The Heritage Rhode Island Red Site

[immyjay54]

What size diapers do they wear at that age Jim??HAHA They are really dark nice looking chicks.

1/4 inch square piece of paper towel and scotch tape. After first use, the tape sticks pretty good to the bare skin. Oh my gosh, that's not even nice. See what you guys get me into. lol

 

[sgribble]

1/4 inch square piece of paper towel and scotch tape. After first use, the tape sticks pretty good to the bare skin. Oh my gosh, that's not even nice. See what you guys get me into. lol

Hey you started this yourself......and you really went over the cliff with the red express.lol

 

[monnie662]

LOL. Actually, been kicking around the idea of local chicken delivery hubs. Like UPS but just for birds, or maybe other small animals. My hubby and I ran teams for a crazy 6mos years ago, so I know the distance that can be covered with multiple stops in one day's travel. As expensive as it is to ship, what if you knew the 'carrier' actually gave a hootenany about your birds? It's probably years out as an idea, but it really bothers me when people say how few eggs hatched, or how few chicks survived. Ridiculous.

After I read the thread last night, I was thinking , the animal shelters get together and send dogs and cats to areas that do not have many adoptable animals why couldn't different HRIR fanciers network and do the same thing and get their birds safely to who wants them so I am not the only one thinking about it.

 

[monnie662]

I will be at both shows if nothing happens.....so I might be able to deliver you one to florida

 

[AletaG]

In all seriousness, I'm surprised that there isn't someone that jumped onto this. When I showed horses, there are a few companies that will deliver them. I was very impressed when I had a horse delivered from Texas to Pa. Price really wasn't that bad either compared to what it would have cost me to make the trip myself. They would schedule enough where they had 4 or 5 horses and pulled a 6 horse trailer and did a fine job. I think this would be great and you figure if we had a vehicle that wasn't hard on gas, it doesn't seem like this would be such a hard thing. The breeders in different states would have to get together and set up hatching times and the chicks might be a few more days old when they arrived at buyers but Heck, they would be taken care of better on the trip. lol Who knows, maybe I'll check into this a little deeper. ha,ha,ha Like I don't have enough on my plate right now. It might be kind of nice to get to see the country.
Jim

After I read the thread last night, I was thinking , the animal shelters get together and send dogs and cats to areas that do not have many adoptable animals why couldn't different HRIR fanciers network and do the same thing and get their birds safely to who wants them so I am not the only one thinking about it.

Things that I haven't been able to work out are 1. insurance? What if someones 300$ pair of breeders don't make it - like the AC dies or something and heat exhaustion happens? 2. Crossing state lines - that whole import/export thing. 3. licensing as a courier... (WA state is so weird)
I don't have the time or energy to start the whole thing, but I sure wouldn't mind being a driver once in a while. Can fit an awful lot of chicks/eggs in the back of a Scion XB with the back seat folded flat. And if the routes are done so any one person drives no more than 250miles one way, and any stock going further gets swapped out to a different driver/car, then you don't have birds sitting while someone sleeps. Would be nice if it was all a once-a week kind of thing, since it wouldn't matter how old the chicks were, and egg collection, etc. could be planned according to when things get picked up in your area. Heck, I've even got a wine cooler that could carry eggs at 55 or 60F.
Ok, gotta do dishes, and finish sanitizing my incubator. Not a darn thing hatched. Oh, well.

 

[lualshannon]

Well, I did it again. lol I am hoping that there are enough little pullets in here that I can build up my little flock of RC's. These are out of the Underwood RC's that I've been showing pictures of. I know there only babies BUT they are mine and I love them. ha,ha Quit laughing sgribble. We all know how quick things can happen to our birds and with only the 5 RC I'm glad I have these coming on. I offered them to a couple of folks that were on waiting list but they didn't or couldn't take them right now and I am really happy that they didn't. [COLOR=B42000] [/COLOR]

They are beautiful babies! I hope each and every one grows up to make your dreams come true.. Lual

 

[immyjay54]

They are beautiful babies! I hope each and every one grows up to make your dreams come true..

