Oops I forgot to do this! Hi Everyone its Me!

[Compost King]

Something keeps showing up to introduce myself, I figure I better do it so it stops telling me to do this. I have chickens because they work well in my Nursery where I mass produce evergreen hedging plants. They eat the weeds but never the evergreens however they will sample them from time to time just to find out that evergreens taste bad. Their manure is used to make the best compost, and all the free leaves and grass clippings I collect from neighbors are scratched into compost in no time. Now I just pay for Chicken feed, eat eggs and the chickens produce all my soil needs.

My Favorite Breed would be leghorns, although I have none at the time. Breeds I currently have, Black Copper Maran (just 1 Roo) Cuckoo Maran, Maran Sex links I hatched myself, Black Americuna and crosses between them and Marans. Ayam Cemani and I suspect 2 of the males I have are not pure bred. Seramas, Millie Fleur D'uccles, Silkies, Rhode Island Red Bantam, Production Red, Easter Eggers, Welsummers, Buff Orpingonts, Silver Dorkings, Golden Seabrights, White Silkie (one with no feathers on the legs) Delaware, Columbian Wyandottes, 2 Red Rangers on rationed feed in a pen that is really my giant compost pile, Red Pyle Old English Game bantams that can easily clear an 8 foot fence but my bantam breeding pens have netting on top, grey and black tail white Japanese Bantans. The there is Ms Ugly... a mutt that goes broody and follows me around everywhere. I tend to love the ugliest of chickens especially if they follow me around the nursery when others run from me. Ms Ugly looks to be half Cochin half Orpington and half bantam, with a mix of Grey and Buff Barring in the most hideous pattern. She gets all the worms I dig up and all the bugs under the things I lift. She is also currently sitting on 6 eggs and I bring her bugs ... she only likes worms when she is laying. I also feed her my egg yolks since I only like the whites. I know its healthier to eat the yolks but I make up for the lack of yolks by adding cheese and sunflower seeds. I feed the yolks back to my best layers or the chickens that spend more time eating weeds from my potted evergreens. And while Ms Ugly is sitting on eggs I deliver her a yolk neatly placed in the egg shell and hold it for her to eat until she stops eating, and if she finishes the first one she gets to start in on the 2nd. She rarely finishes the 2nd. She is the only broody that lets me pet her without getting aggressive. Ms Ugly arrived with clipped wings, all of the wing feathers and she was immediately sent to the bottom of the pecking order but she fought back. I have multiple flocks and cliques and she never fit in with any of them. She even hated me at first and I believe the previous owner wasn't very nice to her. She can't even clear a 2 foot fence due to her short legs and no wing feathers. Eventually she will get those feathers back and I never clip wings so she is going to really enjoy life.

I also have a few Maran Sex Links I hatched myself but they are still feathering out... and some are currently pipping, gotta go check my incubator... later

 

[BlueBaby]

Hello, and welcome to BYC!

 

[New2Chicks97]

Hi! I am new here too. I enjoyed reading your introduction. Ms. Ugly sounds like a lovely companion bird so of course she deserves the treats.

 

[drumstick diva]

Great intro and already love Ms.Ughly. I think she should have a name like Sophia so she will feel better about herself. Would love to see pictures - hint, hint.

 

[Pork Pie]

Hi and thanks for dropping by introduce yourself.

Best wishes
Pork Pie

 

[N F C]

Nice to "formally" meet you, thanks for the intro!

 

[Kiki]

I'm glad you found us.

 

[Compost King]

Ms Ugly just hatched out 2 chicks this morning. and 4 more eggs are still nder her... I was going to post an old picture of her but since she has hatched out 2 of 6 eggs overnight I would have to take a picture of her playing Mama Bird.

I thought I would share an older picture too! So you can see all of her.

That picture was taken back when she hated everyone.

Then one day when I was introducing my very aggressive Serama Rooster to a Bantam flock just to see how thing would go he met up with Ms Ugly. Every Bantam was afraid of his over confident ways. The most aggressive of Bantam Roosters were clearing a path for him. He was strutting his stuff as Serama Roosters love to do. Ms Ugly refused to clear a path for him. He did his mating dance and tried to mount her and she unleashed on him. I only took a picture because I wanted to get a picture of Chickens mating instead I got a picture of Ms Ugly finally standing up for her self and even though it was the smallest rooster I had, he was the cockiest of roosters and after that Ms Ugly was no longer the bottom of the pecking order. And the Serama Rooster? He doesn't bully anyone anymore.


if I had time I would show more pictures but I have to move a mother hen and her month old chicks out of the chick rearing coop and pen and into their new free range coop, and move Ms Ugly and her Fledglings into the baby chick rearing Pen and Coop.

 

[Lazy Farmer]

Nice belated introduction.

 

[Compost King]

I thought I would tell another nice chicken story. About 2 best friend chickens who always cling to each other. 2 totally different breeds, who due to a bad hatch and some untimely death they only had each other for the longest time. They weren't even meant to be in the same Brooder

My Serama Cockerel and his Ayam Cemani Friend were supposed to be in 2 different brooders. But due to my inexperience in hatching I was unable to get much of my hatch to get out of their shells. Most died while pipping. 3 Survived, 1 Ayam Cemani and 2 Seramas.


In the picture above is a Buff Orpington from another Brooder to show the size difference. the darker Serama up front passed away hours after this photo, he was healthy and active then POOF dead. The Little one in the back and the Black one over on the right are the 2 best friends. Hours after this photo it was just the 2 of them in a Brooder.


After a few weeks it was time to move them to the larger Brooder with other chicks their age that I received through mail order. I wanted to keep the Serama and Ayam Cemani separate because they are a bit more valuable than other chicks but since my plans to raise them in a flock of their own breed wasn't going to happen they needed to move on to the main flock of about 25-30 other birds outside. Besides I had a new batch in the Incubator that needed to go to the indoor brooder.


They meet other chickens and get along!
In the large outdoor brooder they mingled with the other chicks and held their own. Still the 2 of them were always side by side and never really bonded with other chicks. At this point I was wondering how to integrate them into the older Cermani and older Serama Flocks. The Cermanis are kept in a very secure coop/Pen and the Seramas were caged. Its so hard to add one younger bird to a flock of all older birds. Looks like they are just going to stay in the general flock for a while. I was worried because this would be the free range flock and one was too valuable to risk and the other was too vulnerable due to size and inability to evade predators.

The time for them to be let out of the Brooder and into the free range coop, I do this usually between 4-8 weeks depending on how crowded the outdoor brooder gets. And also which adult birds are free ranging. The Adult birds free ranging at this point were not aggressive so around 5 weeks they were free! In the above picture they are only just outside of the brooder and rarely get far from the door while the other chickens their age are going all over the yard, forming the Cliques and setting their pecking orders. These 2 keep to themselves. I was worried the Cemani might be like the adult Cemanis I have and go well outside the boundaries of the yard when I let them out. This guy seems to only want to go as far as his serama buddy will go, and by this point I am finding out that the Serama is a cockerel. I can't sex Cemanis until they are close to sexual maturity. If the Cemani is a female I might just cross them to see what I get... but eventually if its a female will be desperately needed as I have too many Roosters and not enough hens. Its so nice that the Serama and the Cemani balance each other out for now.

They even roost next to each other every night.