post your chicken coop pictures here!

[Beekissed]

Here is a pic of her. Hard to get a good angle. She still won't come outside to range. Anyone know what breed she is?

She's a black minorca....

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minorca_chicken

 

[FarmerPhronc]

She's a black minorca....

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minorca_chicken

MMMM, I wonder? Not to say your wrong, I have 2 black hens, though you have to look close, they both look different as well as having different personalities. The lady I got them from couldn't even tell me. She just smiled at me and said, "Well you know how it is around here Frank, every animal on the ranch likes to ....

 

[bruceha2000]

She's a black minorca....

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minorca_chicken

Or maybe a White Faced Black Spanish??

 

[Beekissed]

MMMM, I wonder? Not to say your wrong, I have 2 black hens, though you have to look close, they both look different as well as having different personalities. The lady I got them from couldn't even tell me. She just smiled at me and said, "Well you know how it is around here Frank, every animal on the ranch likes to ....

White earlobes, floppy comb, small body and elevated, pinched tail...looks like a Minorca to me. Except bald.

 

[Beekissed]

Or maybe a White Faced Black Spanish??

Quote:

http://www.poultrypages.com/minorca.html

 

[Sylvester017]

BTW, salt is used to back flush the resin beads. Once the beads are reduced the salt is no longer present. The taste in soft water is the resin, not salt. I believe the right softener combined with a good filter would reduce the problem significantly. It may take more than one stage. Industrial operations which have such issues use several stages designed to remove different minerals. I've forgotten the name of the system but there is a softener system which uses tanks which are recycled that remove a lot of minerals. It's not as cheap as a home softener but very effective.

We plan to discuss most recent updated options with the contractor. But frankly, I'm exhausted spending money on our money-pit house!!!

My problem is I'm lazy and don't want to wait til they are big enough to defend themselves so I thought I'd try adding some adults. I raised some from my own eggs with my own rooster but had trouble even then keeping them alive. Even though they hatched in the same coop they were still attacked. This spring I will try chicks kept separate again, it's just a lot of work to maintain two areas with feeders and drinkers etc. I was hoping to simplify. I guess I need to move all my stone pile and extend the coop to allow for a brood area :-(( Does anyone know how to turn off this stupid typing helper that 're-writes almost every word !@#$%^&* Don't answer that, I'll do it, just being lazy

Raising chicks is very iffy -- too delicate for my taste. They can either be really healthy and all survive or they can start dropping off like flies. I only get 3 to 4 month old juvies now. Even then you can still lose them. But my track record with juveniles is more successful. I get to keep them in-house for quarantine and to socialize them before integrating them at 5 to 6 months old to the outside flock. We dealt with chicks and ducklings on my folks' farm and it was a hassle. I prefer the curious outgoing friendly juvenile stage of poultry.

 

[bruceha2000]

Sorry you've had such bad luck with chicks Sylvester. I guess I've been VERY lucky. Got 12 from Ideal 3.5 years ago. All girls and all healthy. Same with the 7 I got in June from Meyer. Given chicken sexing is a 90% accuracy proposition, statistically speaking someone somewhere has 2 cockerels that should have ended up at my house (and no I am NOT complaining, in fact I am VERY happy!).

My daughter dealt with the couple of the now 3.5 Y/Os that had pasty butt. They were raised in an overheated (as I now understand) bathroom where I used the standard and VERY unnatural red heat lamp method. The 7 younger ones were raised by a broody hen. Not a lick of problem with any of them.

 

[MeepBeep]

BTW, salt is used to back flush the resin beads. Once the beads are reduced the salt is no longer present. The taste in soft water is the resin, not salt.

Not exactly the whole story... Yes the 'salt' (sodium chloride) is not transferred to the soft water but the sodium ions from the salt are transferred to the soft water, and that is what you taste in the form of sodium bicarbonate (baking soda)... The salt is used to 'recharge' the resin beads with new trapped sodium ions and flush out the calcium and magnesium ions, the resin beads themselves are just a tool to facilitate the ion exchange and contribute nothing to the taste of the water... When conditioning the hard water resin beads perform the opposite by trapping the calcium and magnesium ions in the hard water and releasing the sodium ions... The change in the taste of the water is a result of the the calcium and magnesium ions being replaced with sodium ions to form sodium bicarbonate... The amount of sodium in the soft water is low and it's not 'salt' but it's there and you can taste the sodium bicarbonate in the soft water... They also sell potassium chloride salt that will function the same, but exchange potassium ions for the calcium and magnesium ions, but most people don't use potassium chloride as it's a lot more costly...

Either way I just posted in another thread about the 'risk' of salt toxicity in chickens, soft water poses no risk, and you would to really dose you chickens up with pure salt to be lethal...

This is a horrible scan but it still is readable... https://archive.org/stream/toxicityofsaltfo00mitc/toxicityofsaltfo00mitc_djvu.txt

If you gloss over it you will see that chickens given 4 grams of salt twice daily appeared to do fine, that is a lot of salt, this is about about 1.5 teaspoons of pure salt a day!
With that said and the average adult chicken being about 4.5lbs or 2kg it would take about a tablespoon (8-10 grams) sized does of pure salt to be lethal...

 

[gpeters3]

White earlobes, floppy comb, small body and elevated, pinched tail...looks like a Minorca to me. Except bald.

This looks very much like her. She has a floppy comb and Struts,around almost,like a rooster with her head held high. She is already getting more feisty so may not be on the bottom very long.

 

[Sylvester017]

BTW, salt is used to back flush the resin beads. Once the beads are reduced the salt is no longer present. The taste in soft water is the resin, not salt. I believe the right softener combined with a good filter would reduce the problem significantly. It may take more than one stage. Industrial operations which have such issues use several stages designed to remove different minerals. I've forgotten the name of the system but there is a softener system which uses tanks which are recycled that remove a lot of minerals. It's not as cheap as a home softener but very effective.

I will keep it in mind. Thx.