INDIANA BYC'ers HERE!

[Greenthumb83]

Hi all -- I'm a new chicken mom in West Lafayette. I have seven 9-10 week old ladies.

Glad to meet you!

Welcome! Love the profile pic!

 

[tmctlt]

BTTT ( back to the Top )


HELP!!!!!

For anyone in or around the Avon area that would like a few cockerels from @jcnhy2000's stock I have (2) Easter Egger's and (1) Lavender Splash Sumatra and (1) White Leghorn from @racinchickens stock.

We are not planning on breeding in the near future so we just don't want / need roosters. Let me know if interested and I'll send some pics via text ALL are very nice looking young roos or if your gonna process them....you don't care about pics I suppose

They were hatched approx. 1st of April

Paul

( and a warm welcome to any and ALL newcomers to our IBYC page!! )

 

[hbrown322]

Welcome from Jasper County!!

Whoop whoop, I graduated from Purdue! Welcome!!

 

[Faraday40]

Guess who just crowed?

Yep. Trouble just left these chicks about 2 weeks ago & he made his 1st crow today. Hatched May 13th, so only 2 months old. Of course his daddy (Cogburn's son) started crowing at 3 mo & was mating the adult hens by 3.5 months. (I had the fertile eggs to prove it!) Apple doesn't fall far from the tree.

 

[ellymayRans]

Took some pics today...mostly of the Muscovy..a guinea and peas in there too.

My newest additions, hatched 2 more pea babies just pulled from the bator today. Still at 100% hatch rate, 1 left not due for a few more weeks, that will make 10 ive hatched. Momma hen has 4 eggs she'sbrooding since we were on vacation so i suspect hers should be hatching this week or next.

Of 9 peas hatched 2 are black shoulder.

I have hatched 4 atipico muscovy but only 1 that isnt black, here she is before and now...so cute!

A pair of atipico.

Today...they both have such pretty copper colored barring on their chests.

Love the "butterfly tips" these have.

I also managed to hatch 6 of the AM eggs shipped to me. 2 Cuckoo, 1 black and 3 lavender..one of them came out with feathered shanks and splashes of copper?!? Not sure what happened there.

Ok, lots of pics i know but I've been sick and away for too long! I had to share!

 

[racinchickins]

Quote: I don't know if there will be enough meat on the SFH at 20 weeks. They are a pretty light bird. Boys are 15 weeks now and pretty light. I'll see.

Are you able to use them for anything besides soup at that age?
At that age we do pretty much anything except fried chicken (not saying you can't, we've just never tried). When we roast them and they turn out great.

 

[ellymayRans]

For some reason my "tagging" never works! Never knew it until a few days ago @mother2hens informed me. I don't get a drop down option sooo...hope she sees this!

I will PM her too but thought I'd share. I have 5 bantam Cochin eggs I'm hatching for her. Set 7/5 and all 5 are developing. Woohooo!

 

[Indyshent]

2016 is a dumpster fire.

But my first "little" laid the last two days. MMH Marans. First egg at 16 weeks 6 days. Second egg much more uniform.




And my Cochin roo, biggy, covering hens and finally crowing some. Handsome fella.

Aww, Biggie's a lot like Big Jim Slade here. Poor boy lost a lot of weight (at least half) after I gave him to another home, but he (along with almost all of his girls) have returned by fence-jumping, so I'm working to put there weight back on and get them healthy again. He settles pretty well once I get him picked up, and he's generally good with the girls and never crows. I think Biggie's going to work out swell for you, based on my experience with the breed. Such sweeties

Another busy week, lots of good progress on several projects. Working with a neighbor for a month now on new poultry housing. After finally installing electric fencing and a large pasture, I am seeing huge improvement on predator issues. Next project is fencing and adding another layer of hot wire around the coops. We hope to have at least 3 acres of pasture by fall for open grazing. Setting up paddocks to allow our land to reseed and grow. My birds already comingling with the livestock, win/win all around. Chickens are still laying very well! Having the goats and donkey able to be on pasture around my coops is a huge improvement too. The guineas love keeping flies off Daisy, the cows and my goats, its too funny to watch.

@Indyshent

I had1 more vet to chat with over Fanny's options. Called for another opinion before I let her go. My sister and another good friend gave me the vets info. I have someone lined up for a cow/calf swap. This vet also tells me the same options she has been given already. That makes 5 vets and 3 cow neighbors I have discussed her options with. Read a ton of homestead forums and blogs. I just can't prolong this, my heart is already broken over her situation as is. I have let my emotions postpone things too long already. I owed it to her to make a careful decision based on several opinions. I also had to know there is no possible chance she can be helped to live a long life.

