Pennsylvania!! Unite!!

[LadyBehir]

Three out. 2 Maran and 1 New Hampshire. Tucked everyone in for the night. Letting Mama do her thing.

 

[LadyBehir]

 

[chiques chicks]

Got the turkey housing finished. Simple hoop structure with a tarp over the one end portion and a small coop.

Moved the poults in to it and they are confused. Probably go out around dark and move them in to the small coop in there. They did find the food and water bowls. It has to be a shock going from an 8x4 to a 30x12!

 

[Reyvaughn]

My weekend projects:
Saturday: Fire, drinks, hot dogs, s'mores and friends/family to celebrate my birthday early.
Sunday: Tear out the rotting pallet fence that was here when we moved here. It's pallets, 2' rabbit fence, t-posts, landscaping timbers, deer netting and some slab wood. Yeah, quite a mess. I just need to take the t-posts out and roll up the wire - the rest is out.

I also sold my 4 single beard gene wheaten Am hens/pullets. I decided to take the chocolate Mille Fleur bantam Cochin project birds to the auction on Tuesday. I am going to focus on projects I feel I have more control over. I've been wanting out of the MFs for 2yrs because of how many people don't breed towards the standard.

 

[chippysmom327]

Go Pennsylvania.

Welcome! What county are you in?

We used some chicken compost in our garden. Some sprouts started to pop up were we didn't plant anything. It looks like our garden will have many pumpkin plants this year lol. We gave our chickens some pumpkins last year and I guess some seeds were buried in the mud and poop.

I had a surprise pumpkin plant too next to my porch. I'm just going to leave it there for kicks. I had a pumpkin on the porch that the girls were eating and now I got a surprise in spring.

Good news! My husbands landlord let me plant a garden behind our work building where there is lots of full sun.

Bad news : I now have poison ivy blisters on my arms (I did wear gloves!). Any body have any good home remedies for Poison ivy? I found some jewel weed yesterday, I will have to track down some more today at the park. Sshhh, don't tell anyone I'm stealing...,

Vinegar or rubbing alcohol to clean the oil off your skin & begin the drying process. Yes, you will stink until you get a good shower but it really helps.

Added benefit: smell keeps boys away.

yep, they have cooties. I bathe in vinegar often, I think it does a pretty good job.

 

[chiques chicks]

yep, they have cooties. I bathe in vinegar often, I think it does a pretty good job.

Lol

 

[AnneInTheBurbs]

Sorry to hear yoy got devil weed on your arms. I'm one of those people that seems to constantly get the stuff. Had it real bad last year and had to take a bunch of steroids to help.

It really is terrible. I have only gotten it once before years ago. :/

Anne, jewel weed is my #1 go to, although I'm one of the lucky ones who doesn't get pain ivy, generally.

Just grabbed some from a local park today.mmthe stuff wilts in minutes though. Plunged it in a bucket of water and hopefully will last me a few days.

to quote Ambassador Kosh "And so it begins"

Congrats!! Now another hard part, not peeking!

Vinegar or rubbing alcohol to clean the oil off your skin & begin the drying process. Yes, you will stink until you get a good shower but it really helps.

Thanks! I may try this tomorrow.

In PA they have closed all PA funded shows to poultry through till next year's farm show (2016). This is still in the precautionary stage as no Hi Path cases of AI have been found in PA or even on the Atlantic Fly Way......yet. New Bolton assured me that it is not IF it comes, it's WHEN. I hear through the grapevine that they expect the Fall Migration to be the downfall of the east coast... There are hardly any confirmed backyard cases so far, mostly commercial production. It makes me wonder, are our birds less suseptable? Or are less backyard breeders reporting their losses? At this point, just crossing my fingers and am hanging onto my egg layers as I keep hearing that egg prices are climbing.

What exactly are the symptoms of AI? I want to be sure I know, just in case.

Added benefit: smell keeps boys away.

I don't want to keep my husband away! I love him and we're trying to start a family.

 

[emorems0]

In PA they have closed all PA funded shows to poultry through till next year's farm show (2016). This is still in the precautionary stage as no Hi Path cases of AI have been found in PA or even on the Atlantic Fly Way......yet. New Bolton assured me that it is not IF it comes, it's WHEN. I hear through the grapevine that they expect the Fall Migration to be the downfall of the east coast... There are hardly any confirmed backyard cases so far, mostly commercial production. It makes me wonder, are our birds less suseptable? Or are less backyard breeders reporting their losses? At this point, just crossing my fingers and am hanging onto my egg layers as I keep hearing that egg prices are climbing.

According to the article I shared, any time there is a confirmed case they search out all poultry within 6 or so miles, including going door to door looking for backyard flocks. More than half of the flocks tested were backyard flocks, they just aren't getting sick. The lack of backyard cases confused the scientists because backyard flocks are in greater contact with wild birds that carry the disease. Their thought is that because the virus can't survive heat and sunlight, backyard flocks are actually less susceptible because the virus can't proliferate in their environment, as opposed to the crowded, indoor setting of factory farmed birds. So yeah, I do think our birds are less susceptible... at least in the summer time when it's hot and sunny.

 

[emorems0]

Alas, we are not somehow immune to predators. We lost 3 birds today sometime between 9:30am and 2pm, right in the middle of the day. I was getting the stuff ready to process the rest of the meat birds and my girls came up and told me that the 'hurt wing chicken' was bleeding on his head. I went down and sure enough the back of his head was all red but he seemed fine otherwise. I assumed he had gotten into the layers run and the girls were nasty to him just like they did with the turkeys. But as I ran around the run trying to catch him to fix his bandage and spray some blu kote on his head, I notice a big grey feather on the ground with some other light fluffy feathers. I start doing an inventory, it's hard to see them all because they have good cover in the new run, one of the blue/yellow orps that I just got from chiques chicks is missing. Upon further inspection, two of my Delaware pullets are missing too. There were quite a few feathers in the run, but not a ton. There was no blood, I found no bodies, no trail, and it was the middle of the day. Am I dealing with a fox? whatever it was, it didn't eat them here and was strong enough (or maybe it was a group of something) to carry off three pullets.

It figures we had just quarantined the meat birds in a separate pen so they couldn't eat this morning and those fat, slow birds were untouched. The extra Delaware roo with the broken wing was not taken, the dark Cornish and turkeys were all fine, just 3 of the most important birds for my meatie project. I'm down to only one Delaware pullet and one Orpington. Any chance anyone has any Delaware and/or Buff Orpington pullets (any color is probably fine) to share???

Tonight I had the girls round up all the chickens into the extra pen, hopefully they don't go after each other too much in there tonight, they are used to being allowed to roost in a tree/bush in the run. I've been seeing lots of confrontations between the little roos lately, including the broken wing chicken who was not deterred today by either his broken wing or his bloody head and had quite the staring contest with the other little Delaware roo this evening. Hubs went out on the porch with a pellet gun around 10pm and shined flashlight around into the woods. He caught eyes right away. He shot at it and it was gone. Hopefully it doesn't return later tonight. Tomorrow we secure the run a little better and work on integrating the hens and the chicks so they can all start using the coop.

 

[chiques chicks]

Sounds like a fox to me.

When is your next trip east, I may have a couple more orps. Someone was interested, but hasn't gotten back to me for days. If they don't show interest before you come through these parts, I can help enable.