Lual

Thank you so much. If running, jumping, eating, drinking and most of all pooping means they will make it, I have no worries. At this point in their life they are sure healthy and I am sure happy. lol A couple of them are almost black. I am so glad that I found this line a couple of years ago.
Jim

 

[Robert Blosl]

hatcher I built a few years ago forced fan on ceailing old parts
cheap incubator worked great.



chart for inbreeding back to sire or dam



see width of back on this male.

When you get to your first year of razing R I Reds you got to think about how you are going to mate your young birds that you have chosen as breeders for that year.
Let’s say we have just one breeding pen. We have two nice pullets they have great type and color good head points over the other females and vigorous layers and just that great all around red personally.
You then mate these two pullets back to their sire who now is a cock bird of 18 months or maybe more. These eggs will be marked say pen one and when the eggs are hatched in the Hatcher you may not have any toe punch on these birds as in your system they chicks without toe punches will always be pen one. As these chicks grow older during the year you may put leg bands on them with a color that you have chosen like red as I have done for years. Next we have the female from this started pair and we find a wonderful cockerel that has type like his sire, legs dead center, hopefully he has width of back like a two eight even from the mid back to the oil gland with no taper. He should be of good rich color nice beetle green tail and will produce nice chicks again the next year. The eggs from this mating will be put into a Hatcher if we have one or in the bottom of our big wooden incubator in a plastic basket that we bought at wall Mart. They are white and have little square holes in them you can put office supplies in them or used in the kitchen. I put cut panty hose over the top of the baskets to keep the chicks from getting out after they hatch. The number of eggs per basket can differ but I put in the eggs and leave on egg for them to have room to get out and wiggle around till I open up the Hatcher to put them in the brooder. These chicks will have a toe punch hole on the right inner toe and then latter I have a white leg band on their legs as they grow older to show me they are pen two chicks. If I have a a second pair then it would be the same but we will have pen three color of bands will be blue then the fourth pen would be color green in color.
Now we have the mating for year one and for year two we can repeat the best daughters back to the sire and dam again on each pair like we did or go to another method of line breeding which could be the rotational which I have a article on my web site or whatever we wish to do. But for simplicity for year one we are going to do this method for this lesson so if you want to deviate from this you can.
Again we started out with two pairs but you could do this with one pair. Most important issue is to keep it simple keep good records of your mating and work real hard not to let your birds die do to stupidity as I have over the years. Give them good fresh food free from molding, fresh water, and greens if you have them during the winter and I like to give them cod liver oil and wheat germ coated feed every other day to aid in fertility. Try to improve each of your hatches and keep your incubator as clean as possible. That is why having a hatcher and cleaning after every hatch keeps infection down on the chicks and maybe defect of a good chick that may have been a great bird but due to poor husbandry the chick never develops because of dirty incubators.
If you have any questions ask latter on this thread. Others sure can answer them as after three years you get very good at these simple methods that I have just described.
I got a message yesterday from a fellow who has a great thee year old cock bird but lost his females to raccoons. He needs a female to keep this old line going which is my old line. I am going to get a female from Matt 1616 and bring her to my farm and get this male from him and mate her to him then hatch the chicks for him and have a friend drive near his home this spring and he can raise them up and then next year mate the best two or three pullets to this grand old male and then the best ckl to one or two of the pullets from this mating. Then I will take the female I borrowed back to Matt for future breeding.
He then wil have to follow a line breeding method with the old cock bird his decedents or we can get another female unrelated to these birds or the female that I used for year two and continue a year two line breeding system. He is not going to show his birds but just likes to have them run around his yard but he is limited to numbers due to his small layout and pens in home in Louisiana.

 

[SallyinIndiana]

Some pictures. The younger birds are only 20 weeks so not much to look at. The last is a blur as my chickens are terrified of the camera.



The chicken area ant the back yard are a little bit of a mess right now as we have had some strong winds and little rain to make my grass green.

 

[CityHen-Indy]

There's rain coming thru Indy tonight. My yard needs water desperately. Some of my hens seem to actually like my camera...