First time disbudding our goat kids Saturday. Big thanks to @jsummers and her DH for helping with this, its not for faint of heart, for sure. I am pretty tough on such things and it was hard for me. Its a safer option for keeping them for the owner, and prevents heads stuck in a fence! Horns can harm other livestock too, seen it myself. Our plans are to add a new buck next year, and the bucks will pasture with Moose our bull. My adult goat buck, Bocephus has massive horns, very sharp edges from his scraping trees. He is mostly social unless he is in rut. Those horns tell me I have to disbud any future goat stock I keep.
Off to catch up on our thread!

So you're getting another Jersey calf, or will your new girl be a different breed? At least poor Daisy will be better suited to life without Fanny now that her pal's been relocated to the bull's paddock and other farms recently.

So you're officially staying in poultry? Looks like you've even set up more pens!

Lemme know what I can do to help out, will ya? I'm not going to be on break forever. It's good to know you'll be staying with the hobby and that your birds are getting more range time now that the big kids are helping protect them (not that hot wire ever hurt on that front!)

I am working on Coro Sussex and Lavender orp crosses after seeing @Faraday40 's! I have 2 Coro hens. 1 rooster hatched from the cross is cuckoo feathered. Going to be huge, so will continue the experiment. Chicks are hatching Lavender and just massive. Agreed, large single comb do not withstand sub zero wind chills well at all.

If they are meant for the table, boost protein with a meat bird ration. Raw meat scraps or cheap hamburger helps too. Scratch will only increase fat in the bird, protein builds muscle.


I usually process my roosters before 6 months old. After that they are more soup birds or pressure cook before frying.
Handsome roo! Love the tiny egg pictures its always fun when they start to lay. Nice color too!

Definitely sounds like a cool project! Love the coronation Sussex you had. They're flat gorgeous!

I second the protein uptake. Only way to put meat on a rooster is to treat him like you would any other meat bird.

2 broody turkey, 1 broody Sumatra, 3 brooding Muscovy. Come on ladies, your eggs are due to hatch soon! Mabel our barred rock, oldest hen is trying hard to go broody also. I checked that coops nest box several times to find her parked and pancaked over eggs today! She is in the BLR wyandotte pen for red sexlink chicks.
Still have 1 incubator going for a few orders left, mostly quail.

four of my gals are still brooding. I think the two broody EEs are originally from your splash Marans roo. At least one of the twins switches her nest up a lot, so I'm always putting her eggs back under her when she relocates (generally, after someone's stolen her nest out from under her). The problem being that they're both amassing a lot of extra eggs--above and beyond all the one's the Welsummer and BO are stealing! My goodness, I hardly get any eggs with the way these four steal them!

So you have a BLRW pen now? Did you make the hand-off of those birds I gave you, or did you decide to keep the sweeties? Won't blame you for keeping them; the splash-laced hen was especially easy-going and loved pets.

Let me know if you'd like to hold one for you, and whether you have an age preference. I have 2 months down to less than a week old and they're getting culled Wednesday otherwise. They are handsome roos. Hopper is camera shy but I'll look for a photo. He has proper tail carriage (obtuse angle). Mostly Omega Hills line. His sons look good, too. Hopper is also my quietest roo. Mostly he doesn't bother because some Orp is always crowing!

At least I'm confident about my splash babies! The girls were all with one blue roo, and I've been hatching eggs out of one black and one blue hen from Fancy Chick lines. I can tell their eggs apart and my two splash came from the blue x blue breeding, as expected, and I can see a few blue feathers on a wing of one chick already. I should have had more splash, including last year, but it just didn't happen! Still, when they first hatched, I was like "what on earth are THESE?!?!?"

My current hatch, since it's just from two hens, is on a rolling basis. On average I get 1-2 chicks a day. I actually am finding this enjoyable. As they hit about a week old, I move them into my mid size brooder box to make room for new littles. I only have a handful more of these eggs to go.

Then my genetic test eggs start. My other blue roo is out of a black/lavender split roo (the avatar photo, Cogburn). I put Junior in with my best lavender hen and have 7 dated eggs. If I get no lavs, I will be thrilled. Otherwise I will get about half lavs but have to cull or rehome Junior, who is a blue version of daddy. I am hoping his dark eyes are telling me he doesn't carry lav. Sometimes intermediate eye color is a clue that a black is split to lav, but some splits have dark eyes.

I've wondered about that. Often, black birds will have super dark eyes, but then someone shows off a picture of, say, a BSL, and she'll have flaming orange eyes. My blue and splash birds always have lighter eyes. Black and mostly black birds (like my BCM pullet) tend to have much darker eyes. Good to know there might be a correlation.

