INDIANA BYC'ers HERE!

[chick rookie]

WOW she sounds determined. I have had a few broody but not a lot of experience with it.
I hope someone can give advice but my only thought is give her a few eggs from the fridge.
Maybe with them being cold it might "shock" her out of it.

lol yea you would think that would do it... but it didn't. but thanks for the suggestion. she warmed them right up.... I am thinking about putting some of those plastic easter eggs the kids get, under her but am afraid all that will do is make her even more determined thinking she will hatch them??????

 

[Chaneys Ranch]

Quote: Maybe. thats 21 days from now tho

any breeds you need to hatch?
Seriously my luck would be give her some eggs I really wanted to hatch and she would stop!
I am so sorry. Hope some of our broody hatchers can give you good ideas.
I use incubators usually, and normally can break a broody fairly fast.

 

[chick rookie]

Maybe. thats 21 days from now tho

any breeds you need to hatch?
Seriously my luck would be give her some eggs I really wanted to hatch and she would stop!
I am so sorry. Hope some of our broody hatchers can give you good ideas.
I use incubators usually, and normally can break a broody fairly fast.

I do want to hatch some but not right now.
Thats going to be nmy luck too I get her out of this now then come spring, when I want her to ... she wont!!
I'm new to all this and want to try hatching with a hen cause I'm too scared I would mess things up in an incubator. I figured Mother Nature knows more than I do... well I used to think that, till this!! lol

Mother Nature!!!! This sucks... I just hope I get her out of it before she starves herslf to death. I am giving her food a little at a time. but she needs to get off her but and move around and get her own food

wonder if any one needs some eggs hatched???? offering here....

 

[chick rookie]

I hope she gets her strength back. Broody hens are hard to convince to leave the nest to eat. I'm glad you got to her before she passed on the nest.
Also the little things get forgotten so easily when a crisis happens. And a pet getting sick is a crisis. Still if she does not improve at all in 72 hours I would recommend culling and investigating. For non pets I only give 24 hours.
Now M2H puts her heart into her animals and she will have a different outlook on the matter.

She is defiantly driving me insane!! I hope she makes it I really want her to set but not right now... my roo is old and don't get too bizzy ( if ya know what I mean ) am getting 2 new Roo's this weekend but still don't want her to set yet. I cant cull my girls, I guess I'm like M2H on that. DH wants to start raising meat birds and I'm just not having it!! lol but he is a farmer and I'm talking old style farmer. I am just keeping my fingers crossed that she makes it out of this ALIVE. Doing what I can, that's all I can do I guess. it makes it even harder that she is so mean. my hands look like I have been playing with an ice pick. ( sometimes I forget to put my gloves on... my bad!! )

 

[racinchickins]

...

The heating element looks great too.  I'm looking into getting one, but it may be a little while. 

If anyone is selling or rehoming their ecoglow, I'm interested.
[/quote
I love the ecoglow. But don't let the claims fool you. The 20 should be called the 10. There is no way 20 chicks would fit under there. I'm planning on getting the larger model, I'm thinking it will be good for 20-25 chicks. The electricity savings are huge! And so much safer.

 

[racinchickins]

oh I love the idea!
So will you be doing tilapia again?

Yes, but not till spring. Want to raise them outside as long as possible.

 

[CCCCCCCCHICKENS]

If you need bigger ones, the dollar places sell some for young girls hair. They are larger than the tiny ebay ones and they stretch a bit more. They are not as sturdy as the ebay ones though. Still I had issues with the ebay ones. If you like them (ebay ones) and want more, I'll mail you mine. They are tiny though maybe good for quail but the large fowl chicks grow out of them too fast for me.

I got some of the little rubber bands for girls hair the other day. I won't be using them for a little while.

 

[CCCCCCCCHICKENS]

Quote: When I saw the estimation for how many chicks would fit under either one of them, I thought no way would that many fit. But then again I had never used one. Good to know. My main reason is that it is so much safer than using a heat lamp.

 

[leslea]

and our thread!

Thanks! Happy to be here! I have only lurked on BYC for about seven years. LOL

It's so great to finally be "expecting"!

Silkies are becoming a favorite here too. You have a nice mix planned!

Thank you! I had a slightly different mix chosen until I realized MPC wouldn't ship what I wanted until May...then I had to start all over again with what was actually available May...

Haha It won't take long once your DH sees those chicks and starts staring at "Chicken TV" He will be smitten.
I didn't know BR and EE came in bantam size. I have one of each in LF and they both lay the largest and nicest eggs-- and my EE's is the prettiest of course. Silkies have grown on me since I've been on this thread (around a year now). I am hoping to get a couple of them in the future. I will get your avatar to you tomorrow.

