INDIANA BYC'ers HERE!

[Indyshent]

Got a turkey egg last night! This this is *HUGE* especially considering how dinky this little hen is


Hoping the pullets are going to start laying soon, but the silkie is laying gangbusters. Always heard they were terrible layers, but this girl has something to prove, apparently.

@kanina I had a silkie roo with a much bigger single comb earlier this year. Was a huge boy. Especially in the bigger "meat type" silkies (as opposed to "show silkies"), you tend to see big guys and single combs. Single combs are a recessive phenotype, so they don't crop up often in silkies, which have at least one kind of dominant comb and might have up to three in the same bird (rose comb, pea comb and duplex comb) depending on who's breeding them to what standard. With all of those dominant alleles, it takes recessive everything at each of those three gene locations to make one single combed.

Your boy doesn't have to be crossed with anything (and isn't likely to be considering that his color is nice and dark, his white's white, and his feather's are silky). He's just got a recessive comb.

Single combs tend to hide especially well in bird's that have rose comb genes (which includes walnut, the American standard comb for silkies) because homozygous rose comb males have decreased sperm motility and fertility in general. Hence, in mixed flocks, the heterozygous rose/single comb guy will outperform and fertilize more eggs--and you won't be able to tell which is the single comb carrier either. This is why you see a lot of single combs cropping up in rose comb breeds, like Wyandottes.

 

[kanina]

I saw Crystal lay her 1st egg this morning!!!!!!!
(I also saw Mr Wonderful mating yesterday.)
*Both of these are big events.... after being shipped from CA to Chicago, then driven home in rush hour traffic, hatching on June 17th, patiently waiting through summer to know gender, selecting which birds to keep in fall, and making it through some pretty rough arctic temps & a few snow storms, there's finally a simple, little, brown pullet egg.

Looks like I will hatch some laced orp chicks this spring!!!!
View attachment 1246965

Got a turkey egg last night! This this is *HUGE* especially considering how dinky this little hen is


Hoping the pullets are going to start laying soon, but the silkie is laying gangbusters. Always heard they were terrible layers, but this girl has something to prove, apparently.

@kanina I had a silkie roo with a much bigger single comb earlier this year. Was a huge boy. Especially in the bigger "meat type" silkies (as opposed to "show silkies"), you tend to see big guys and single combs. Single combs are a recessive phenotype, so they don't crop up often in silkies, which have at least one kind of dominant comb and might have up to three in the same bird (rose comb, pea comb and duplex comb) depending on who's breeding them to what standard. With all of those dominant alleles, it takes recessive everything at each of those three gene locations to make one single combed.

Your boy doesn't have to be crossed with anything (and isn't likely to be considering that his color is nice and dark, his white's white, and his feather's are silky). He's just got a recessive comb.

Single combs tend to hide especially well in bird's that have rose comb genes (which includes walnut, the American standard comb for silkies) because homozygous rose comb males have decreased sperm motility and fertility in general. Hence, in mixed flocks, the heterozygous rose/single comb guy will outperform and fertilize more eggs--and you won't be able to tell which is the single comb carrier either. This is why you see a lot of single combs cropping up in rose comb breeds, like Wyandottes.

gratz on the eggs!

Would he be a good boy to keep and breed my silkies with (buff, BB, partridge)? He's sooooo handsome, I really don't want to get rid of him. But I also have little Jax (avatar) who is the same size as my girls.

This guy seems like a really good roo. I let them out in the yard yesterday and he was tending to his hen, leading her and protecting her. I don't know what to do. I also don't quite understand Silkie genetics. I was always under the impression that white was a dominate color and then I read otherwise here.

 

[Leahs Mom]

I saw Crystal lay her 1st egg this morning!!!!!!!
(I also saw Mr Wonderful mating yesterday.)
*Both of these are big events.... after being shipped from CA to Chicago, then driven home in rush hour traffic, hatching on June 17th, patiently waiting through summer to know gender, selecting which birds to keep in fall, and making it through some pretty rough arctic temps & a few snow storms, there's finally a simple, little, brown pullet egg.

Looks like I will hatch some laced orp chicks this spring!!!!
View attachment 1246965

Yay! Maybe some in April....

 

[Leahs Mom]

About twenty different names for that stretch anymore. M51, S 11th St, Old 31, (south of the border) 933, Dixie Highway. I love it. Its like they couldn't figure out what to name it and kept on naming it.

