Show off your Delawares! *PIC HEAVY*

[kathyinmo]

I will bet an ex-husband (roasted, stewed, baked, fried, etc) wouldn't taste nearly as good as my Dellie culls are gonna taste! I feed them good, so when their time comes, they can return the favor! YUMMMMMM ......

 

[Laney]

I wish I could eat my roosters. But.. and here I am sure that LadyHawk can understand where I'm coming from even if Cheyenne isn't the same way (I"m sorry if I butchered her name).....my 14yo daughter won't let me butcher our birds. So I have to find good homes for all of our roosters. I can't give them to folks who don't have enough to eat etc...I have to find them homes where they will be loved and pampered just like they are here......

I'm waiting for the day she realizes that you can't enjoy a good steak and keep every animal on the planet alive at the same time. She comes back at me with the logic right now "No mom, just the animals I KNOW"......poor child. She's in for a rude awakening once those rose colored glasses come off.

Laney

 

[Cetawin]

Laney I have the same issue with Cheyenne initially....the thought of eating one of these chickens or ducks causes all sorts of ruckus. *sigh* She is much more "up" on the food chain thing....and she has no problem with me deer hunting and such...but if it is named and lives here I am in for a battle. However...I have used my favorite phrase to her on several of these battlegrounds...

"Put on your big girl panties and deal with it!"

That normally shuts her up.


LadyHawk is a mean ole mom who has no sympathy (or so I have been told).

 

[tnchickenut]

Here is one of two of my Dels.... You may have seen them on ebay for hatching eggs before.

 

[Yard full o' rocks]

Guess I must be the resident "male wuss" here. I can't kill mine to eat either. ANYTHING in my yard seems to become a pet.....and I just can't see eatin' pets. Plus, chicken at Ingles is already dead, plucked and packaged....and is usually pretty cheap.

After roosters (or anything else) leaves here the new owners are free to do whatever they want to with them....I just ain't man enough to do it myself.

Ladyhawk, me and my two sons hunt and fish (a lot). Killing deer, wild hawgs (that's southern for hog so when you get to Kentucky you'll know, lol), wild turkeys, dove, etc, etc.....NO PROBLEM. For some reason the softer side of me just can't muster up the guts to kill something that has no sporting chance in the backyard. I won't even let the boys shoot the deer we have here....only at the hunting club about 3 hrs away.

Oh well.....maybe I need to find me some "big boy boxers" and learn to deal with it, huh??!!

 

[joletabey]

Scott - Real men admit they can't kill their chickens.

Laney and Cetawin - I was just like your daughters growing up, and I lived on a dairy farm- I can tell you about all the lies my parents told me when a favorite animal went to the butcher - they came up with some great ones. Don't hold your breath on those girls ever changing. . . .

Tnchickenut - those are beautiful birds!!! Contact Vexor, who is looking for eggs! I don't look on ebay for eggs so this is the first I have seen of your beauties!

 

[Yard full o' rocks]

Well...just got back in from "checking on everybody". My little Del girls got put in with the "big girls" after dark last night. So far, everyone seems to be ok. L'il Bit is exerting her "alpha hen" authority a bit, but there is no blood and everyone seems to be co-existing (at least for now). Pepper doesn't seem to know exactly what to do right now with 4 add't "young girls"....he acts a bit confused. He hasn't seen a new girl (other than Sasha) in many months.

Everyone is out free ranging now...the little girls are a bit shy of going too far from the coop and Pepper seems to be hanging close by too. Probably a good thing as I still see an occasional Coopers hawk around.

Will have to get some new pix together. Two of the girls are looking very nice. Good color on their necks and their tail black is showing thru pretty well. I have 2 others though that are very light colored still. One has a "little" barring on her neck, the other has absolutely NOTHING. White bird with tail black. Hoping they will get better looking at their juvenile feather molt.

Hope everyone is well...cold here this morning, but supposed to get better late ron...in the 50s I think

 

[speckledhen]

Stacy, looks like a pretty meaty boy you have there! Pretty hen, too.

I moved Isaac and his seven (six Del ladies and Riley, the barred EE, since Gracie is her only pal-she lays green eggs so no mistaking hers for a Del egg) girls back into the original coop they were in. Phoebe and Maxie's weight loss has been very worrisome, though Maxie has gained some weight back. I was thinking that it was their mini-molt they have been experiencing, but just in case, I have wormed the Del flock. The soil has been pushed downhill and has built up against the back fence of the main pen so could be that those two encountered a bed of nasty worms in all their digging. No others seem to be having issues like those two, not in the entire flock, so seemed prudent to worm the Dels. And it's easier to ID poop from an individual hen in their own separate coop instead of having 20 plus other hens in with them and never being able to do that. They also were given a big dish of oatmeal/grits/tuna/olive oil/garlic/crushed red pepper/ spritz of RedCell mixed with wheat germ oil/calcium tablets; lots of natural wormers in there. Need to get more pumpkin seeds, though.

 

[joletabey]

YUM! (not!

) Natural wormers, huh? I guess I better learn about this pretty fast, too.
Which are the natural wormers? Garlic? Red pepper?

 

[speckledhen]

Mainly chopped unsalted pumpkin seeds, but I was out of those. Also, garlic and cayenne/crushed red pepper are supposed to help with worms, but I know more about the pumpkin seeds. The curcurbit in them paralyzes worms so they can be expelled. And I try to have buttermilk for the acidity which helps the gut pH>