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

[1muttsfan]

Maybe you should use a different letter for each generation, easy to mix all those names up!

 

[speckledhen]

Yes if Athena is same generation as Apollo then they would both be F3 and chicks would be F4

Athena is only 2 weeks older than Apollo and Zara-those latter two were raised by Ida and Athena was raised by Wynette with all those brothers I sold. So, they were incubating at the same time. Ida just happens to be Apollo and Zara's biological mother and I think Athena is either Wynette's or Lizzie's, not really sure.

 

[GingersHuman]

Incubating some of Hector's offspring and selling him and Apollo sounds like a good idea. You'll have cockerels from each most certainly, and a few months break from so much attitude and drama!

 

[speckledhen]

Incubating some of Hector's offspring and selling him and Apollo sounds like a good idea. You'll have cockerels from each most certainly, and a few months break from so much attitude and drama!

Drama-free sounds great about now. But, I'd have to collect eggs from Hector's two breed-able girls (Jill and Ro) and then a broody would have to pop up to incubate them. Too funny thinking of tiny Carly, who only weighs about 17 ounces, sitting on one of Ro's jumbo eggs, though! Jill's are much smaller, though getting larger now, at last.

 

[GingersHuman]

I use one of my tiny OEGB's as my broody. She thinks nothing of it when her babies outgrow her at 6 weeks. I say she thinks, "I grow the biggest babies!"

 

[speckledhen]

I use one of my tiny OEGB's as my broody. She thinks nothing of it when her babies outgrow her at 6 weeks. I say she thinks, "I grow the biggest babies!"

Yeah, she probably thinks she's really a bad-girl! My D'Anvers have hatched LF Barred Rocks before and raised them in the coop, but Ro's egg is much larger than most of those they had at the time. Spike is a good daddy, but when they start to outgrow him about 8 weeks old, he gets all stressed and runs around figuratively wringing his hands and complaining in that old Olive Oyl voice, 'Ohhhh, ohhhh!'. He doesn't care for those monster barred chicks, LOL.



ETA: On a more somber note, poor old June, my 9 year old EE hen who has had issues over the past year with eggs breaking inside her, etc, has very labored breathing. She is clear eyed and all that, but you hear every breath, as if it takes so much out of her. She may just be passing on soon. But, she's in the house in a pet carrier where she is warm and I even misted her with some Oxine-laced vaporizer water a few times. She sounds just like my Ameraucana hen, Nora, did years ago when she came into lay after a very long hiatus and either she strained very hard and blew an air sac or she got a piece of straw stuck in her windpipe. She was perfectly fine the next day, but she was not as old as June. She did have soft shell issues, no matter how much calcium she ate and took super long breaks from laying at times. June's had a tough last year.

 

[Wyatt0224]

Poor old girl. I hope she feels better soon.

 

[speckledhen]

Poor old girl. I hope she feels better soon.

Thanks, me, too. Folks would think I'd had quite a lot of issues lately, but then, most don't have this many elderly hens. At a certain point, you being to lose them in groups or one at a time close together.

On a brighter note, my oldest living hen, Amanda, laid an egg this month, yet again. She's been laying the last four months straight, I think she's up to 15 eggs since the first few days of November. What a gal! She'll be 10 in mid-March.

 

[speckledhen]

June sounds somewhat better this morning. Her crop is functioning properly and she has an appetite. I think breathing like that wore her out overnight. At some point, I did not hear her anymore over the baby monitor and I knew she either was working out whatever was in her throat or she had passed away. But, she is breathing with less noise today so maybe it worked its way down or out or whatever. It sounded like breathing over a reed like on a wind instrument, if you know what I mean, not gurgling or anything like pneumonia, but just a throat/windpipe obstruction. If it was an air sac, there is really nothing anyone could do for her except hope it self-fixes. But for now, she seems to be improving. Yet, she is a very old hen who has had egg difficulties this past year so she could still succumb due to the stress of the last two days, I suppose.

 

[1muttsfan]

Good to hear - sometimes just some low-stress good nursing is all that is needed.