INDIANA BYC'ers HERE!

[atrueb00]

Thanks! Einstein is my first, but from what I understand, when the crest starts coming in it doesnt take long before becoming pretty obvious what sex it is. Einstein is more like a parrot than a chicken. She is immediately on my shoulder when I walk into the room the brooder is in.

That is so cute! Would love to have some WCBP some day and good to know they don't take forever to sex like silkies.

Lily loves her reflection. I took the mirror back into the bathroom, so she settled for the tv stand windows on the doors. They are a narcissistic little animal.

Yes, very narcissistic!

 

[raisinemright]

I think I have a broody Muscovy hen?!?! Lol

 

[pginsber]

CRSelvey" posted: On another topic, I have had several friends offer to buy eggs, but I have just been giving them out when I have extra.  If I did have more in the future, can anyone give me a fair price to charge for a dozen eggs? They are fed non-gmo organic food (not counting some of the food scraps we give them).  I'm not sure if that makes a difference. 

We exchange 6-packs of eggs for favors...since DW still can't drive from her shoulder replacement, we give the folks that drive her to phys therapy a dozen a week.

Otherwise, we try to get $2 per dozen from select persons who appreciate them.
We give a teaser 6-pack and see what the person says after they've eaten them. If they say "you can hardly tell the difference from store-bought eggs, but the shells are harder to crack" I never sell them any. City folk!!!

 

[SallyinIndiana]

Quick question...I started another "bug" with my father-in-law...lol. He seems to be into incubating, now. I'm looking for a "better than the styrofoam contraption" we currently are using. I've never had a problem with them, but I want to take a bunch of the variables out of the equation for him. Next step or two up from hoverbator? Thanks!

The still air with a fan and turner is about as basic as I would recommend if buying new. Next up would be the 1588 genesis model although there might be a generic brand with a non digital display. The brinsea incubators are not styrofoam but they are almost as costly as the cabinet incubators yet they hold fewer eggs than the cabinet incubators. The cabinet incubators by Gqf cost much more than their 1588 sytro model but are really nice for setting large numbers of eggs or for setting eggs weekly.

Now I just need to find me some of those really great shoppers so they can locate me a great deal on a GQF cabinet incubator.

 

[pginsber]

Wasn't there someone that posted their started garden on here? My mom and I looked into getting starts today, but Lowe's didn't have a great variety just yet and we didn't stop anywhere else. I'm not sure if I want to go from seeds again, although I'm eager to get something growing here! We always have tons and tons of tomatoes no matter how many plants we put down, and then dozens of pepper plants with absolutely no peppers growing on them. I don't care, it's spring! I want a garden!

We've found that our eggplants seem to take longer than the other seedlings when we grow from seeds so we started them early this year.

Then we ended up being late starting our other seeds, so it looks like we got it backwards this year....bummer!

 

[CCCCCCCCHICKENS]

I have used both sides of handling roosters; handling and not handling. And I think both work, although neither works all the time.

I currently have 15 roosters
-hatchery barred rock
-white rock
-white rock
-salmon faverolle bantam
-blue ameraucana
-black ameraucana
-black ameraucana bantam
-black ameraucana bantam
-blue ameraucana bantam
-mixed breed frizzle
-mixed breed
-mixed breed
-buff brahma
-mottled cochin bantam
-silver duckwing OEGB

4 are aggressive; 2 LF and two bantams

The two LFs are mixed breeds. The one attack everytime I step foot in the door. And the other occasionally follows suit. They are getting butchered in the may, nothing works with them. Not ignoring, being assertive, or humiliating. When I am away for a weekend, my mom won't even open the pen door anymore. And I don't blame her, I just give them surplus feed and water before I leave. I have a scar on my leg, from getting cut with a spur.they have had chance after chance and I have given up on them.

The two mean bantams are in hanging cages. One is the mixed breed frizzle and the other is a black ameraucana.The mixed breed is just aggressive, I don't know why. Nothing works with him either. Honestly I haven't butchered him because he is my only frizzle, but he will also be butchered in the spring. The ameraucana was just pushing his luck to show off to his hen. I have been able to make him behave much better using humiliation. He does have a fascination with fingers.

