***OKIES in the BYC III ***

[MrsDickey]

Wanting some opinions please. I'm getting together a list of chicken breeds I'm wanting to buy/ order from a hatchery. I know I want some speckled Sussex, some silver laced wyandottes, and some black copper marans. My question is what kind of rooster would be best for my flock? I'm not interested in show quality birds. I'm in it for eggs, meat, and pretty birds. I already have some Australorp girls and some ee girls. I don't want a barred roo because all his babies will be barred, right? I just want an all around great rooster that will do his job protecting the girls but not be too aggressive with us and that will give me a variety of colored babies. And if I were to choose a black copper maran roo or a ee roo would they pass on the dark/colored egg genes on to the offspring despite the hens breed?

 

[miohippus]

Is that guy actually perched on your run??? The nerve! Will a red tail or red shouldered hawk go for full size chickens? Or just bantams? Or just chicks? We have a chicken named peregrine because it looks like, well obviously, a peregrine falcon. My husband and I joke that one morning we will go out to the coop and all the chickens but peregrine will be dead and she will swiftly take flight

she's a large fowl cochin tho...nothing about her is swift!

yes, yes he is!! and Yes i belive they can take full sized chickens.

 

[miohippus]

Do you think your dogs will be enough of a deterrent? I feel like my Great Pyrenees works hard on keeping EVERY bird out of our yard. Especially the bluejays. He has some serious beef with them.

my healer/shepord mix chases birds all the time, he runs under halks and vultures barking. they don't land in our yard but he would eat my chickens too if they got out of there pens.

 

[Ksane]

Hello everyone! My mom (Free2bme2798) says that you all might be able to help me figure out what is going on with my flock. It's always the same thing:

• the middle toe on one of the bird's feet will go numb
• then the whole foot
• then the whole leg
• the the bird will either die or I will kill it

So far I have lost 3 birds to this and I'm trying to save the 4th. I always clean the coop in between the deaths and there is typically a period of one to three weeks between one bird dying and the next showing symptoms. I'm worried that I am going to lose my entire flock to this one bird at a time so any help that you can offer would be greatly appreciated.

The same EXACT thing happened to both my Asil cockerels this spring, about a month apart. They were so beautiful and so sweet, those deaths hit me hard. I had gotten them from someone in Norman and they were in with the hatchery Leghorns and a few others I'd gotten from various places and raised. But it was just the 2 Asils it happened to. Started out with the middle toe, the foot, then dragging their leg. We ended up putting them both down. What I thought it was at the time was Marek's disease, I still think that. And maybe the 2 Asils were just more prone to get it and show those signs because of their breed and because they were related. Marek's has tons of signs and symtoms, and usually by thg time a bird is 8-9 months old they've become somewhat immune to getting it. How old are your birds? My Asils were 5-6 months old. I still miss them.

Is that guy actually perched on your run??? The nerve! Will a red tail or red shouldered hawk go for full size chickens? Or just bantams? Or just chicks? We have a chicken named peregrine because it looks like, well obviously, a peregrine falcon. My husband and I joke that one morning we will go out to the coop and all the chickens but peregrine will be dead and she will swiftly take flight she's a large fowl cochin tho...nothing about her is swift!

Hawks will go after adults, too. One had ahold of one of my Black Ameraucana hens a few yrs ago. My daughter was here and said the crows were going nuts and when she went out there she saw the hawk chasing down the chicken. She hollered like a mad women and the hawk took off. Poor Linda the Ameraucana was pretty shook up but ok.

 

[vanahjeane]

dog food when they get too cheeky before I'm willing to take the time to prepare them for human consumption.

If they hang around long enough, maybe we'll eat them, it has yet to be seen.

Keep them, build them yards, feed and house them for life  
I suck. 

Haha that's what I fear we will do.

 

[marks1987]

Anyone in western oklahoma have any turkey or guinea eggs they would sell?

 

[ashtree]

my healer/shepord mix chases birds all the time, he runs under halks and vultures barking. they don't land in our yard but he would eat my chickens too if they got out of there pens.

My Pyrenees is all bark, but it's a mighty bark. The silkie run is his favorite place because he likes the fan they don't mind him at all. And I just know they'll all be napping together come winter. I think if I had gotten chickens when he was under 2 he maybe wouldn't have been so great. He was a crazy puppy!

 

[artsyrobin]

Quote: we have a pair of red shoulder hawks here that have raised chicks for many years- my understanding is redshoulders won't go after adult chickens, but red tails who are larger will- we have a dog that will chase hawks if they get to close, watched him do that this spring, as one dove at the ducks, that dog chased him clear across the pasture-

 

[subhanalah]

Do you think your dogs will be enough of a deterrent? I feel like my Great Pyrenees works hard on keeping EVERY bird out of our yard. Especially the bluejays. He has some serious beef with them.

They probably would, but I've heard of BOP still striking with a dog in the yard! They do chase anything that doesn't belong in the yard though.

Is that guy actually perched on your run??? The nerve! Will a red tail or red shouldered hawk go for full size chickens? Or just bantams? Or just chicks? We have a chicken named peregrine because it looks like, well obviously, a peregrine falcon. My husband and I joke that one morning we will go out to the coop and all the chickens but peregrine will be dead and she will swiftly take flight she's a large fowl cochin tho...nothing about her is swift!

they may not take off with the whole thing, but they will kill and make a meal of any fowl.

 

[Poco Pollo]

Hello everyone! My mom (Free2bme2798) says that you all might be able to help me figure out what is going on with my flock. It's always the same thing:

• the middle toe on one of the bird's feet will go numb
• then the whole foot
• then the whole leg
• the the bird will either die or I will kill it

So far I have lost 3 birds to this and I'm trying to save the 4th. I always clean the coop in between the deaths and there is typically a period of one to three weeks between one bird dying and the next showing symptoms. I'm worried that I am going to lose my entire flock to this one bird at a time so any help that you can offer would be greatly appreciated.

This is a long shot, but consider there may be a link between contaminants in your coop and your problem.

Don't clean the coop unless you've got all your birds in another enclosure, far enough away that airborne particulates from your coop won't be inhaled by your birds. Don't just shoo them out into the yard: cage them and put them out of harm's way.

Use bleach and water solution or Oxine or some other trusted germ killer on all the interior surfaces in your coop. Let everything dry before you put new bedding in. Don't rush this step. You need to kill whatever is hurting your flock. If it were me, I might spray and dry, and then spray and dry, just to be sure I haven't missed any cracks or crevices.

Don't put your birds back into their cleaned coop until you're sure everything is dry and all the dust has settled. If you've got a nasty bug, germ, bacteria, fill-in-the-blank-a-cillis in your coop, you're launching it into the air when you clean the old bedding out. Three weeks sounds like it could be the length of time a nasty coop bug needs for incubation.

I hope you find the problem soon.

I had an uncle who claimed that he was responsible for keeping the coop clean. He scraped the poop out with a wide metal spatula every morning. What he failed to recognize was that my aunt sprayed the interior of the coop with bleach and water once a week. He was getting rid of the parts that they could see, but she was getting rid of the bad stuff that they could not see. Both steps were essential to having a clean coop.