INDIANA BYC'ers HERE!

[Finnie]

Thank you @Crafty chick! I'm thankful she's home too. That's not the usual outcome when a poultry goes missing, unfortunately.

I did also worry about hunters. I'm just super glad she didn't get eaten by a coyote. I don't know what caused her to go so far from home, but I hope she doesn't do it again.

 

[Chaneys Ranch]

Super busy week! I have read everyones posts, and loved the pictures! Congrats on your hatch @ellymayRans I went through that a few weeks ago also. When my 2 duck hens were taken, the drake was actually sitting on the eggs.They were cold, but I knew I had to try. We had 15 ducklings hatch.
Busy weekend ahead of us, replacing the flooring in the kitchen. The main house is a 1985 modular, and the floors are particle board, ugh. Kitchen is getting an overhaul. We were hoping to wait until spring but its just too soft to put off.
Not much going with the chickens, we are going through the roosters to determine who stays tho. One EE roo, a mixed breed rooster and a naked neck fella are probably going to be having a bad day! They are way too rough on my hens. The guineas and geese are always chasing them off the girls. My leghorn fella is a great guy, feeds the girls and sits with them when they lay eggs. My Ameraucana rooster is super sweet too. I have a pair of dark cornish and trio of OEGS. Both those boys are also social and treat their hens well. The few cockerels growing up I have are much too young to decide.

 

[Chaneys Ranch]

Thank you @Crafty chick ! I'm thankful she's home too. That's not the usual outcome when a poultry goes missing, unfortunately.

I did also worry about hunters. I'm just super glad she didn't get eaten by a coyote. I don't know what caused her to go so far from home, but I hope she doesn't do it again.

Something drew her to wander, hard to say what! I have free ranged my turkeys for years. One hen continually would cross the road and go over to the park. She eventually was hit by a car but the rest of the flock had always stayed here.

 

[Finnie]

Aw, I'm sorry that she ended up getting run over.

I'll have to keep an eye on Swan to see if she's planning to follow her new route again. I hope not.

Our turkeys for the most part seem to naturally stay close to the house, on the occasions when they jump the back yard fence. But last year our most gregarious one discovered that PEOPLE lived in the house next door. She started to become a pain, I had to go over there three times to get her back. So then I had to lock her up for about a week to break the habit. I hate locking them up. I hope I won't have to lock Swan up.

 

[MikeTodd]

Can anyone confirm if the egg on the left is a bantam egg? We have been getting between 8-9 eggs a day and there is always one this size. I am thinking that it is either out blue cochin or black cochin.

 

[Mother2Hens]

@Mother2Hens and @ellymayRans

Is this breed known for being broody? If so, I may just have to get myself a couple!

(But...I won't be giving them a bedroom complete with bed and pillows....

)

Hahahaha!

If only I had the space to run such an elaborate bed and breakfast for my girls!

Honestly I started with them for brooding along with Silkies but I've only raised a few hens and only 1 of 3 ever went broody. Those are small stats but they are known to be. I also always separate for breeding most times they were laying and gathering eggs to hatch myself. They are soooo easily imprinted and I love that about them so I prefer to hatch.

HaHa! @Leahs Mom and @ellymayRans The Frizzle girls are showing you in the photo below that it was actually an old leather sofa that they were sitting on in the basement—not a bed. That sofa was great for wiping up spills when our kids were young, and it's still easy to wipe up the chicks "spills." lol They do have a nice area fenced off by the sliding glass door along with their bedroom, which is in their adjoining bathroom. En suite, I believe it's called. Hahaha For their sleeping perch, I covered a tension shower rod with a layer of textured foam shelf liner (for safe gripping) and put the shower rod parallel to the one above it, but it's only a couple of feet from the bottom of the shower. I put paper towels under the bar for easy clean-up. They have a night light, too.

And Yes, Leahs Mom, Bantam Cochins (and probably LF Cochins) are wonderful for people who like to interact with their chickens. Like my previous precious Screech, these frizzles are loving, love to be held, interested in people, full of personality, and are adorable! (I'm sure that the lineage from ellymayRans helps, too). And like Screech, they're smaller than my Silkie and than my Bantam Orp Bonbon was, but I remember that Screech laid nice snack sized eggs. She didn't go broody, but unfortunately I didn't have her long enough.

No matter the weather, I take the chicks outside across the street each day while quarantined...

 

[Mother2Hens]

Could use some help identifying this guy. I was told he was an Americuana, but after doing some research I'm doubtful.

@Lengerich Farms Your handsome roo is a very interesting mix! I'm no expert—just throwing out some ideas...His face looks like an EE, but there are other breeds with beards and muffs —and a body shape like his—like a Belgian d'Uccle. His body style also looks like an Old English Game or American Game roo. And I'm not sure if that's a large pea comb or a strawberry comb? Anyone else have insights?
@Finnie ~ Great news that your Turkey is home—that was a crazy story!

 

[Faraday40]

Pics for quail people.

DD gave away most of her hatch results, but we allowed her to keep a few. (Hopefully more will end up layers than meat.)

3 are the wild type that should be sexable. Of course ALL the ones we hatched looked female to me, so I suppose there's a subtle trick I'm missing.
Can anyone help me sex these quail?

#1 DD's fav (so it must be a male b/c she has never once picked a female as her fav. In that way, she is my most accurate gender indicator. LOL) The food coloring was simply her way of marking it, so I could make sure this one stayed.

#2

#3



I know the white chicks below won't be sexable for several weeks.
The small one is the "failure to thrive" chick. It's still smaller, but continues to eat & drink on its own. In fact, it refuses to eat unless its siblings are there for competition. Other than putting some some electrolytes in the water around day 2-3, we haven't done anything extra. I didn't feel right killing it, because it was eating /drinking & showing some growth. I thought that the chick would have caught up or given up by now.

Has anyone had experience with these runt chicks before? This is my 1st time having a "failure to thrive" chick & I'm completely new to quail.

 

[Lengerich Farms]

[COLOR=8B4513]@Lengerich Farms
 Your handsome roo is a very interesting mix! I'm no expert—just throwing out some ideas...His face looks like an EE, but there are other breeds with beards and muffs —and a body shape like his—like a Belgian d'Uccle. His body style also looks like an Old English Game or American Game roo. And I'm not sure if that's a large pea comb or a strawberry comb? Anyone else have insights?[/COLOR]
[rule][COLOR=8B4513]@Finnie
[/COLOR]~ [COLOR=8B4513]Great news that your Turkey is home—that was a crazy story![/COLOR]

I was told that it's a rose comb. I'd never seen a comb like that, at first I thought it was a deformity haha. I'd like to know how to get him to stop crowing at midnight, and again at 3 am though -.- the coop is about 15 feet from my bed, so he keeps me from sleeping haha. He's a character, that's for sure.

 

[Finnie]

@Faraday40I've never had quail. But I had some redcap chicks this summer that were "failure to thrive". They hung on for weeks and weeks. Just kind of in a suspended state, their bodies not getting much bigger, and their feathers not really coming in. But they ate, drank, and ran around, so I didn't cull them. Just kept moving them to different groups of younger chicks. Eventually they started getting wing feathers, and it seemed as though that caused their small wings to twist and deform. Some went downhill and died at this point, and some I ended up putting out of their misery. After that experience, I decided that future failure to thrive chicks will be euthanized much earlier on. It appears that they really don't outgrow it. And I did a search at the time, and found someone else whose failure chick was several months old and still had down. Interesting that it could even live that long.