I personally like to be able to handle my roosters. Any rooster I have not handled ends up extremely scared of me. I know some people think you should not treat roosters as pet, but I have with some of mine. (I know the risks, but there are risks with everything).

I do treat my white rock roosters as pets (some others too). They are the sweetest gentle giants. They are much pass reaching maturity and never became aggressive. They are like the giant teddy bears of the chicken world.

Before these guys I had 4 other rooster
-buff brahama
-rhode island red bantam
-OEGB
-buff orp

One I bought from a girl in 4-H. At the fair kids tormented this rooster the whole weeks and he would play right into their game, pecking their fingers. I saw her show him too. Someone had to wear gloves to take him out of the cage and hand him to her. She was showing and he flipped out. She screamed and ran to her mom and the judge had to grab the rooster (she was 17). Every sign showed this rooster was extremely human aggressive. The people said that their daughters were so afraid to go in the barn, they had to put him in a cage. So what dumb move do I make? I buy him for $3 lol. There was nothing special about him. He was a poor hatchery quality biff orp that had aggression problems. He turned out to be a good rooster.

I have also realized thata majority of my roosters do not like the color red. Attacking the red feed scope and other items. Change the color of the item and they don't care. It is like is flares them up or something.

Man I ramble lol.

 

[bradselig]

Any now I pack my incubators FULL!

 

[CRSelvey]

Me, I guess, although if it means I won't be harassed every time I go out in the chicken yard, I'm good with that. I have plenty of hens that beg to be held, anyway. I don't need to coddle a rooster for the same effect.

I agree completely that Cochin boys must be the best roosters ever. I read about another Cochin boy who unfortunately died of Marek's disease, but he was such a wonderful guy that he inspired me to try raising roosters again after everything I had experienced with them, and that's how I ended up with my Cochin boy, Po. I read everything I could after ordering him, and a large amount of things I read said, bottom line, roosters are not pets and should not be treated as such. There are so many people saying this whose points of view I respect so much, and my experience has agreed with their statements. And some of them, even though they didn't handle their boys more than they absolutely had to as chicks, ended up with perfectly docile roosters that could be handled without issue as adults anyway! I also do walk through him rather than around him, and I knock him off the girls when he mounts them in my presence, though he just doesn't do that anymore so I must have done something right.

I guess what I'm stuck on is that everything you keep saying about holding them to make them submissive backfired on me with every boy I tried it with. Why would I want to go through that effort if it doesn't work reliably? I suppose I could have been exceptionally unlucky and gotten a whole lot of boys whose personality types simply wouldn't allow for them to be raised this way, but then that doesn't explain why Po has done so well when using the no-handling method. Po is respectful, calm, gentle, and even though I can't handle him a whole lot except for after dark, I don't have to fear him. And in the end, that is what was most important to me when I decided to put a rooster into my flock.


Sorry if I sound like I'm trying to be argumentative, because I really am not. I just want to make sure that my point of view on the topic is out there and not just being brushed off (which was... kind of how it seemed there). I've never written anything here on BYC with the intent of purposefully insulting someone and I definitely don't plan to. I like you guys too much.

I really respect both points of view because they were thoughtful and you both took the time to give an inexperienced person a thorough answer to a question that I've been struggling with. I tend to take bits of information and blend it anyway. Thanks for the good bits!

CRSelvey" posted: On another topic, I have had several friends offer to buy eggs, but I have just been giving them out when I have extra.  If I did have more in the future, can anyone give me a fair price to charge for a dozen eggs? They are fed non-gmo organic food (not counting some of the food scraps we give them).  I'm not sure if that makes a difference. 

We exchange 6-packs of eggs for favors...since DW still can't drive from her shoulder replacement, we give the folks that drive her to phys therapy a dozen a week.

Otherwise, we try to get $2 per dozen from select persons who appreciate them.
We give a teaser 6-pack and see what the person says after they've eaten them. If they say "you can hardly tell the difference from store-bought eggs, but the shells are harder to crack" I never sell them any. City folk!!!

That's funny!! If I give someone my eggs, it's generally people who I know care where their food comes from and that I like a lot. If they don't love the eggs, I just share them more with others ;-)

 

[raisinemright]

And it's lock down time!!!

 

[kabhyper1]

And it's lock down time!!!

Hey I know those eggs!