As to preference on boys, I like older ones because the brooder's been retired (though it can easily be fished out) but my heat sources are either still on in the night or within easily retrieved storage (one's still burning for the little heritage poults). I can't imagine culling a chick because I'm a wuss. I could probably be talked into all of them (because Janet has a really hard time keeping Bielies and would probably want the "spares" in the event that any of them grow up to be range-worthy or good for breeding, provided she still has her Bielie hen) and I'm a sucker... especially when it comes to really pretty, fluffy chicks who might grow into bigger, fluffier, friendlier, prettier, more chivalrous boys some day. I'm mostly focused on eggs right now and trying to get down to only pretty eggs in the basket. The few who don't lay really pretty eggs are here because I'm a sucker who doesn't like splitting up sisterhoods or making children cry. Once I get 'em up to a more impressive size, I'll probably rehome extras because I'm a wuss (unless DH makes me process, which he might just do because of all the free birds I've given away).

However, if you or Janet could help me cull poor Curly the Turkey, I would be really grateful (and I think she would be too). I've heard I can do it with dry ice and an enclosed container, but I've never managed to find any dry ice, and I'm pretty sure you know how to do the deed humanely. Poor girl's getting unwanted attention from a lame-but-healing roo and from Major Tom, and I'm pretty sure she's slipped her tendon in one leg (above and beyond what looks like a case of rotation of the bones). I just need to put her out of her misery at this point.

Hi all -- I'm a new chicken mom in West Lafayette. I have seven 9-10 week old ladies.

Glad to meet you!

Welcome to the thread! Nice to meet you, too! Which breed(s) do you have?

BTTT ( back to the Top )


HELP!!!!!

For anyone in or around the Avon area that would like a few cockerels from @jcnhy2000's stock I have (2) Easter Egger's and (1) Lavender Splash Sumatra and (1) White Leghorn from @racinchickens stock.

We are not planning on breeding in the near future so we just don't want / need roosters. Let me know if interested and I'll send some pics via text ALL are very nice looking young roos or if your gonna process them....you don't care about pics I suppose

They were hatched approx. 1st of April

Paul

( and a warm welcome to any and ALL newcomers to our IBYC page!! )

Why do you need to get rid of them all so quickly? @jchny2000 will usually take free roos and free range them, but she's got a lot on her plate. I often take in free roos to see how they grow up and find them new homes once we find out how chivalrous they are with the girls, how loud they crow, that sort of thing. I've yet to process anything but meat birds, but if a boy grows into a regular jerk, I'm amenable to learning some really good soup recipes.

Are you sure your Sumatra's a lavender splash? All of the rest in the pen looked more like BBS. Was someone in the pen hiding a lav gene unbeknownst to the breeder?

Quote:

Guess who just crowed?

Yep. Trouble just left these chicks about 2 weeks ago & he made his 1st crow today. Hatched May 13th, so only 2 months old. Of course his daddy (Cogburn's son) started crowing at 3 mo & was mating the adult hens by 3.5 months. (I had the fertile eggs to prove it!) Apple doesn't fall far from the tree.

Wow, that's fast for a heritage boy!

 

[tmctlt]

BTTT ( back to the Top )


HELP!!!!!

For anyone in or around the Avon area that would like a few cockerels from @jcnhy2000's stock I have (2) Easter Egger's and (1) Lavender Splash Sumatra and (1) White Leghorn from @racinchickens stock.

We are not planning on breeding in the near future so we just don't want / need roosters. Let me know if interested and I'll send some pics via text ALL are very nice looking young roos or if your gonna process them....you don't care about pics I suppose

They were hatched approx. 1st of April

Paul

( and a warm welcome to any and ALL newcomers to our IBYC page!! )

Quote from indyshent:

Why do you need to get rid of them all so quickly? @jchny2000 will usually take free roos and free range them, but she's got a lot on her plate. I often take in free roos to see how they grow up and find them new homes once we find out how chivalrous they are with the girls, how loud they crow, that sort of thing. I've yet to process anything but meat birds, but if a boy grows into a regular jerk, I'm amenable to learning some really good soup recipes.

Are you sure your Sumatra's a lavender splash? All of the rest in the pen looked more like BBS. Was someone in the pen hiding a lav gene unbeknownst to the breeder?

@INDYSHENT,

They're all beginning to crow and when there was only one it wasn't too bad, but now that there's three already crowing and a fourth to " join in " @ some point I'm afraid I'll begin to get complaints from some neighbors who are near the barn / coup. That and as said we do not plan on breeding @ this point so no desire to keep them around. My mistake on the Sumatra I went back and looked @jchny2000 text and she said Blue Splash Sumatra

 

[Leahs Mom]

I have a pair of blue-based sfh (Swedish Flower Hens) for sale. 15 weeks old.

Pullet has a crest; cockerel has German parentage.

Northern Indiana. I don't ship so it would have to be a pick up. If anyone is interested, send me a message and I'll send photos and more info.


And...
Here are a few photos of the SFH kids from a couple weeks ago This particular breed changes so much from week to week that they are really fun to watch grow up. The little cockerel pictured below already has changed immensely since these were taken.