The Evolution of Atlas: A Breeding (and Chat) Thread

[oldhenlikesdogs]

He looks spiffy and ready for a night of line dancing.

Sorry about your headache, I can't handle even a little one.

I find birds with mites tend to have an underlying health problem. Give those old girls a good dusting with that dust and hopefully they will be okay. We have lots of dust holes in the dry lot area in our goat and donkey pastures, some of them holes are getting very deep like yours.

I don't know what my yard would look like without all my birds patrolling the yard and getting the bugs. Their must have been a sudden increase in bugs too in the last week or two as my birds are barely eating their rations.

 

[speckledhen]

He looks spiffy and ready for a night of line dancing.

Sorry about your headache, I can't handle even a little one.

I find birds with mites tend to have an underlying health problem. Give those old girls a good dusting with that dust and hopefully they will be okay. We have lots of dust holes in the dry lot area in our goat and donkey pastures, some of them holes are getting very deep like yours.

I don't know what my yard would look like without all my birds patrolling the yard and getting the bugs. Their must have been a sudden increase in bugs too in the last week or two as my birds are barely eating their rations.

Well, they may have something going on just from being 10 years old. Actually, Amanda is 10 1/2 now and Snow is approaching her 10th hatch-day. They both have such terrible arthritis and each has lost the use of one leg from it. But, they're just really old and spend all their time laying in the shavings, or out in the dirt when I carry them each outside, but Amanda will dig around and try in a limited way to dustbathe. Snow acts like she's quit the chicken life entirely.
Gloria Jean has been bloated up several times and always "un-bloats", but she'll go to the nest, not lay, get off, etc. She definitely has something going on in there. And Atlas mates her more than any other hen so that tush-to-tush contact could have transferred some mites to him. I didn't see any on the broodies at all, but I dusted Thea anyway. Will have to check Brandy soon. She has tiny chicks with her so she goes nuts when I try to take her away from them for any reason, even to check for mites.

 

[oldhenlikesdogs]

My husband and his brothers worked on the east side of my shed this weekend. I need to get a picture of the stuff back on there. He's almost done. My husband is on the left.

 

[speckledhen]

Looks great, Lisa! I love building projects, I really do. I miss building stuff, in a way.

 

[oldhenlikesdogs]

Well, they may have something going on just from being 10 years old. Actually, Amanda is 10 1/2 now and Snow is approaching her 10th hatch-day. They both have such terrible arthritis and each has lost the use of one leg from it. But, they're just really old and spend all their time laying in the shavings, or out in the dirt when I carry them each outside, but Amanda will dig around and try in a limited way to dustbathe. Snow acts like she's quit the chicken life entirely.
Gloria Jean has been bloated up several times and always "un-bloats", but she'll go to the nest, not lay, get off, etc. She definitely has something going on in there. And Atlas mates her more than any other hen so that tush-to-tush contact could have transferred some mites to him. I didn't see any on the broodies at all, but I dusted Thea anyway. Will have to check Brandy soon. She has tiny chicks with her so she goes nuts when I try to take her away from them for any reason, even to check for mites.

Aw, poor old girls. My oldest has bad arthritis in here legs too. I feel so bad for her some days, but other days she does fine. She will be 10 next spring. I always expect her not to make it through another year, but she sticks in there. Something took her sister last week without a sign. I still haven't figured it out as she didn't go far from the shed when she did step outside.

 

[speckledhen]

Aw, poor old girls. My oldest has bad arthritis in here legs too. I feel so bad for her some days, but other days she does fine. She will be 10 next spring. I always expect her not to make it through another year, but she sticks in there. Something took her sister last week without a sign. I still haven't figured it out as she didn't go far from the shed when she did step outside.

Well, darn, sorry to hear that. I got a message from Karen Lockhart today (lockedhearts on BYC, lives in GA, too). She owns a sister of Amanda's, plus an EE x BR hen that hatched here with that hen (I hatched several batches that year from her BR hens, some pure, some sired by EE or Silver Phoenix or an old Cochin/Silkie rooster) the same year Amanda hatched. So, those girls are both 10 years old. She said the BR hen is failing now and she wanted me to know it was coming, but those girls out of her flock have certainly had some longevity!
I'd rather they go like my big Blue Orp hen, Dusty, just on her feet on minute and BAM! Gone to that Great Roost in the Sky the next, bossy to the end.

 

[speckledhen]

Not far from being done with the barn clean out and chicken-dusting extravaganza. We finished the Old Hens, Atlas, the Brahmas, June/Georgie's group, the Belgian D'Anvers and Hector's pen, plus one of the dog cages in there. We still need to do the little front pen with Thea and her four Brahma chicks, plus the little coop where Brandy and her chicks are living, plus one more dog cage in the barn.
I did the Brahmas' pen all by myself while DH went back to town to get more shavings. You should have seen me holding that big, sweet Sebastian over my lap to dust his tush and under his wings. When he started to seem nervous, I just whispered in his ear and he held perfectly still for me. And trust me, he's an armload! But he was easier than most all the hens. Love that rooster.

Hector, on the other hand, was the worst of ALL of them, screaming and struggling and fighting the entire time my husband held him. He's never calmed down about being held, not ever.

Atlas, Georgie and Bash all have 8-9'x 8' pens so they are each as large or larger than our original coop we called The Clutch Hutch. The other pens are smaller, mostly 5x8.


I also swept the shavings and hay from the barn aisle and sprayed all along the pens with Orange Guard. Too many molting lately, too many feathers that may have mites on/in them.

ETA: Now, all barn pens and all birds are dusted. Even the little coop with broody and babies is completely cleaned out, sprayed, dusted and re-stocked. And we dusted Brandy herself this morning, though I saw no mites on her.

The lady who was coming to pick up her blue partridge Brahma cockerel today PM'd and asked if she could get her boy on Saturday instead. She said, "I'm not finished cleaning my pens, ugh". Guess we were in the same boat, LOL. I told her that was fine. She bought Belgian D'Anver eggs from me a couple of years ago and lives in the next town.

 

[getaclue]

Got my flu shot this afternoon.

 

[Leahs Mom]

@speckledhen
Lovely shirt! And wonderful that all that work is done. And...you can eat the leaves of the nasturtium too. This is the first year I've put them in the garden and really happy with how long they've lasted and how well they've done. Next year I will plant them at the front edge. That will be pretty!

 

[Leahs Mom]

PS: Tell me about the orange guard. Is it the regular one with limonene? I've wondered if it was safe to use around chickens as they're so sensitive to fumes but sounds like that's what you're using exclusively in the pens, cracks, etc.? I actually have some here but have never "really" cleaned out my chicken area. I used to spray some olive or coconut oil in the cracks along the walls, roosts, etc. in the little house on occasion. But have never cleaned since they've been the the pole building.