You're so kind to do that for me!

Yes, DH is definitely coming around. It doesn't hurt that I have made my family watch the live brooder cam on Animal Planet...so in a way he has already seen "ChickenTV." LOL! But it will be so much better to have "live theatre." We have four children, so the three old enough to understand what we're talking about have already started picking out names. (Princess Layin', anyone?) The three oldest are boys. I thought they might be blasé about the birds, but I showed them the photos on MPC and they have already picked out which ones are "theirs." Now just crossing fingers that all the chicks are healthy and travel well. Thankfully they'll all be in school when I pick them up from the PO that day. Baby girl is just excited about "chickie butts." Not sure she understands we're getting our own. She will be three then. She'll probably go crazy!

Re: the bantam BR and EE, they must be fairly new, because they didn't show up on any of the "choose your chicken" selectors online. I had to backward research them from the "available" date, cross reference them to BYC and other sites to see if they were any good. The EEs should only be 24 oz at maturity! Tinier than the BRs or Silkies. (BR will be about the same size as the Silkies per all the info I could find.)

Supposedly all these breeds are good with kids. So important when you have almost as many kids as you'll have chickens, I think. I want those kids to have fun with them and help Mama out with birdie chores.

Now if I can just figure out what to do about a run...we inherited a lovely coop from the previous homeowner. I did the math and it's the perfect size for six bantams...but no run attached! We live on a hill and it drops off right next to the coop, so I'm not sure how I'll work that out, but feel pretty sure I need one, since we have two dogs. I plan on training the dogs stringently to leave the chicks alone (possibly even to be protective of them, if that's possible), but we need a run, regardless.

Here is a silly question perhaps y'all can answer for me...is it better to have a detached run that I can move around the yard, or to figure out how to attach it stationary to the coop? I've been thinking stationary because I have a small fenced yard. We have 3 acres altogether but only about 1/3 acre is fenced, and that's where I plan on letting the chickens roam. We already have trouble with grass because we live in the woods, so I'm not worried about burning up a nice lawn. I feel like we should cut a hole in the side of the coop even though it's on a hill, and just make stationary run there,but if there's some advantage to a portable run, I'm open-minded about that.

Thanks for the warm welcome!!!

 

[FarkerFarms]

Good morning all! I had a nice chicken day yesterday. I let all the "kids" in the barn which I rarely do because they like to climb on the hay bales and poop all over them (which the horses do not appreciate and which worries me from an illness standpoint for the horses). I was in one of the stalls cleaning and heard a ruckess in the storage bay next to me. This is what I found:



8 hens and a rooster found the dirt floor and went to town! It was a living, wreathing pile of contentedness. Pretty cute. They haven't been able to find a good spot to bathe with all of the mud and snow. The bulk of my chickens will be leaving this weekend to go live with Chick Rookie, she will be a fantastic mama to my babies. I had been in a sort of "partnership" with the chickens with a friend that lives about 15 minutes from me. We were splitting costs and agreed that she would come up twice a week to help with care and was taking 1/2 the eggs. She got a new job and her husband didn't take to the experiment so she hasn't been able to help me much with the chickens. I have decided to go it alone in order to be able to reduce flock numbers and since I was doing 95% of the work myself anyway. So most of our "partnership" chickens have to go It didn't seem fair to keep them all and completely cut her out and I didn't need as many for just myself. I did talk to her and we agreed that I would keep a few of the oldest hens (3 years old) since we are the most attached to them and a couple that I bought myself. Then I will add some of my own and do this by myself. I really wanted a couple female Cochins and a Maran for the dark eggs so I have ordered chicks for the first time! All of my experience has been with getting pullets that were close to the point of lay. I am super excited and a bit nervous to have them in my super small house! I am also concerned about getting too attached to them - it seems a bit easier to only get kind of attached when you get them as adults. I am going to be Mother2Hens in no time raising them myself! I of course had to order extras to meet the order minimum, so I am not sure how many I will get attached to/keep in the end. I am nervously awaiting the arrival of my chick gear as well as the following chicks: 2 Partridge Cochins, 1 Red Cochin, 1 Gold Laced Cochin, 1 Buff Brahma, 1 Buff Orpington, 2 Easter Egger. All were sexed as pullets and don't be surprised if I offer some of them at some point, I really need to re-home some of the extras if I can make myself do it! And I am getting Brad's latest three Birchen Maran chicks and hoping at least one is a female! I am also working on a new screen name since Farker Farms was our "partnership" farm name. If someone new while alarmingly familiar with you all starts posting, probably me!