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

[speckledhen]

My Speckled Sussex looks like a basketball tonight, she is so pouffed out

The Belgian D'Anvers are so funny. They pull their bearded faces into their chests and all you see is a round pouf of fluff with a beak. Penny is especially cute with her almost completely white beard.

 

[oldhenlikesdogs]

I also think that chickens are acclimated to the climate they grew up in, something folks rarely mention. Mine wouldn't make it in Wisconsin and yours would be partying hard here, thinking they had made it to Chicken Shangri-La (well, maybe not so much tonight, LOL). Maybe the Brahmas and mostly younger to middle aged hens don't need heat at all, but an ailing bird, a naked bird, or one like old Amanda may need a heat spot. It really depends on the situation. And Lisa, you also have other animals in the barn, too, and use the deep bedding as well. You have a really good barn for them to be out of the wind like I do, though yours is larger than mine. I have no larger livestock to provide body heat and we don't do deep bedding, though I piled in some hay with Georgie's group and the other old hens' group tonight.

Mine would be very happy there in winter, I will box them up and send them down to you.

Mine can handle cold but not the heat. Mine start panting when it gets over 80 here. I would much rather deal with the cold than the heat.

They are now predicting a few days of 20 degrees. It will be a nice break, and hopefully we can regroup, and get ready for some lower temperatures again.

I'm having troubles with my bad shoulder, well the worse one at least. I think it's from bashing my rubber pans out to remove the ice. I was told not to do a lot of hammering when I had it replaced 15 years ago. I will let my husband do that for a while and see if it calms down.

I have enough pans to just swap them out. I'm hoping the pain is a muscle. I do not want to have to get something repaired. It started hurting after pushing open a hard opening door at the garden center last weekend. I wish I could use heated water buckets but the ducks and the sparrows make it so I need to dump them out daily anyways, so why waste the electricity running heater.

 

[speckledhen]

Mine would be very happy there in winter, I will box them up and send them down to you.

Mine can handle cold but not the heat. Mine start panting when it gets over 80 here. I would much rather deal with the cold than the heat.

They are now predicting a few days of 20 degrees. It will be a nice break, and hopefully we can regroup, and get ready for some lower temperatures again.

I'm having troubles with my bad shoulder, well the worse one at least. I think it's from bashing my rubber pans out to remove the ice. I was told not to do a lot of hammering when I had it replaced 15 years ago. I will let my husband do that for a while and see if it calms down.

I have enough pans to just swap them out. I'm hoping the pain is a muscle. I do not want to have to get something repaired. It started hurting after pushing open a hard opening door at the garden center last weekend. I wish I could use heated water buckets but the ducks and the sparrows make it so I need to dump them out daily anyways, so why waste the electricity running heater.

I hope so, too, Lisa. I popped something in my right shoulder and after that, it hasn't been the same. It will go out on me and I have pain in it for a week or so, but then, when I baby it for awhile, it seems to get better. I have no idea what is going on in there, but I have to be careful throwing things now with that arm.

I always concentrate on what the cold does to my old chickens and others with physical issues like Atlas's stiff hock joints, but we humans can also have troubles in the cold. You take care of yourself, my friend.

Next week, I see a few 50's for highs. It will feel like an early spring!

 

[getaclue]

The weather report says it's suppose to start warming up on Monday. YAY! It dropped down to 21 degrees the night before last, and last night it dropped to 26 degrees. That is not even close to "normal" for this part of Florida. Typically, we stay in the low 60's to 70's, then it drops into the 50's when a cold front moves in. During colder winter years, we may get a total of 6 days that it drops to freezing temps, then it warms back up. I won't say it's never been down in the 20's here, but I will say it's exceedingly rare.

The good news is that my coop, and chickens are doing fine with all this cold weather. Dh says he's looking at various fasteners, so next year, instead of tarps, I can put up sheets of plywood when needed, and easily remove them when I don't need them. I had considered this option early on, but it really never gets that cold here, or warms back up so quickly that stapling the tarps up was faster, easier, less expensive, and really all that was needed.

 

[speckledhen]

Sounds like having other choices is a good thing, Cheryl, though as you said, not many times they'd be needed.

