The Natural Chicken Keeping thread - OTs welcome!

[Mumsy]

So sorry about your loss, he sure was special. Do you have any of his eggs in your incubator now? Hopefully yes and you can see his offspring.

Thank you. Good news is always tempered with bad it seems. Such is life.

Unfortunately, this Lavender cockerel was not old enough to breed yet. He hadn't even started to crow. He was a valuable bird. Well bred, show and breeding quality Catdance Lavender birds are hard to come by. I have one Lavender chick left. The little pullet. I will need to drive to Karen Karson's farm and pick up eggs soon and start all over. It is fortunate for me that this source is four hours drive away. (plus ferry trip)

 

[aoxa]

Hubby has been keeping things from me. Apparently There is one HRIR missing presumed dead and he found the corpse of another HRIR at the back of the barn. He thinks that a hawk got it . I know it comes with free ranging but it still makes me sad.

Oh no

Did I mention that one of your girls you gave me MAY be a boy? I think she is a he.. Seems like pointy saddle feathers are coming in. Comb is still very small. :/

Have just enough time to come on this morning and share my good news. I set a dozen and a half White Silkie eggs eight days ago. Covered by my Catdance cockerel. The two Catdance pullets have been laying again and one Sheryl Butler pullet is laying. These girls got good bum trims as did the roo. The three have tried to brood a couple times but they are bad at it. They all want the same nest. Eggs get strewn all over the place. Judy the Broody hatched one beautiful little white female. So the Genesis is in full swing. . Well....Back to the good news! Did the first candle at eight days and 100% fertile and growing embryos! Never had 100% in Silkie eggs EVER!

I think my FF and them free ranging has a lot to do with it.

Don't candle anymore Mumsy. These high quality ones do not take well to candling. I've had 100% fertility and still ended up with 50% hatched. I still can't figure out why, but candling less seems to help them get to term.

 

[RedRidge]

I sure wish there was a magic way to know about the sex of HRIR chicks because getting eight females and fourteen males after waiting four months to know for sure has been hard. I really can sex Silkies much much earlier. Go figure.

Now you know the reason for my interest in Rhodebars.
I love my HRIR, but the Rhodebars fascinate me. They are basically RIR with "proper" barring (meaning the girls are single barred and the boys are double) who are a true autosexed bird.
I love them!

 

[aoxa]

Now you know the reason for my interest in Rhodebars.
I love my HRIR, but the Rhodebars fascinate me. They are basically RIR with "proper" barring (meaning the girls are single barred and the boys are double) who are a true autosexed bird.
I love them!

So are the Barred Plymouth Rocks

I think with every breed I have tried, and I have tried a lot, the Barred Plymouth Rock will always be my favourite. They are such amazing dual purpose birds. Great egg size and frequency, Amazing temperament, food conversion is the best I've had for the size, and they are a classic heritage bird.

I like the Rhode Island Reds as well of course, but the Barred Rock still beats them in my book

My young HRIR eat more than my grown HPBR!

 

[RedRidge]

Quote: Research is WISE when thinking about this breed. You want to make sure you have "brown" eggs... not green. You want to make sure they come from a double barred sire and a single barred dam.
There are some strains being "billed" as rhodebars that there are too many rumors about... suspecting some other breed involved. It's all rather a grey area, so just be sure you know what you're getting.

Mine came from a guy who purchase the pullet and cockerel directly from Greenfire quite a while back. There are rumors of some green eggs recently from Greenfire also. This is NOT an attempt to start rumors... I hate rumors... I am just trying to help. I don't know any more than anyone else, other than the fact that my eggs were brown, and all 7 chicks were easily autosexed.

Now... that said... I only got one pullet. If you are interested in putting a Rhodebar cockerel over a nice RIR hen (which is what I am doing), then the Rhodebars will really begin to improve in type and structure. F1's need to be culled carefully... many culled, some used to breed back... definite genetics involved here. And the F1's are not Rhodebars, but they can potentially be used to produce RB if bred correctly... and so on...

I am keeping two cockerels of the 6 I have... I will be selling the remaining 4 if you are interested in one. I have photographed and banded them since day 1 to be able to track how their coloring changes from hatching on. It really is fascinating if you're into that sort of thing... which I am I guess.

There is a great RB thread here on BYC... I recommend reading it if you have an interest in learning more.

 

[Alibabe]

Thank you. Good news is always tempered with bad it seems. Such is life.

Unfortunately, this Lavender cockerel was not old enough to breed yet. He hadn't even started to crow. He was a valuable bird. Well bred, show and breeding quality Catdance Lavender birds are hard to come by. I have one Lavender chick left. The little pullet. I will need to drive to Karen Karson's farm and pick up eggs soon and start all over. It is fortunate for me that this source is four hours drive away. (plus ferry trip)

How sad for you. Hopefully you can get some eggs from Karen and hatch a replacement. I use 'replacement' not to belittle your loss... I hope you know what I mean!
Good luck

 

[chooks4life]

Their rato is 2:1 (intake two times what they weigh at slaughter roughly)> You wouldn't get that out of a DP bird.. Also the DP roosters have to be slow cooked.

If when you say 'DP' you mean Dual Purpose, then you've got a bad strain. Dual Purpose is not supposed to mean a layer breed you cull and eat, it's supposed to mean a breed that is both good laying and good eating.

