INDIANA BYC'ers HERE!

[daskhan]

Anyone want free Perina? http://virl.io/ibLXPLSk
Short form and video and you get a chance

 

[Hholly]

Anyone want free Perina? http://virl.io/ibLXPLSk
Short form and video and you get a chance

Thanks! I entered.

 

[Faraday40]

Totally agree. Have had some really painful losses, as well as life events. It feels pretty good to have friends to sound off to!

We are here for you, as you have been for so many of us.


They didn't for me until I first saw the jubilees, and

LAVENDERS! I had to have them! almost 3 years ago jubilee was out of my reach, financially. DH would have had a heart attack lol. I did invest in the Lavender orps and don't regret for a moment. Lovely sweet birds, good layers, friendly roosters.
X2, stunning birds! The roosters are just too impressive!

We

our lav & black orps. I also enjoy those fancy varieties, but lavs fit us well. Most are trained to do silly tricks. They love attention & will allow any child to pick them up. They train so easily b/c of their love for food. (Mine can do card tricks, magic tricks, find the dot, tip the cup, walk through hoops, & of course come when called.) They're like dogs with feathers who happen to lay eggs. Most people prefer the lavs b/c of the unique color, but those black ones can't be beat when the sun shines on them.

 

[Hholly]

I'm waiting on the plumber today. Woke up at 5 with no water. Hope I don't need a new well pump. I need a shower and teeth brushing. Yuck!

 

[tmarsh83]

I'm waiting on the plumber today. Woke up at 5 with no water. Hope I don't need a new well pump. I need a shower and teeth brushing. Yuck!

Had the same thing happen earlier this summer. Was petrified that the well pump went.

Ended up being a loose wire nut in the stand pipe.

Bullet. Dodged.

 

[Hholly]

Had the same thing happen earlier this summer. Was petrified that the well pump went.

Ended up being a loose wire nut in the stand pipe.

Bullet. Dodged.

Fingers crossed it's something like that. How did you figure out the problem?

 

[chick rookie]

Anyone want free Perina? http://virl.io/ibLXPLSk
Short form and video and you get a chance

I'm entered x4... thanks could use the layer.

I'm waiting on the plumber today. Woke up at 5 with no water. Hope I don't need a new well pump. I need a shower and teeth brushing. Yuck!

o my, that will not be good. At least its not freezing out yet. Easier to work on things.

 

[tmarsh83]

Fingers crossed it's something like that. How did you figure out the problem?

Eliminated everything else that it could have been (breaker, voltage at the pressure switch) then called a friend of mine that owns a well drilling company. It was the first thing he checked and it kicked right up.

 

[Hholly]

Eliminated everything else that it could have been (breaker, voltage at the pressure switch) then called a friend of mine that owns a well drilling company. It was the first thing he checked and it kicked right up.

Good to know. I'll make the guy check that. Thanks!

I'm entered x4... thanks could use the layer.

o my, that will not be good. At least its not freezing out yet. Easier to work on things.

Yes, thank goodness!

 

[pipdzipdnreadytogo]

pipd I love your dorkings! They are so sweet! Chicken therapists for sure, they need mealies for a reward .

Aren't they just the sweetest?! I need to find my bag of mealworms--it disappeared a while ago and the girls have had to settle for scratch since. :/






So, it didn't quote your post properly... :/

But, dear Elda and her sister, Kit, are Silver Gray Dorkings.

[COLOR=8B4513]Thanks for thinking of her! Yes, she'll end up snuggling —probably with Bonbon who sleeps in a nesting box. Before she ever went broody, she perched. Bonbon the type to roll her eyes at bedtime ruckus, so she's satisfied having a box, and she's nice about sharing. Also, I use heat when needed. (Remember all of the debates on our thread about using heat?[/COLOR]  [COLOR=8B4513]LOL) Heck, even Perdue Farms and other commercial chicken companies have temperature controlled housing. [/COLOR][COLOR=8B4513]Anyway… a couple of nights ago, temps were only in the 50s, but it was windy, and my chickens were sopping wet. When it was time for bed, I blotted them with a towel and turned on a heat lamp for 20 mins while they preened and dried their feathers. [/COLOR]  

Oh boy--just remember, you brought it up!


