Show off your Delawares! *PIC HEAVY*

[capayvalleychick]

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Can you take a look and comment whether my guesses are correct? There seems to be a range of comb sizes.

Thanks,
Kim

 

[ladytoysdream]

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Our girls mainly lay large brown eggs. Friendly and have strong personalities.
They get to forage / free range in the late afternoon, and put themselves back in the coop and get locked
up at night.
Buttons ( above picture )went broody this summer for her first time, and stayed that way for a week.
Day 8, I felt sorry for her, and stuck 8 guinea hen eggs under her because my son lost his 2 guinea
hens that layed those eggs. His broody girls were tied up with their own eggs at that point. I had 3
broodies at the same time setting here. Buttons managed to hatch 7 of the 8 guineas and I raised
those guineas from July 4 to sometime in September till he took them home.
Buttons wanted nothing to do with those babies. Nothing. All she wanted to do was set more eggs.
One very determined broody hen.
I tried giving her some chicks from the other hen because I had them timed to come off within a few
days of each other. Buttons did not want any babies of any kind. I finally had to let Red, who is our
super broody / mom take over the extra babies. Red loves to babysit chicks

So Red and the other
Broody, Mindy ( pure buff orpington ) were in 2 outside kennels side by side this summer raising chicks.
Buttons went back in the regular yard with everybody else. And she still growls at me when I take her egg

 

[speckledhen]

Broodies are so goofy. I had one Orp hen who wanted to kill the chicks after she hatched them, so she didn't get to be a mama. You just never know what's in their little walnut brains sometimes.



Kim, your curl toed cull is a cockerel, sorry. #44 with the broken toe is a cockerel. Most of your guesses look right to me. but one you called a pullet, I feel could go either way-not sure which that was. One of them, you asked about a pinched tail, but you can't tell at that age.

Cockerels should have bright yellow legs at that age. Pullets may have slightly less bright yellow, but shouldn't be green. The cockerel below was 6 weeks in the picture-note the leg color:

 

[ladytoysdream]

I love working with broody hens

They start in the main coop and then if they stay broody, I move them over
to these huge dog crates, 1 bird per unit in our shed. They get checked on often.
After the babies get so big, I can move them to these dog kennel cages I bought this
past summer used. The roofs are tarped good to protect them from sun and rain.
My husband spoils them and makes pets out of them.
He basically pouts when I have to get rid of any extra roosters.
I only started with 16 girls. Last winter we had 27 girls. This winter 42.
I think I am at max. Sigh.

 

[speckledhen]

Your hubby sounds like mine! He makes pets of all of them. When they leave here, they're spoiled rotten. I keep telling him not to get too attached because we can't keep every rooster that hatches here, LOL.

 

[ladytoysdream]

My first group that had the pure orpingtons, had 12 girls and 4 boys.
2 roosters went to freezer camp. One rooster who I named Tommy went to live
at my son's house. He still is the head rooster there.
The other rooster Henry was here till sometime this summer. He was HUGE.
Easy to work with, friendly, etc. But hard on the hen's backs. And Bert used to kick the stuffings out of
poor Henry. So I finally gave him away to a farmer who had some hens but no roosters.
This fall when we were chasing pumpkins, we stopped to visit with Henry.
He was a happy boy with his harem. I felt relieved that hubby was happy with my decision.

 

[capayvalleychick]

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I love broodies.

Thank you for looking. None of these chicks have bright yellow legs like that. Their feed has corn as the second ingredient, so it's not lack of corn. They have not been outside yet, could that affect leg color? Are they too bad to use, to improve upon?

I've been reading that you should not mix strains, so I wanted to use only these as a basis for my breeding Delawares. Is that not going to work with these chicks because of the cockerel leg color?

My Sand Hill cockerel had bright yellow legs, which are fading. His type is not the best, so I didn't want to mix him with these chicks. I've also considered getting Paul Harter chicks, but all the best breeders say don't mix strains. I had to wait most of the year to get these hatching eggs.

I have better luck breeding my cattle & pigs than I do chickens!

Kim

 

[speckledhen]

You picked a hard breed to get right, Kim. I don't know about not mixing strains. If a certain breeders birds are lacking in a certain area, how will you fix that if you don't bring in new blood that doesn't have the problem? I can't really agree with that, but I'm not a breeder so what do I know? Seems to me if you have a whole line of green legged Delawares, not going outside that line is going to stick you with green legged Delawares for the foreseeable future.

My Dels don't have a diet high in corn nor do they have grass as we live on a mtn in the woods so it isn't full of green forage. If the breed is supposed to have yellow legs, seems logical to me that those legs ought to be yellow, regardless of diet. Now, that little guy's half sister had less yellow legs, though pullets often do, and her legs became more yellow with age, I noticed, but the males always seem to start out with yellow, after the pinky-baby-leg stage is over.

 

[capayvalleychick]

Yeah, both breeds I raise are hard to get right.

So, their legs do look green to you? Or simply too pale of yellow? I asked a poultry geneticist about it and she asked if they have willow legs.

Thanks,
Kim

 

[rebel yell]

Got a pic. of my 4 newly hatched Dellie. chicks today: