Pennsylvania!! Unite!!

[dheltzel]

I put some more pics of my incubator build here: https://www.backyardchickens.com/t/736899/the-incubator-thread/780#post_16350618
Tonight I should finish it up and start testing.

 

[BullChick]

Aurora, what is happening with the hen? Did she make it?

 

[TillyPeeps]

Thanks guys. She spent the evening sleeping on the recliner in the living room snuggled up with a towel. She's still the same, though she does complain to me if I move her. Not like a painful complain but more of an annoyed complain. I couldn't leave her in the living room all night so I put a towel in the bottom of the bathtub in our room and put her in it. She's all fluffed up now and only took about a half a bite of food this evening. She's as comfortable as I can make her now.

Sorry to hear the poor girl suffering. In my understanding, 5 is a old age for hens. There is not too much you can help. Just keep her comfortable and hope her will get better.

 

[TillyPeeps]

Cheapest, either live or dried, will be online (Amazon or eBay). As mentioned, growing your own may end up being the very cheapest (I assume your labor costs are 0).
I was looking to dried mealworms and found dried Soldier Fly larvae that was supposed to be a great substitute, and slightly cheaper. My turkeys have no idea what to do with them and the jury is still out on how the chickens like them, I haven't had much time to feed and observe.

I can tell you what my birds adore this time of year:
1. pumpins or gourds, chopped in half - they eat everything down to a husk
2. regular feed put into a bowl and made wet, once they understand what is in the bowl they come running at the mere sight of that bowl
3. hardboiled (or scrambled) eggs - I mash these up with water and add feed on top so they have to hunt for the egg

All of these are cheaper than mealworms and (I think) just as appreciated.

I heard that fly larvae has more nutrition than meal worm，but it just gross me out when thinking of handling it. I'll have to just use meal worm.

I really hope your Bielefelder eggs will have a good hatch. Cannot wait for my chicks coming home.

 

[TillyPeeps]

The first Bielefelder eggs to make it to lockdown are set to hatch this Saturday. The first 3 were all clears, but in the second setting of 5, 4 are now in the hatcher. Last year I had good fertility but poor hatching with the eggs I bought. I'm hoping that does not happen this year.

The first BCM eggs are in this group too.

I have a question: how do you tell Bielefelder chicks from Rhodebar chicks in the incubator? The chicks and even adults look similar to me. Even legbar looks the same except of the crest.

 

[dheltzel]

I have a question: how do you tell Bielefelder chicks from Rhodebar chicks in the incubator? The chicks and even adults look similar to me. Even legbar looks the same except of the crest.

They have to be hatched in separate "baskets". I make them out of 1/4 hardware cloth. I can mix breeds in a basket if the chicks look different, so the Bielefelder eggs in the hatcher now share a basket with the Copper Marans, but the Reese Legbars are in a separate basket (in this case, with 4 turkey eggs). My existing hatcher has 4 baskets and I have a divider I can add to one to make a 5th area. That actually worked pretty well all last year. This year I will need a much larger hatcher, with multiple large baskets on shelves and dividers in those baskets. This is my next project after the new incubator is running and loaded. That starts the "timer" for getting the new hatcher made before the first huge group of eggs is ready for hatching. Fortunately, hatchers are a lot less complicated since no turners are involved, but they must be easily cleaned and be more waterproof due to the high humidity.

This is how the colors work in the chick breeds I am hatching. Each basket can have (at most) 1 breed from each group. Moving the eggs to the hatcher is a fairly complex operation.
Wild-type (chipmunk striped):
Welsummers
Legbars (Reese must be hatched separately)
Rhodebars
Bielefelders
Welbars
Olive Eggers (if parents are both wild-type)
Extended Black:
Copper Marans
BBS Ameruacanas
Black Sexlinks
California Greys
Wheaten (yellow chicks):
Wheaten Ams
New Hampshires (no longer hatching these)

As you can see, the biggest problem is all the wild-type breeds I have (7, if I make OE's and hatch all the rest at the same time). I tend to favor these because I like them all a lot.

Even after hatching, it's a problem since they either need separate brooders or really good banding and careful attention to the bands when selling (and remembering the remove the bands before they cause problems). Times that by several different ages of chicks and you can see the brooder situation can get out of hand quickly.

 

[TillyPeeps]

The wild-type breeds are all nice birds and I like them all too. I'll get 4 out of my 5 chicks! It'll take me a while to remember who is who. How long can the bands stay on? I think I may need at least a week before I can tell the chicks apart.

 

[maranfarmer563]

If you just have a few similar kinds you can hatch in a onion bag.i have the same problem with cemani,svart and Hmong chicks

 

[OneMountainAcres]

Aurora, what is happening with the hen? Did she make it?

Sorry to hear the poor girl suffering. In my understanding, 5 is a old age for hens. There is not too much you can help. Just keep her comfortable and hope her will get better.

Penny is still with us. She's still has no desire to eat or more and is just sleeping a lot. I brought her back out to the living room chair to be around us. The poor girl looks so miserable :/

 

[dheltzel]

The wild-type breeds are all nice birds and I like them all too. I'll get 4 out of my 5 chicks! It'll take me a while to remember who is who. How long can the bands stay on? I think I may need at least a week before I can tell the chicks apart.

I usually leave the bands on for at least a month, so you won't have any problem for a few weeks. Just inspect the bands every week or so and if it seems really tight, take it off. I have some larger bands I can give you to replace them as they grow. Rhodebars and Bielefelder pullets look very different as adults, and even more different from the Legbars. The bigger issue for you will be telling the Legbars apart. Some of the non-Reese Legbars can look a lot like the Reese line, and I expect the ones I'm hatching to be even more so (that is my hope) since their daddy is Reese. I think you will eventually see some differences in appearance, but I can't predict when.