My brother used to call it the road that always has a Nelson's on it.

@kanina So you know that "neck of the woods" eh? Yes... Dixie Way North, etc. etc. etc. etc.

Did you grow up in this area?

 

[Indyshent]

gratz on the eggs!

Would he be a good boy to keep and breed my silkies with (buff, BB, partridge)? He's sooooo handsome, I really don't want to get rid of him. But I also have little Jax (avatar) who is the same size as my girls.

This guy seems like a really good roo. I let them out in the yard yesterday and he was tending to his hen, leading her and protecting her. I don't know what to do. I also don't quite understand Silkie genetics. I was always under the impression that white was a dominate color and then I read otherwise here.

There are multiple genes of "white", the big two are dominant white and recessive white. Some breeds are more prone to one versus the other.

Leghorns, apparently, have dominant white, as seen through my test cross kids this year (half-Leghorns have "leak" or "bleed". One allele of dominant white, in other words, will make a bird mostly, but not all white). Two copies of dominant white should make a bird completely white.

Silkies are recessive white. If you breed a white silkie to anything but another white silkie, you're most likely to get something that isn't white at all (unless the other parent bird is carrying recessive white or some other alleles that would make the distinction hard to notice). Most white silkies are partridge under their white lab coats. Recessive white takes two copies to make a bird white, but it's never going to leak. The bird will be completely white if it carries two copies, and not white at all if it doesn't.

 

[twoacrefarm]

Hey guys! Long time no chat! I was wondering if anyone can point me in the direction of how to sell eggs at a local farmers market. Like what do I type in google to get it all figured out? Once before I had the link, but I only had 12 chickens at the time, and then I didn't really have enough eggs to worry about selling them. Chicken math happened and now... well.... I need to sell eggs!!

 

[Faraday40]

Hey guys! Long time no chat! I was wondering if anyone can point me in the direction of how to sell eggs at a local farmers market. Like what do I type in google to get it all figured out? Once before I had the link, but I only had 12 chickens at the time, and then I didn't really have enough eggs to worry about selling them. Chicken math happened and now... well.... I need to sell eggs!!

I only know IL laws & there are several rules that make it too difficult/expensive for small farms to sell eggs. (Must be candled, graded, weighed, washed, refrigerated during storage, transportation, and distribution, packaged in only brand new egg cartons, dated, and the area where eggs are processed must be regularly inspected.) However, for small family flocks - under 1,000 birds, there are no restrictions to sell eggs from your home (aka -location where flock is kept).

 

[Leahs Mom]

Word of mouth is good too through the workplace, etc. Oftentimes, once folks find out you have them, the demand can become higher than the output

 

[Soon2BChixMom]

Hey guys! Long time no chat! I was wondering if anyone can point me in the direction of how to sell eggs at a local farmers market. Like what do I type in google to get it all figured out? Once before I had the link, but I only had 12 chickens at the time, and then I didn't really have enough eggs to worry about selling them. Chicken math happened and now... well.... I need to sell eggs!!

I wonder if you can contact your local county extension office ask if they have advice? I know a lot of the people who work at the farmer's markets around here are also master gardeners, so you might ask for a contact.

 

[Faraday40]

Word of mouth is good too through the workplace, etc. Oftentimes, once folks find out you have them, the demand can become higher than the output

Yep! That's how I sell all of my extras.
1. Drop hints wherever you go that you have backyard chickens. People looking for fresh eggs will perk up & ask you about them.

2. Give away 2-3 eggs as free samples & ask your friends & neighbors to compare the taste, color, shell strength, & freshness to their store eggs. If they agree, then they'll become customers & come to you for eggs.

3. If you already know people who regularly buy pasture raised eggs from Whole Foods (about $6-9/doz), then they'll be very, very happy to buy your eggs for far less. BTW- These are also the people who will give you the nicer egg cartons. LOL (Those smaller ones from Aldi & Walmart won't shut b/c our orp eggs are too BIG.)

Of course we technically don't sell eggs in cartons. I simply let customers pick their eggs out & have a tall stack of used cartons available. People donate them & take them as needed.

4. When the eggs are completely over-flowing, I send the kids out to the sidewalk to sell them. It's kind of like a lemonade stand with a cooler of eggs.