INDIANA BYC'ers HERE!

[julie0477]

I see no boys in your pictures, Julie. See how their patterns are more spread out as opposed to the sort of patchy pattern my boy has? That's an indicator of their sex as well.

hallelujah!!! Lol. Thank you! I was getting nervous.

 

[Thunder Chicken]

I noticed this about a week ago but it looks like I have a problem. At first I thought one of the others was picking on this White Rock. My wife said she was pecking herself back there today. We got a closer look and it is looking bad. Both of the white ones are laying but I am guessing this one is the one that is laying smaller, more white eggs. I don't see any bugs and it appears that this is the only one with this problem out of 8, including the two EEs that are on the bottom of the pecking order. Any ideas? My wife wants to put antibiotic ointment on it. I told her I don't know if that's a good idea so I want to check with y'all first. I'm guessing its not a good idea but I don't know what else to do. Whatcha thing?



A closer look.



The red sex-links felt left out. Do you think the curled over comb is a leghorn characteristic? No idea what cross they are.

 

[Old Salt 1945]

How do you search by my post number? Gotta see what I said! Now about the blathering................

I found them in the "sun don't shine" repository of information.

The same place I get most of my information.

John

 

[pipdzipdnreadytogo]

Looks like a pretty classic case of feather picking, Thunder Chicken. You can see where some of the others have had feathers pulled as well. If you saw her poking at the area, she was most likely trying to preen or clean up the area. The other hens are most likely the culprits. This is usually either from boredom, overcrowding, or even a protein deficiency. Do you let them free-range at all or very often? I'm guessing you don't have them overcrowded, so my first thought is boredom. I had feather-picking pretty badly one year and ruled out boredom and overcrowding (we had expanded the run that year from about 20x45 to 50x100), so I switched my girls to a higher protein feed. I still see some picking going on, but much less.

What I do if I see feather-picking that bad is I cover the area with Blu-Kote, which disguises the wound and puts the others off from pecking at it. If that doesn't help, you'll have to keep her separate until she heals over. Antibiotic cream wouldn't hurt assuming it does NOT contain any pain reliever that ends in '-caine' (lidocaine, benzocaine, etc.), but unless she is separate, the other girls might see the ointment and poke at her more.

 

[CRSelvey]

Me, too. And yeah, I have an 8 year old rooster that has clucked all his life. I'm not sure why they think clucking makes this a hen.

You have to get your giggles where you can get them! My mother in law got them when I told her my roo was a pullet right up until he crowed. She said, well just look at his tail (with an implied DUH). I have now decided its a boy if I think its a girl.

 

[CCCCCCCCHICKENS]

Quote:
pullet. That is a female color pattern only. No need to worry

 

[CRSelvey]

The Farmer's Almanac is predicting an unusually cold and snowy winter for the midwest. Time to start knitting coats, caps, and scarves for your chickens! Do you insulate your coops?

Hi Toodles, I don't have insulation but there is wood on the in and outside of the studs. My husband thought I was nuts when I got the insulation out. I wonder what he will think when I knit hen coats? PS, we haven't lived through a chicken winter yet so my info is not credible.

 

[Old Salt 1945]

Yesterday, I changed my ratio of roo to pullet from 14-21 to 3-21.

The freezer is full and the chicken yard much quieter and nearly conflict-free. It had gotten to the point that most of the pullets and a couple of lesser roos spent the entire day in the coop rather than expose themselves to the bullying from the roos.

I will never again take on the processing of that many birds in one sitting. My back should be healed up by Thursday, Friday at the latest.

John

 

[CRSelvey]

Here ya go! It measures about 24 w, 18 h, 12 deep.
With some effort, he should be able to make a MUCH better version.




The framing around the top is a drip edge to keep rain out of the hopper.


Send me a self-addressed stamped envelope of epic proportions and I'll mail you some of the fencing. $15 postage should do it.


John

Thank you John for posting the detailed pics. I was also hoping to build something like this and needed more info. I have my own fencing.

 

[danand]

Julie- your EE girls look exactly like a couple of my girls.

Old salt- you know better!! That's a lot of work for 1 day!! I've been VERY happy since my boy numbers were decreased!! Now I have 2 sebright Roos, 5 Millie Roos and 5 Bo Roos that will leave next Friday and it'll be even more quiet. It has taken 2 months for my older girls to finally get some back feathers. I now have room for 1 roo so I would have 2/15 .

So I finally wanted to work on a EE girl that has a crossbeak. I pick her up all the time and give her more and special food since she has a hard time eating. She's a bit smaller than her sisters but is always busy and friendly and seems happy enough . I didn't see her crossbeak until she was several months old and didnt have the heart to cull her. So I wanted to start trimming her beak every couple of days to see if I could shape it better and guess what .....she has mites!!! Started crawling up my arms!! So now I've dusted everybody( including myself) and checked most, and dusted the coups. What a pain!! I'd been checking any that I would pick up and now it's hit!! Pain in the }>€\!!!