Iowa Blues - Breed thread and discussion

[Hurley]

I'm not against altering the name birchen to silver gray, though I need to look up exactly what that morph is supposed to be, colorwise.

Loving the photos and the discussion!

Got a bunch of photos today. Will have to work on them tonight, but here are a couple of the birchen pullet.




edit to add: OK, sorry, I bombed the thread, lol, but there are even more photos up on my site, if you are a glutton for punishment.

 

[Hurley]

 

[Hurley]

To continue the photo bombing...

Here is "Mosaic", the weirdo pullet that started off as a mostly silver penciled looking chick with dark calico patches. Here she is now in her big girl feathers. The splotches haven't changed in shape, they're still there as dark areas. She's mostly birchen now, tried to have a white head, except for those calico black patches interfering. Not sure what she is, genetically, but she's pretty anyway.

 

[Hurley]

The boys - "Big Ben" (aka yellow legs) and "David", who is beginning to fill out and is looking better and better.

 

[Hurley]

And the last of the photo bomb - some flock pics and outtakes...





Lady and the Tramp, awwwww...




Peeping tom, caught red-combed.



"And I better NEVER catch you RUNNING around with that CLUCK, a-GAIN!"




"Come on baby, let's do the twist!"




I don't want to know.

 

[Jake Levi]

Beautiful flock Connie !

Keep them coming !

 

[debs_flock]

Stunning birds!

Would you like me to mail a box to you so you can ship him to me?

And I just want to add, I am SO jealous of people that have grass!

 

[IowaBlueCurt]

Connie- Thanks for all the photos!!! It's fun to watch everyone eles' flocks grow up. Your young cockerel looks very nice Connie. I especially like how white his hackles, back, and saddle is. And you have a coupe of pullets that are nice and white on the hackle. FANTASTIC!! They are simply stunning!

 

[ottbjumper06]

Very beautiful Connie! Just curious, when can I expect my birds to reach their final size? And also, have we figured out how important to the breed the Silver Duckwings are, if at all? I'm trying to decide how many to keep .
By the way Curt, you were so right when you told me the only way to treat my chicken fever was to feed it! There is already talk of expanding my 14x24 chicken coop, and Im going to be putting in some breeding pens in my horse barn. Lol, this is addictive.

 

[Hurley]

Got my little coop fixed up today (repaired the fox damage and reinforced the bottom with cinder blocks), and moved the black bantam rocks out of the juvenile/growout building. They are designated for making snake food for me, since I've got this nice big bator...can raise my own.

Now my juvenile building just houses my turkey (who I think is going to be really hard to turn into thanksgiving dinner...what a cool bird), a few silkies because I like them, and the leftovers of the birchens with a couple silver sussex that I may make a side project of. It can go back to being a juvenile building. Need to build a brooder out there in a corner, get them moved out of the house, but I do so enjoy them for the first few weeks.

Went to put 2 dozen eggs into the incubator tonight and they got knocked off onto the floor (in their cartons). Gah! Broke 3, so I have 21. Haven't yet candled to see what kind of damage the air cells took as it will make me too sad, so I'll just wait for a week and see if anything grows. Darn it all! Ah well. There will be more.

After I got the little coop ready to roll and moved the little bantam rocks in there (black rocks, though one cockerel looks almost identical to our original birchen cock bird), I worked a bit on my duplex set of 2 runs to use as breeding pens. Got the supports in place for the wire and started stapling one side. Have the divider done, roost in place in the outdoor runs. Need to finish wiring it up, put doors on it, and do something with the roof...the current situation allows to much leakage.

The wasps are incredibly prolific this year, killed another 4 nests today in my coop areas. Darn things.