The coldest early winter I can remember here and I have a broody hen. Maretta spent the night on the nest and she is full-on broody when I have not one single Brahma egg to hatch. I have about a half-dozen eggs from MaryJo sired by Atlas.

As you know, MaryJo, being an Atlas daughter, may be a dwarf gene carrier. This could be a test, though if she and Atlas do not both contribute the gene to any of these chicks, I've only made several possible carriers and still will not really know if she is a carrier or not. If I get a dwarf, then I will be certain she is a carrier and she will be relegated to position of layer-only. But, are 5 or 6 eggs enough to test this? I'm not really sure. If there are no dwarfs, I may still not be certain and have to sell off every chick, dwarf or no dwarf. So, maybe not a great idea to even test MaryJo as a breeder. The ONLY other hen I have that is currently laying and fertile is Thea... wry-tailed Thea.

Geez, Maretta has put me in a bad position. She will be 7 years old in April and this may be her last hurrah. She's raised three broods, if I recall correctly, so is proven and that's not an issue. What would you do? DH is not thrilled at the prospect of dealing with even one broody right now, but again, at least she's experienced and won't need a lot of hand-holding.

SO, what would you do? @1muttsfan what say you on this matter? Anyone else? I'm on the fence.

 

[getaclue]

I would not breed Thea. Wry tail is harder to fix, and you don't want to deteriorate your line like that. I would do 6-8 eggs from MaryJo. That actually should be enough to determine whether she carries the dwarf gene. If she does, you won't be overwhelmed with too many. If not, then you have a good hen to help carry on your line.

BTW, I think they can stop trying to fix global warming now.

 

[speckledhen]

I would not breed Thea. Wry tail is harder to fix, and you don't want to deteriorate your line like that. I would do 6-8 eggs from MaryJo. That actually should be enough to determine whether she carries the dwarf gene. If she does, you won't be overwhelmed with too many. If not, then you have a good hen to help carry on your line.

BTW, I think they can stop trying to fix global warming now.

Oh, I was definitely not going to hatch Thea's eggs, trust me! I just meant she was the only fertile hen laying besides MaryJo, so I have literally only MaryJo's eggs to put under Maretta.

I hope I could figure if MaryJo was a dwarf gene carrier. If not, I could eventually breed her with Hector IF the tyrant would ever accept her. Maybe now, he would since she's laying and may squat for him. MaryJo is a real beauty.

 

[speckledhen]

Just came back from the barn. Maretta was sitting on Wendy's egg and I took it from her because I have less than a dozen eggs in my fridge, plus it isn't fertile anyway. I have six MaryJo eggs. If none are dwarfs, how sure can I be that she is not a carrier? I mean, as you know, to get a dwarf, both Atlas and MaryJo would have to contribute their dwarf gene to that same chick, but they don't pass it every time, so it's dwarf gene roulette. Say Atlas passes it to one chick and MJ doesn't. That makes one carrier. Then, MaryJo passes hers to the next one, but Atlas does not. That makes another carrier. This could possibly do on for all six eggs. Then, I'd still be unsure if MJ carried or not. So, I'm not 100% sure that six eggs is the best sampling, but surely on one, they'd both hit, you'd think.

What concerns me is that Rex, Atlas's sire, obviously had it and one of Rex's daughters had it to produce the other two dwarfs prior to Pooh and Piglet. But, Atlas sired a lot of chicks before I saw a dwarf, though that could be because most of the moms were pure Stukel hens and not his daughters.

ETA: I put all six of MJ's eggs under Maretta and moved her to the back empty 5x8 pen. She may stick or may start pacing, but she was definitely over the edge as of last night.

 

[speckledhen]

She has not moved from her eggs so it's on. Insanity. They're due January 26, tomorrow being Day One since it was afternoon before we gave her the eggs.

 

[Leahs Mom]

I once had a broody hatch on New Year's Eve. She took care of those babies very well. She even took them outside as I was using the little house at the time and I tried to sweep the snow off so they could go outside and at least see some of the ground under them.

They'd let her know when and she'd just drop wherever they were at the time until they wanted to come out again.

I was surprised at how hardy they were and how long they'd stay out from under mom in very cold temps.