INDIANA BYC'ers HERE!

[hoosiercheetah]

I have a silly question.

How do chickens know to eat oyster shell? Do they just want it when they need it? Are they attracted to dusty white things?

 

[racinchickins]

Thanksgiving processing day went off without a hitch yesterday. We were very lucky to have a warm morning and the rain held off until noon. We did 7 turkeys and 9 chickens in about 2 1/2 hours. @SallyinIndiana and her DH came over and helped, had some other friends and family too. It was great to have a group to work and socialize with. This is how it should be. The turkeys turned out great, and I am really excited to be able to provide my family and friends with great birds for the holiday! I'm hoping to turn this into an annual tradition.

 

[twoboystwogirls]

As with chickens there's not just one way to do things & rabbit breeders each have their own way to do things. This is what we've done for the past 8 years: Nest boxes go in on day 28. Average gestation is 31 days. We've had some go sooner, some later. When the doe starts pulling fur & lining the nest we know she's starting to get ready to deliver and we go out to the barn to check on her pretty frequently -- about every 15 minutes. (If the doe doesn't pull enough fur you may need to supplement.) When she starts delivering we usually try to be out there watching. We've had a couple does (usually our smaller breeds) have trouble in the past with having a large kit get stuck and I've had to help deliver a number of babies. Once the babies are born and the doe has hopped out of the nest box we pull the box out, count the live kits, take out any dead kits and clean up whatever mess might be in there. Occasionally some kits have been born in the front of the nest box and weren't able to crawl into the fur lined portion of the box. If we weren't right there to help them they would have chilled or froze to death, depending on the barn temp. Unless it's in the warmer spring or summer months, we bring the nestboxes into the house. The doe won't be ready to nurse the babies for about 24 hours so we wait that long to take them out. We've tried giving does their babies much earlier than that, but they are rarely ready or interested to nurse at that point. Sometimes we do have to encourage the doe to nurse even after 24 hours. Once she done it, though, her milk seems to really come in & she's really ready for the future nursings. The babies can get by with once a day feedings, so we try to take them out at the same time every day. We always check the babies' tummies after nursing to make sure they're all nice & fat. They sometimes seem to double in size with their full tummies. We're also making sure everyone has gotten fed. Sometimes there are kits that don't seem to have nursed as much, so we try to take them to the mom later on alone so they don't get pushed away. We have brought does into the house when it's really cold to flip her on her back & hold her so the thin kits can lay on her belly & nurse. Once the kits have opened their eyes (around day 10 - 12) we take them back out to the barn to stay with mom. By that point they are a decent size and fairly well furred. Once the babies are jumping in & out of the nest box well on their own we take the boxes out of the cage & they hang out with mom. Weaning sometimes happens as early as 4 weeks, but usually around 6 - 8 weeks (some babies will try to nurse as long as you let them with mom.) We've had some moms get tired of having their babies with them. When the mom starts trying to mount her kids you know you need to get them out of the cage (happens sometimes with our smaller breeds.) Good luck with the coming babies!

I just wanted to say that this is exactly what we do. One of our does had her babies in the middle of the night. We were out there by 6am but she had already had them on the wire cage floor. Of 7 we were only able to save 3. And this was in the spring when it was not that cold outside but baby bunnies cannot get cold when first born. She also would not nurse when we first brought them out so we had to coax her to nurse (we actually held her while putting the baby to her nipple). The next day she nursed them on her own. I know that some of our friends wean at 4 weeks but we wait until 6-8 weeks depending on how well they are eating mom's food and how irritated mom seems to be with the kits. Our last litter the mom refused to allow them to nurse after 6 weeks so we just put them in another cage.

 

[ChickCrazed]

Hi all, hope everyone is staying dry! It looks like waterworld in my neck of the woods!

I had a rough Saturday, I went out to feed the chickens and found Harris in the pen beaten to a bloody pulp, both eyes pecked out. His "brother" that he had been raised with for the last 7 months was covered in Harris' blood. Harris was humanely euthanized and the other rooster now needs to go.

