Pennsylvania!! Unite!!

[sharron]

Hey, chicken crazy people. When you are buying several hundred pounds of feed at a time, where do you store it? A can only works for a bag or two at a time.

we use 275 gal oil tanks with the top cut off, we used to have big horses and would buy a thousand pounds of horse feed at a time, husband would find one for a good price, cut it and clean the insides out real good and then we would use them to store the feed, still have them, use them for feed still altho the horses have been gone for over twenty years now.

 

[wingstone]

I do not withhold food at all, I do not pull the crop, I cut it out at the same time as loosening it from the body.

Great!! Thank you  Wing!! 

If this does not go as planned, you can always stop in when down this way, I could always find some to process, ..

I am curious though, which one of you plans on doing the plucking,,,this part gets to most people, the smell of wet feathers can be strong...

 

[sharron]

we use 275 gal oil tanks with the top cut off, we used to have big horses and would buy a thousand pounds of horse feed at a time, husband would find one for a good price, cut it and clean the insides out real good and then we would use them to store the feed, still have them, use them for feed still altho the horses have been gone for over twenty years now.

husband suggested a old chest freezer too

 

[chiques chicks]

Hatch day was Wed. to Thurs. this week! I finally have a moment to post some pics! Thanks to Troyer and Chiques Chicks for the eggs! Of the 7 Americauna, 3 Easter Eggers, and 5 Swedish Flower Hens, we had a great hatch rate: Mama pushed 1 SFH out of the nest day 1 after I set them (I guess 15 was 1 too many); and the rest hatched except 1 A and 1 SFH. Not bad for me leaving for vacation and letting Mama do the work! Gotta love my Black Australorp! This was her second time hatching and she was a trooper! To Troyer & Chiques: Do you think wing feather sexing has any chance of working on these babies? I observed all of them & made note of how they feathered but I know that's not a reliable method unless the breeding is set up correctly. The bottom pic is the 3 SFH. They are so cute! Ok, they're all cute but I'm in love with the variety in the SFH breed! And of the Americauna, I was tickled to get a mix of lavendar and black.

If hatch day was Wednesday, it's already too late to try to feather sex sfh. First three days only, so I'm told.

 

[chiques chicks]

I've never heard of a Swedish Flower Hen until reading this post (I'm still getting my feet wet in the chicken world), but what a bunch of cute babies! Congrats on the great broody work!

I have a bunch available, lol. Mine are mostly miile fluere, some blue mixed in, some crests, most not.

I really should take a picture.

 

[wingstone]

Wishing Rose good luck.
She just picked up 3 baby ducks for her broody Pekin.
I tried to vent sex them, hopefully she has a trio, I am not very good at that though.

Still have a few more available, I have the 3 older 8 week olds, so to have 11 more hatch is to many, I also have 10 eggs in incubator at home...
I am only looking to overwinter about 8 of these all together..

These are french white Muscovy, nice pets or can be raised for meat within about 14 weeks.

 

[joyfulshepherde]

If hatch day was Wednesday, it's already too late to try to feather sex sfh. First three days only, so I'm told.

True. I did the observation for the feather sexing pretty much as soon as they were born. I only had 3 chicks (all black Americauna or EE) with all the same length Primaries. All the others had long-short-long-short Primaries. I put a dot of white paint on the heads of the ones with the same length Primaries just as an experiment. I know as dhetzle said this will probably not work; but no harm experimenting.

 

[joyfulshepherde]

I have no idea on the feather sexing of the Americaunas, but on the Easter Eggers I tried it this year and was wrong as many times as I was right. Pretty little chicks.

Too bad! Probably my experiment won't work, then! Thanks!

 

[joyfulshepherde]

Quote:
Wow, great results, I'm so happy. I sort of feel like a number of us had a part in making this happen. And that's an impressive broody you have there. I bet she is very happy to have all those chicks.

I don't think you can rely on feather sexing at all. You might see differences because the slow/fast feathering genes are present, but it takes a carefully setup breeding to link that to the sex of the chicks. The only reliable way for regular chicken keepers to sex chicks is by careful hybridization to makes sex links, or with an autosexing breed. The autosexing breeds are great and eggs from those breeds should be a lot more available next year (I presume you will want to do this again, it would be a shame to not employ such a talented hen).

Another note about the genetics - your "lavender" Ameracuna chicks are really "blue". There are 2 genes that produce blue and they have very different results. Because they all have a lavender parent (the roo you raised last year), they are all carrying 1 copy of that gene, but it's not expressing in any of the chicks because it's recessive and so you'd need 2 copies to make the bird lavender. The mother, however, has one copy of the "blue" gene and that is partially dominant, so it always shows up, in this case in about half the chicks because the lavender roo is really "black" as far as the blue gene is concerned.

The interesting part is in the next generation. If you get black hens, those could be crossed back to their father and half the babies will be true-breeding lavenders, the others will be genetically like their mother (carrying lavender, but look black). The blue hens will produce an very strange set of offspring if bred back to their lavender father - 50% will be "blue" and 50% "lavender", but some (25%) will also be black because those 50% will overlap in the blue chicks. IDK if you will be able to tell the chicks that are expressing both type of blue. They could look like either type of blue or like an overlay of both types. I think troyer is working with this also, so we may have a local source of lavender ams next year.

OK, more questions:

1. "Blue" looks the same as "lavender"? Or is the coloration slightly different? Is the term used just to denote genetics? My lavendar-looking chicks do look slightly different from each other, with one especially leaning more toward a charcoal coloring than light gray.

2. Since Troyer's hen was "Blue," then does it mean that I have a 25% chance of a true lavender in this crowd of chicks (although I realize that statistics won't necessarily play out very well with only 7 chicks)

3. Once you have true "Lavenders," will breeding them together create true Lavenders as well? Or do you always have to do a Lavender roo and black hen with a Lavender parent?

Thanks!

 

[joyfulshepherde]

I've never heard of a Swedish Flower Hen until reading this post (I'm still getting my feet wet in the chicken world), but what a bunch of cute babies! Congrats on the great broody work!

Yes, I had never heard of them either until Chiques offered me some eggs a month ago when I was looking to set my broody. They sounded really neat! Here is some info: http://greenfirefarms.com/store/category/chickens/swedish-flower-hens/

Apparently they're not always easy to hatch but I was happy with my 75% hatch ratio. Maybe they do well under hens.