Minnesota!

[Cluckies]

Welcome to the MN thread Scott!

 

[duluthralphie]

I lost an egg today frozen cracked and rolled in wood chips coated with poop..


I thought about fixing it for the wife, then relented and decided to feed it back to the chickens...

I hate having a frozen egg.

I had two chickens in the same nest box today again. I think they have a love hate relationship, there was 2 empty boxes, but they had to sit in the same box.


And to make today worse, I got attacked by a chicken. I reached under her to get the eggs and she became violent. She pecked, pecked and pecked while telling me what she thought of me.

I was offended, until, I sat back and thought about it. If I was sitting on the porcelain throne doing my thing and someone reached under me to see how things were going, I would probably fight back and tell them what I thought of them too.

 

[cmom]

I lost an egg today frozen cracked and rolled in wood chips coated with poop..


I thought about fixing it for the wife, then relented and decided to feed it back to the chickens...

I hate having a frozen egg.

I had two chickens in the same nest box today again. I think they have a love hate relationship, there was 2 empty boxes, but they had to sit in the same box.


And to make today worse, I got attacked by a chicken. I reached under her to get the eggs and she became violent. She pecked, pecked and pecked while telling me what she thought of me.

I was offended, until, I sat back and thought about it. If I was sitting on the porcelain throne doing my thing and someone reached under me to see how things were going, I would probably fight back and tell them what I thought of them too.

I have quite a few gals that like to share a nest box even though they have several to choose from they want to be in the same nest box. These are some old pictures and these gals are no longer around but I love to take pictures so I thought I'd share them.

 

[Dandelioness]

We had a broody RIR hen last year - she was so ridiculous!! We had to wear thick rubber gloves to check under her for eggs because everybody thought her nest was a good safe spot & she'd let them add to her "clutch". At one point, her nest was underneath some boards we had in the coop, a really awkward spot to get to, so we took some scrap lumber and were trying to gently "herd" her off that nest. She pecked that board so hard we could feel it shake on our end. And the stinkeye was amazing.

I think I will not be worried about the welfare of broody-raised chicks. They are something fierce!!

I hope you're not injured or anything, Ralphie!

 

[Bogtown Chick]

I lost an egg today frozen cracked and rolled in wood chips coated with poop..


I thought about fixing it for the wife, then relented and decided to feed it back to the chickens...

And to make today worse, I got attacked by a chicken. I reached under her to get the eggs and she became violent. She pecked, pecked and pecked while telling me what she thought of me.

I was offended, until, I sat back and thought about it. If I was sitting on the porcelain throne doing my thing and someone reached under me to see how things were going, I would probably fight back and tell them what I thought of them too.

Oh god Ralphie....

 

[Chickenchick11]

I lost an egg today frozen cracked and rolled in wood chips coated with poop..


I thought about fixing it for the wife, then relented and decided to feed it back to the chickens...

I hate having a frozen egg.

I had two chickens in the same nest box today again. I think they have a love hate relationship, there was 2 empty boxes, but they had to sit in the same box.


And to make today worse, I got attacked by a chicken. I reached under her to get the eggs and she became violent. She pecked, pecked and pecked while telling me what she thought of me.

I was offended, until, I sat back and thought about it. If I was sitting on the porcelain throne doing my thing and someone reached under me to see how things were going, I would probably fight back and tell them what I thought of them too.

LOL. I have a RIR who gets very aggressive if you try to take eggs from her. But she's usually such a sweetie so she's still my favorite chicken. (She's the chicken in my avatar.)

 

[Scott16475]

Welcome to the Minnesota thread, Is that a Barred Rock or a Dominique you have as n avatar?

Thank you everyone for the welcome! We have four Black Australorps with 6 more chicks due to arrive in just a few weeks (2 Silver Laced, 2 RIR's, and 2 Barred Rocks). This is our first year with chicks as we received our four BA's last April as baby chicks. It's been a blast learning the ropes on chicken 'ownership' and this board has been great with learning the 'how to's'. When I have a question, I post to this page and within minutes, someone returns a great answer. The hardest part after receiving our first chicks this past year was the waiting for the eggs to start arriving! We received the BA's in April and we didn't receive our first egg until October 10th. I'm pretty sure I aged 10 years due to the anticipation and my lack of patience during those 6 months. I hope I can be more patient with these new chicks when they arrive.

This weekend, I'll take a few pictures of the coop as well as the girls. My avatar pic is one of our dog, Max (Welsh Terrier). I got tired of looking at the generic avatar pic and Max was the only pet pic I had on my computer. Plenty of pics of the hens on my phone but none on my computer. I'll change that this weekend.

Speaking of the coop...for those of you who are local, I had the wood shop class at Dunwoody College in Minneapolis build our coop as a class project. They are always looking for unique things to build in class (I was told by the instructor they can build only so many dog houses and keep the class interesting), so they jumped on the chance to build a coop and run. The class did an OUTSTANDING job. It's based on the 'Taj Mahal/Wichita Knockoff' coop found on the Coops page. The hardest part was getting it home from Dunwoody (downtown Minneapolis) to our backyard in Lakeville. Not an easy task but we did it.

I'll post pics this weekend. Thanks again and we'll be in touch!

 

[Bogtown Chick]

I've heard great things about Dunwoody. I think I had a few classmates go there. And what a good idea to farm out the build to some students striving for A's ! Hahaha. I bet they LOVED making a coop. We look forward to your pics!

~BTC

 

[Bogtown Chick]

Welcome to the Minnesota thread, Is that a Barred Rock or a Dominique you have as n avatar?

It's a new strain of Silkie Ralphie....

 

[Minniechickmama]

I did not know that!! Interesting.. So crossing my CX's with a Chantecler would be retro breeding!!!!



We are having Red sex link rooster for supper, for us an excellent bird, small breast in relationship to legs, fairly light colored pin feathers and tasty as it comes!

That is a different term for it, "retro breeding".
The truth is, none of the breeds used to create those like the Buckeye or the Chantecler decades ago are the same as they are today. There are pictures floating around of what many breeds looked like at the turn of the 20th Century, and they are quite different that what we see today. Take the Dark Cornish, for instance. Over the last 100-years, they have been compacted and made heavier than their ancestors. Some Cornish breeders think it has gone too far that way. I tend to agree. There are many who have pushed them to the extreme and to where they do not breed naturally. I believe once we take a breed or species to the point of not being able to reproduce on their own, we have reached that point of saying, "Okay, let's back up." And yet, I find myself ordering the big, fat, juicy CRX each Summer to top off the freezer with.
It is quite evident, and not uncommon, that breeders take some of those parent breeds or even another similar breed to cross back into a strain to attempt to get back the qualities it may lack to fit the breed standard. Some do it to strengthen their strain or line, but others will do it purely to win shows with their F1 stock.
It would be nice if we had more histories of breeds to know just went into the making of them. One of the reasons I turned to the Buckeyes was because the history intrigued me so much. The fact that so much information that came directly from Nettie Metcalf about her process of creating the breed is quite interesting. To think of the challenge of not just developing a breed but getting it recognized and accepted being a woman of that era was a pretty remarkable feat. She must have been a woman with great fortitude to have achieved what she did, and in my opinion, she created the perfect dual purpose bird.