottom is a shot of some splash and mille fleur cochins.



This is a hoop house that I bought at the Knox swap a couple of years ago. The bottom frame and doors are wood, the rest is conduit and hardware cloth. I think that it could be made lighter with all conduit frame and the doors made like those on wire cages. That's my opal peacock in the background.





These stuck together also. My pygmy Greta and her babies in February and a recent pic of Greta's butt and a baby. They're eating feed and hay now, so I'll probably take them to the Martinsville swap next weekend.
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can my breeding chickens eat layers feed or what food do they have to eat

Yes layer feed because thats what you want them to do is lay fertile eggs. If your breeding for certain breed then keep that breed of hen(s) seperate from ALL others. Then you take your rooster and introduce him to girl(s). After he has done his thing then you can take HIM back out. You can repeat this over and over. Or if your space is big enough than you can leave him in there but it depends on how many girls you have in the pen. A good ratio is 3 hens to 1 roo. If you have that ratio than you can leave him in there with the girls. If you have 1 hen to 1 roo then I would suggest taking him out because you dont want him to over do the girl in just 1 day. For breeding also watch for bare backs. If you see a hen that is missing alot of feather on back and neck then I would not breed her for little while till she grows her feathers back. If she is missing lots of feathers then that means she is getting bred to much and could be unhealthy for her.
 

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