INDIANA BYC'ers HERE!

[Faraday40]

Happy New Year Everyone!

I took some pics of my youngest serama yesterday. 9.5 weeks, but still pretty small for her age

Such a little sweetie!

 

[Pollitos6]

Happy New Year Everyone!

I took some pics of my youngest serama yesterday. 9.5 weeks, but still pretty small for her age

Such a little sweetie!

OMG sooo cute

 

[Faraday40]

OMG sooo cute

She's a spoiled "house chicken" for now.
She was hatched by a 1st time broody hen. Since it was cold/snowing & the hen inexperienced, I kept the hen & her 2 chicks inside for the 1st month. When I tried adding them back into the coop, the hen decided to abandon her chicks. They slept together at night, but I found one chick cold & in shock in the run in the late morning. (She was fine earlier in the morning.) Although no blood, the other hens must have severely injured the delicate chick. I brought the chicks inside to warm up but the one died about an hour later. That incident caused the remaining chick to be fearful of all other chickens. Just walking past the coop causes her to panic. She's fine with people but wants nothing to do with chickens. Surprisingly, she's pretty quiet most of the time but she does respond when she hears one of our voices. She loves to cuddle.

I decided that in spring when I hatch some chicks, I'll try bonding her with a chick and then slowly try to integrate them into the bantam flock. Perhaps she'll do better with a buddy & also in a different location - like the chicken tractor instead of the bantam coop.

 

[karollis]

I'd like to add one heavy goose to my chicken flock this year, preferably an African gander gosling. I only want one, so mail order is difficult because of minimums. I'm in the Fishers Indiana area, hoping to find one close enough to pick up. Thanks!

 

[Chaneys Ranch]

Hello,

I need an advise please... We have moved to a new property that is located in a more rural area. During spring we get a lot of ticks in the yard and I was thinking in getting us Guinea birds. I heard they are great pest control for ticks. I already have a flock of chickens and 3 ducks, but not sure if they will be a big help with ticks. Does anyone has guineafowls? How do you handle Tick issues?

Thanks

Guinea are great for ticks, ants, bees you name it. The cons, they are loud, really loud! If you don't have close neighbors you will be glad to have them.

Happy New Year Everyone!

I took some pics of my youngest serama yesterday. 9.5 weeks, but still pretty small for her age

Such a little sweetie!

Sooo precious!

I'd like to add one heavy goose to my chicken flock this year, preferably an African gander gosling. I only want one, so mail order is difficult because of minimums. I'm in the Fishers Indiana area, hoping to find one close enough to pick up. Thanks!

Welcome to BYC and our thread! I'm just south of Pendleton. I have an order of Brown Chinese coming this spring in April. They are much like African just weigh less. If you look at pictures of both nearly identical. The real difference is the size and the voices. I have a 7 year old African gander, he is already infertile. Good boy, non human aggressive. The new flock are from the same hatchery, pretty excited to get them! I've found Chinese to be very predator aggressive, much more so than African. To be clear, no goose is a match for a dog or coyote.

 

[Chaneys Ranch]

Eggs are picking up and our first goose egg this year already! One of my Muscovy is also laying. Might be an early spring! Neither normally are not laying until March.
Pixie one of my Jerseys had her calf this afternoon!

Its a girl! But it was sired by the Angus bull we sold a few days ago, not my Hereford. She's 75% Jersey, 25% Angus so she won't be staying long term. We will sell her once she's old enough to leave her mom. 1 cow left to calve this season.

 

[Finnie]

. Anyone that's met us personally knows we like to help others learn too.

Yup! I can attest to that!

For some reason the kids get older.... but we stay the same age. Right?!

I still feel like 40 and am 56 lol I just keep keeping on!

I am 54. That’s hard for me to grasp, because I don’t feel any different than always. Then I look in the mirror.

I sometimes have these dreams where I am in college or high school, and my kids are there in my classes with me and we are all the same age together! Wouldn’t that be great?

 

[Finnie]

On my experience I can tell you that if you can build your own coop then do it. The coops that you get online or at the store are very flimsy and very expensive

This is so true. And even if you think you can’t build your own, give it a try. You will surprise yourself. It’s very empowering to learn how to use power tools and build stuff.

Now having said that, did any of you see the “super heavy duty” chicken coop that Tractor Supply was selling last year? It was sort of a compromise between the cheap typical prefab and a build-a-better-one-yourself. All the wood pieces were thicker and more durable than the usual kits. And for the price ($500) they were asking, it was smaller than the other prefabs in that range. I was sorely tempted to want one. So I decided to wait for a sale or end of season clearance price. Well did I ever luck out over Memorial Day weekend! They had 20% off clearance prices that weekend, and the coop was marked down to $199!! So I got it for $160!! Lol, I drove all over creation that weekend and scooped up 3 of them.

You had to paint the parts before assembly, and that took me weeks and weeks to do two of them. (The 3rd is still in the box for future use or selling.) After that, putting it together was easy. I am really happy with both of mine, and I plan to build on to the run so that on lockdown days, it’s not so cramped in there.

Now that I’ve done these two, I wish I had pre-painted the other prefab coops that I have. Pre-painting really makes a big difference.

 

[Faraday40]

I sometimes have these dreams where I am in college or high school, and my kids are there in my classes with me and we are all the same age together! Wouldn’t that be great?

It would be great to look like we once did & have that unlimited energy..... BUT
today's kids have it so much harder than we did.

My "Mom" rant:
There are so many addictive vices being marketed especially toward teens. Ex: sexual ads, vaping, narcissism via social media, "likes" &/or number of followers, 24/7 texting, & now marijuana's legal (here in IL) It's too easy to find out all sorts of info about a teen via the Internet and made worse because any thoughtless teen action can be saved forever used to haunt them as adults.

We had it easy. We could simply avoid certain places and if we said or did something inappropriate, it could be forgotten. Other kids had to have the guts to talk to your face (or at least call on the phone) so much of today's social drama didn't exist.

Nope. I would not like to be a teen right now.

 

[Pollitos6]

This is so true. And even if you think you can’t build your own, give it a try. You will surprise yourself. It’s very empowering to learn how to use power tools and build stuff.

Now having said that, did any of you see the “super heavy duty” chicken coop that Tractor Supply was selling last year? It was sort of a compromise between the cheap typical prefab and a build-a-better-one-yourself. All the wood pieces were thicker and more durable than the usual kits. And for the price ($500) they were asking, it was smaller than the other prefabs in that range. I was sorely tempted to want one. So I decided to wait for a sale or end of season clearance price. Well did I ever luck out over Memorial Day weekend! They had 20% off clearance prices that weekend, and the coop was marked down to $199!! So I got it for $160!! Lol, I drove all over creation that weekend and scooped up 3 of them.

You had to paint the parts before assembly, and that took me weeks and weeks to do two of them. (The 3rd is still in the box for future use or selling.) After that, putting it together was easy. I am really happy with both of mine, and I plan to build on to the run so that on lockdown days, it’s not so cramped in there.

Now that I’ve done these two, I wish I had pre-painted the other prefab coops that I have. Pre-painting really makes a big difference.

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WOW you did a great job painting. I love the colors!!