Actually, I've come to terms with a lot of things after spending months and months researching and talking to people all over the world while writing my supplemental heat article last fall. While I still am an advocate for avoiding preemptive heating (seriously, more often than not, the birds are totally fine--and that saves you a whole heck of a lot of money on electricity and a lot of worry about power outages or whether or not something will catch fire!), I do understand that in places such as far, far northern Canada, there is just no choice but to give your birds supplemental heat in wintertime. The best way to do it is to know from the start the dangers, and be prepared for them!

So, though it was posted a few pages back, I think, here is my supplemental heat article. It's also always in my signature for easy access. If anyone is deciding right now whether you want to heat your coop for the winter or not, I believe I have compiled almost everything you need to know to make an informed decision on the topic here: https://www.backyardchickens.com/a/...led-look-at-the-question-of-supplemental-heat

And, of course, there are plenty of threads on the topic around the forums--just search for winter heating and you'll find plenty of reading material on both sides of the subject.


As for me, I haven't used heating in many years, and the last time I used heating, I had a bulb explode--possibly why I hate heat lamps and will never use them again, not even for brooders. I did have one old, old, pushing 10-year-old hen that just couldn't handle the cold last winter (though even brought inside to a warm pen, she did eventually pass away, which tells me there was an underlying cause). The only hen I have ever actually lost to the cold in my 10 1/2 years of raising chickens in northern Indiana was a hen that literally lost all her feathers at once a few Decembers ago, and really, the very few of mine that have struggled were either already sickly or molting badly at the time. Other than that, I haven't seen any of my birds suffer from not being provided supplemental heat, and that includes my Silkie hen, my tiny Sebright bantams, my Leghorns, my Fayoumi, and, well, you get the idea. It's actually kind of funny to watch them running around in the (shallow) snow each winter, flapping and racing and having a grand old time, seemingly immune to the coldest temperatures we see. Last winter, I even watched my hens have a mass dust bath in the dirt-floored section of their coop, right in the middle of that super cold snap we had! Of course, they didn't really want to walk in the snow during those temps (because as much as I broke my back shoveling, there was always a thin layer on the ground :/ ), so I guess they needed something to occupy them in the coop.

Of course, I'm always learning, and I'm still figuring out what is optimal for my flock in the wintertime through small tweaks I do every year. A few years ago I did have two birds with large combs get frostbite, though this seems to have been as a result of me closing too much ventilation in an attempt to keep the girls warmer (and a small flood in the coop from a midwinter warm snap likely didn't help them, either). Every year since, I leave more ventilation open than the last, and every year they seem to do better than when I tried to close them up to hold in heat. Just an observation. Mom and I have discussed making wooden frames with clear plastic stapled in them to prop at an angle over some or all of the windows of my coop. This way they can be left open and plenty of ventilation gets through, but not as much of the snow, rain, and wind comes into the coop. I think this will be the optimal setup for my coop as far as wintertime ventilation.

Editing to add, just to clarify, more ventilation has worked really well for me, but I have always closed the vents that are right next to the roosts in the wintertime so the girls never have any direct airflow (or drafts, if you will) on them in the wintertime.



And on commercial farms using temperature control, well, you're right. They do. However, it's typically more to keep the birds cool than to keep them warm. Chickens put out a LOT of heat on their own and meat birds seem to be like living oil heaters, and in such mass numbers as these birds are kept in in commercial farming operations, those barns quickly heat up. They've got to keep the heat down in those barns efficiently or risk roasting their birds even before they send them to butcher!

On a related note, I have heard that it's okay as of just a few weeks ago, in the case of a flock testing positive for AI, for the birds to be mass culled by the venting/cooling system being shut off in these barns and the birds being left to suffocate in the heat and ammonia they produce. I don't know who decides that this kind of thing is okay, but it sure doesn't sound right to me.



I know, blah, blah, blah... I'm done now.