Does anyone want to process him? He is free to any BYCers, just know that he needs to be food. I don't want to risk him harming any other birds. I'd rather not advertise him on Craigslist as chicken aggressive since we all know the type of person that would want him. I just want him gone and soon!

I am just floored by the entire thing. Harris had always been top roo and there were no girls in the pen to fight over. They have been together since they were babies and it was just the two of them in there.

RIP Harris

 

[chickiebaby1]

So I just wanted to share a few pics this morning while I have time. Nursing school has really been kicking my behind, along with taking care of 3 teenagers and over 80 chickens I just haven't hardly had time to sit and do much. I have been keeping up with the posts, just haven't got to post much myself. I've tried to do a few hatches over the last month or so and my last one was just over the weekend, out of 23 eggs that went to lock down only 2 hatched, which was very disappointing, but I had tried something different and my humidity went up to over 80% the first day in lock down so I'm thinking maybe that was the problem. I set another 2 dozen yesterday and going to try something a bit different. I am using Styrofoam incubators for right now and when I try smaller hatches I almost have a 75 % hatch rate, it's when I try the larger hatches that I seem to run into problems. Over Christmas break my DH and I are going to build a cabinet incubator. If anyone has any suggestions about how to get started with that we would really appreciate it. We are planning on doing lots of hatches come spring and I would love to have a system that produced great results without having to spend hundreds of dollars to get started. Well anyway on with the picture show, hope you all enjoy!!!!

Queenie

Johnny

OLaf (white silkie rooster)
Elsa



Some of the babies (they don't have names yet, probably won't keep them all)








SLW, does this look like a rooster or pullet? I know it's early but just thought I would ask.This one seems to have feathered out the fastest, I can't remember if that means boy or girl. I will probably keep it no matter what, but the waiting is terrible.



These pics are actually a couple weeks old, they are almost totally feathered now.

 

[Leahs Mom]

Hi all, hope everyone is staying dry! It looks like waterworld in my neck of the woods!

I had a rough Saturday, I went out to feed the chickens and found Harris in the pen beaten to a bloody pulp, both eyes pecked out. His "brother" that he had been raised with for the last 7 months was covered in Harris' blood. Harris was humanely euthanized and the other rooster now needs to go.

Does anyone want to process him? He is free to any BYCers, just know that he needs to be food. I don't want to risk him harming any other birds. I'd rather not advertise him on Craigslist as chicken aggressive since we all know the type of person that would want him. I just want him gone and soon!

I am just floored by the entire thing. Harris had always been top roo and there were no girls in the pen to fight over. They have been together since they were babies and it was just the two of them in there.

RIP Harris

May I ask what age these boys are?

 

[ChickCrazed]

May I ask what age these boys are?

Harris was 9 months and the white rooster is 8 1/2 months.

 

[SallyinIndiana]

At the ohio nationals I purchased (but did not recurve because it had to be made) a personalized farm windows cling. They said it would be ready in a week and the week was over a week ago. I can't for the life of me remember the name of the booth and they didn't have a phone number displayed. It wasn't a lot money but I am still pretty mad.

http://ohionational.org/ has an ABOUT US place to click that expands to a Contact Us link that opens a compose new email to them.
It might be possible to get a list of vending tables and contact info. The the chore of calling or email each one would be yours. The larger sponsors are listed on their website. Maybe one of their names will ring a bell.

Thanksgiving processing day went off without a hitch yesterday. We were very lucky to have a warm morning and the rain held off until noon. We did 7 turkeys and 9 chickens in about 2 1/2 hours. @SallyinIndiana and her DH came over and helped, had some other friends and family too. It was great to have a group to work and socialize with. This is how it should be. The turkeys turned out great, and I am really excited to be able to provide my family and friends with great birds for the holiday! I'm hoping to turn this into an annual tradition.

We had a great time. Of course I still have a few more roosters to go as soon as they are large enough. I'm thinking of feeding them a more expensive higher protein feed in hopes of them getting that last bit of weight on.

 

[Leahs Mom]

No fair....I want to live closer so I can come to a processing day

 

[SallyinIndiana]

No fair....I want to live closer so I can come to a processing day

Living so close and being able to attend has helped us out greatly.