Michigan

[fuzzybutt love]

Flatlander, good point about keeping the extinguisher outside of your coop!

Mutt, i second Fife. Washing of their oil is awful risky this time of year, even if you were to keep them warm till they dried. In the future, you can go to a farm store and get liquid permethrin 10%; it's sold under different names. On the bottle there are instructions for dilluting it for different kinds of animals, and if you are using it for a coop spray. I used this and repeated in 14 days to catch any stragglers. No bath. I tried countless other methods, natural didn't get all of them and my girls just ran outside and shook all their powder off! Supposedly this is the main ingredient in dog flea striper meds; if someone could figure out how much % is in the dog meds, you could make your own with this; a 2 cup jar of this was only $10 and i barely put a dent in it!

( i actually made a stripe treatment for my birds, and it was sucessful, but have not been able to find any info on it, so i'm recommending to use it the way the bottle says) POISINOUS TO CATS

good for horses, goats, cows, poultry, dogs, etc)
i used it on leg mites too. it's also the main ingredient in human scabies meds at 5% dillution; to make it dilute it 50/50 in olive oil and dip the bird's legs in it, then spray down the roost to get any hiders.

For those with squatters, you lucky *! my favorite hen don't wanna share her guy so she runs up to any sqatters and pecks her until she gets up! (Sometimes unfortunatly while the rooster is trying to ....)! She don't hurt anyone seriously, but talk about a mood kill! (I bought her with this behaviour, i welcome any suggestions)

 

[NovaAman]

BOY! Am I glad I built my run, just in time too. I only have 4 brave chickens this morning. I think more will come out thou. I shoveled a little path, dug a whole in their winter leaf pile and scattered them. I was surprised that the ducks water hadn't frozen, but the pool did. I forgot to leave the hose running at a trickle, now it is solid.... The turkeys came out today. Guess its that time of year. I buy them 50 pound bags of whole corn, and feed them about a bag a month. I like the turkeys. I think they should have been the national bird... but what do I know.

ChicwannaB, sorry for your loss. I hate losing dogs.

The consensus with the duck group is that the girls look like a runner campbell mix, to 2 campbells and 2 PQ runners.

Chickflick, I haven't even bought any presents yet!

 

[RaZ]

After yesterday's discussion about lights and warmth...
No red heat lamp in the coop, lights set on timer were unplugged, sun did not come up this morning (at least not that you could tell there was daybreak), it's grey and snowing...
All of the chickens are out in the snow and going into the tent coop to dust bathe.

Now the biggie...5 eggs by 10:00am. Afternoon shift showed up for work early and the BLA worked OT to make a 35 gram egg!

The other change was offering grumble instead of pellets 2-3 days ago. I see that they are eating more grumble than pellet. So the question now becomes whether food or light has more influence on egg production...stay tuned to this channel for further updates.

 

[RBahmer]

Quote:
What is grumble and where do you get it ?

 

[RaZ]

Sorry, RBahmer, it's a play on words.
It's crumble style feed.

Just went back and looked...on page 2589, post# 25888, Yorkchick mentioned it and blamed it on me.
Page 2589? That 282 pages ago and only 2 months... We certainly are a chatty bunch!

 

[RBahmer]

Quote:
Lol RaZ. Thanks. I feed laying mash with added vitamins & alfalfa cubes ground in. Then they get wheat , scratch feed , & table leftovers scattered around. I am getting around 40 eggs a day from 50 something chickens.

 

[jerryb]

Hi folks,

I live down in Sturgis, just a short way from Flatlander. My daughter and I have been raising some laying hens for her 4-H projects this past spring and summer. She did well at the fair with them and we are now hatching some bantam cochin eggs for this years 4-H.

Flatlander what do you know about the big duck farm there just north of Leonidas? I am wondering if I can get a couple chick there in the spring. from the road it looks like they have a bunch of mallards or rouens.

cheers
Jerry

 

[RBahmer]

Welcome jerryb.

 

[Opa]

Two years ago I had a flock of Vorwerk bantams that I was allowing to free range. For several days they seemed quite content with foraging under the apple trees. Then they decided to start roaming. They had ventured to the back of the property where I felt they were in much greater risk so I herded them back. Three more times that afternoon I would chase them back into the orchard.

We were just sitting down for dinner when Hope remarked that the Vorwerks were at the back again. Well a cheese burger hot off the grill makes an excellent meal, cold not so much, so I remarked "I'm eating, if a coyote gets them it's their own fault". Hope finished eating first and was getting up when she looked out the window and yelled "COYOYE" and ran out the door. Of course I followed and much to my surprize there stood an exceptionally large coyote not 30 yards from the house. The surprizing thing was that he showed absolutely no fear of us and only with much hollering and chasing did we get him to leave.

Returning from chasing the coyote I looked down and spotted a pile of black chicken feathers. I surmissed that he must have gotten at least one bird. We started collecting the birds and found some on top of the chicken coop and others in the trees. To my surprize not one bird was lost although one hen's tail feathers were completely gone. For the rest of the summer she was tailless. I suppose she was a temporary Araucana.


Welcome JerryB and any others that I may have neglected to greet. You must understand that my brain is going into remission.

 

[fifelakelooper]