South Carolina

[RockerHen]

Candled the silkie eggs today and all 6 have little 'spiders' inside them

hopefully the rest of the incubation goes well and in a few weeks I'll have 6 more silkies running around!

 

[froggy848]

Best of luck with your silkie hatch

 

[Avonshire]

This hatch week for me. I have 9 of Sam's(dixiebeast) bantam eggs incubating. These are my first bantams. I can't wait to see the little babies. Tomorrow is day 20.

 

[RedBugPoultry]

So I am finding out that if I do not get on here for a few days BYC stops sending me updates. So I miss out on a lot if I do not have time to get on here! I do want to share my latest discovery and hopefully no one goes after me for animal cruelty as I do not think it is cruel if you consider the option.




This is one of my Faverolle pullets. I have had a lot of trouble with this pen of birds--the pullets chase the cockerels around and pull the feathers out to the point of bleeding, and yes, they pull each others feathers too. Not sure what started it because they were in a hutch for a long time and never did any feather pulling which is where it usually starts. It did not start until recently--maybe a teenage thing. They had the cockerels so frighten that they would not come out of their night box to eat. I started to sell them with the hope of finding someone with more room to split them up but decided I did not want to pass on the problem~and yes, I have tried free ranging them but they just will not stay out of the pen or away from it--strange but true. Anyway, I decided to try blinder. The atmosphere in this pen has changed 99.8 %. There is still some feather pecking but only when everyone is laying around together and nothing real bad that bring on blood. The birds have even changed in personality toward me as I can walk up to them and pet them and they don't run like they did. NOW they can still see to eat and they can run to get away but obviously they can not see forward to chase something. We are doing a mass freezer camp project with some spare roosters this weekend and then these guys will go in a different pen that I hope will make getting them to free range a little easier--I will take the blinders off for free ranging. These blinders do not have the pin all the way through the nose--they are pin free and just kind of pop on the birds nose. You do have to make sure the pens get in the nose right but I have even considered using them on some roosters that go after me and see if they will help with that. I think if you used them on roosters early enough, before bad habits are really formed, they might just work. Has anyone else used these before? I must admit I did not like the thought before this but I am now sold on them!

 

[Jenn1399]

Wow! That's crazy! It sounds like a great option for you.

 

[EggieRowe]

I think if the options are A - they continue to hurt each other, B - debeaking (yikes!), or C - going into the freezer coop; wearing a piece of plastic isn't cruel. Even if they were the pin kind, you could just tell your chickens all the hip teenage chickens are getting piercings now and you're just a super cool chicken parent.

 

[EggieRowe]

I'm almost done with my coop design and wanted some opinions from people in the same climate. My plan is to keep 20-25 out of the 28 chicks I received (remainders will be re-homed or processed). The coop will be 2 1/2 feet off the ground with 75 sq. ft. (min. 3 sq. ft. per chicken), 20 LF of roost (9.5 in. per chicken), and an attached run of 225 sq ft.(min 9 sq ft per chicken). Walls will be wood siding, no insulation. They will free-range in the afternoons and weekends. Also, the run and area under roosts will be sand, but the majority of the coop will be DLM. Does this seem like enough space and would I need supplemental heat this winter? Breeds are Minorca, EE, Australorp, Delware, Cuckoo Marans, and I think 1 Hamburg roo. If I do need heat, I want to go ahead and wire an outlet into the coop instead of running extension cords. If I don't need heat, therefore electricity, I could move the chickens away from the house considerably and build slightly bigger. (Right now its designed to go against the south-west wall of the house.)

 

[RockerHen]

I'm almost done with my coop design and wanted some opinions from people in the same climate. My plan is to keep 20-25 out of the 28 chicks I received (remainders will be re-homed or processed). The coop will be 2 1/2 feet off the ground with 75 sq. ft. (min. 3 sq. ft. per chicken), 20 LF of roost (9.5 in. per chicken), and an attached run of 225 sq ft.(min 9 sq ft per chicken). Walls will be wood siding, no insulation. They will free-range in the afternoons and weekends. Also, the run and area under roosts will be sand, but the majority of the coop will be DLM. Does this seem like enough space and would I need supplemental heat this winter? Breeds are Minorca, EE, Australorp, Delware, Cuckoo Marans, and I think 1 Hamburg roo. If I do need heat, I want to go ahead and wire an outlet into the coop instead of running extension cords. If I don't need heat, therefore electricity, I could move the chickens away from the house considerably and build slightly bigger. (Right now its designed to go against the south-west wall of the house.)

I never use any sort of supplemental heat in the winter. I do, however, wrap the main 'house' area (made of wood siding and chicken wire) where they roost and lay in plastic sheeting to keep the wind off and keep it warmer. I've never lost a bird to the cold, but then again, this is SC, we have mild winters usually.

 

[RockerHen]

So, y'all may remember my 'mystery chicks' that hatched out a while back, that were half OEGB and half large fowl rooster, probably my RIR boy I've determined. I have one of those left, a hen with strange orange and grey lacing. She's bigger than a bantam, but definitely much smaller than a large breed bird. She was missing for a while, and I thought she was a goner, but I saw her this morning taking a dust bath and 'broody clucking'. So I went searching for her nest, and sure enough, I found a nest of 12 eggs in the wooded area behind the main 'chicken pasture'. I was going to throw them out, because I thought they were infertile, as I have no small roosters, but I thought I would candle them just for the heck of it. Lo and behold, 6 of those 12 were fertile, and pretty far along, too. So that means my HUGE silver laced wyandotte roo (he's our only roo, so he has to be the father) somehow mated with this tiny little girl. I've seen him try before, but he was so big that his feet weren't even on her back, they were on either side of her on the ground. I didn't think he'd ever make contact, but apparently he has. Since she has kind of lacing already, I am VERY interested to see how these chicks turn out. if they hatch I'll definitely post pictures.

Here's the "half-breed" hen on her nest (I'd say she's about 3 or 4 pounds)

and this is the father, my slw roo (he's probably like 8 pounds)

 

[EggieRowe]

I was wondering what she looked like, very cool. Can't wait to see the babies! Until I read your post, I never really thought about how chickens reproduced..lol. Had to go read up on the process. Wonder if my Hamburg roo mght be able to fertilize my assorted heavy breed hens...