I select my breeders for DP usage and only 3-year-old-and-older purebred-crossed roosters were ever tough enough to need slow cooking. A little bit of silkie genes mixed throughout the large fowl genes makes them tender at any age, no matter the gender. Also makes them easy fleshing, incredibly feed efficient, great foragers, hardy, etc.

But I do observe that the silkies people have in America seem more often than not a complete contradiction of everything I just associated with my silkie mongrels, and I accept that meaties in America may also be a complete contradiction of everything we condemn them for around here. Nobody I know ever keeps meaties a second time.

Mongrels beat the feed conversion ratios of all layer and meaty breeds I have any experience with, though I don't have experience with them all. But I'm not interested at this point in purebreds. Too inbred on average, round here. I have not been impressed with a single purebred I've ever had, nor their first or second crosses.

Speaking of conversing with our chickens, Bob has taken up a new hobby: getting the roosters to talk to him. For a man who didn't want me to have any ("they're too noisy and mean"), he has certainly come a long way. The other night when I came home, he followed me out to the coop (unusual) and said, "Watch this!" He buck-buck-bagawed at the Silkie cock, who instantly repeated it back to him. Later he went out to the other runs with me, where the Fayoumis did the same thing. The Fayoumi boys are happy to crow about anything, and I've been waiting for him to tell me they should go because they're too noisy, and here he was encouraging them to crow! He likes how male they look too, which again amazes me. hu.gif I'll take it

NOOO! ... lol, sorry, but I strongly advise against this, you will likely end up with hysterical screamers making endless noise. It's one thing to calmly communicate their 'happy noises', but repeating the alarm calls can get out of control.

Once you get a chook to make loud noise in response to human voices, it escalates, I have had to cull both turkeys and chickens for becoming habitually hysterical. My little siblings liked to 'bok-bagark' at chooks and 'gobbly-bobble' and the turkey toms, and in short order I had chooks that began screaming at the slightest sound of a human voice being raised above a whisper, when they'd always been fine with even shouting; with the turkey toms you could not have a normal conversation within hearing range of them, because they would gobble NON STOP. The paddock and yard became deafening day in, day out, until I culled the birds over-reacting.

Before, 'bok-bagarking' signalled either an egg being laid (rarely made for that) or predators attacking. Before, gobbling only occurred when a noise above average decibels was made. It became insane in short order. Some chooks like to keep the whole flock screaming, and once it's trained to do so, they will set it off every time it settles. You can have non stop noise all day every day, anxious chickens, and aggressive turkeys. Bad! (Once a turkey tom or chooks perceives you're making a reply to its noise, it will often reply in kind; it's not uncommon, and in the case of a tom they will likely then view you as a tom).

The noise your husband is provoking them to make is a compulsive reaction for some chooks, and once you get the noisy ones to go off like that, they can just start setting the whole flock off, over, and over, and over, again, until culled. I have found the only way to stop them once the behaviour is ingrained is to kill them. Silkie/banty mixes and layers were the worst for making raucous, endless 'panic' noises over nothing whatsoever.

These high quality ones do not take well to candling. I've had 100% fertility and still ended up with 50% hatched. I still can't figure out why, but candling less seems to help them get to term.

Makes me wonder how they can be 'high quality' --- looks alone do not equal high quality in my book. But I have an idea why they might have such high mortality: weak membrane structures in the eggs. Maybe what other eggs cope with is fatal to them because they can't take the usual movements an egg experiences when brooded, since a brooding hen also turns the eggs as she gets on and off the nest and shifts.

 

[aoxa]

If when you say 'DP' you mean Dual Purpose, then you've got a bad strain. Dual Purpose is not supposed to mean a layer breed you cull and eat, it's supposed to mean a breed that is both good laying and good eating.

I select my breeders for DP usage and only 3-year-old-and-older purebred-crossed roosters were ever tough enough to need slow cooking. A little bit of silkie genes mixed throughout the large fowl genes makes them tender at any age, no matter the gender. Also makes them easy fleshing, incredibly feed efficient, great foragers, hardy, etc.

But I do observe that the silkies people have in America seem more often than not a complete contradiction of everything I just associated with my silkie mongrels, and I accept that meaties in America may also be a complete contradiction of everything we condemn them for around here. Nobody I know ever keeps meaties a second time.

Mongrels beat the feed conversion ratios of all layer and meaty breeds I have any experience with, though I don't have experience with them all. But I'm not interested at this point in purebreds. Too inbred on average, round here. I have not been impressed with a single purebred I've ever had, nor their first or second crosses.
NOOO! ... lol, sorry, but I strongly advise against this, you will likely end up with hysterical screamers making endless noise. It's one thing to calmly communicate their 'happy noises', but repeating the alarm calls can get out of control.

Once you get a chook to make loud noise in response to human voices, it escalates, I have had to cull both turkeys and chickens for becoming habitually hysterical. My little siblings liked to 'bok-bagark' at chooks and 'gobbly-bobble' and the turkey toms, and in short order I had chooks that began screaming at the slightest sound of a human voice being raised above a whisper, when they'd always been fine with even shouting; with the turkey toms you could not have a normal conversation within hearing range of them, because they would gobble NON STOP. The paddock and yard became deafening day in, day out, until I culled the birds over-reacting.

Before, 'bok-bagarking' signalled either an egg being laid (rarely made for that) or predators attacking. Before, gobbling only occurred when a noise above average decibels was made. It became insane in short order. Some chooks like to keep the whole flock screaming, and once it's trained to do so, they will set it off every time it settles. You can have non stop noise all day every day, anxious chickens, and aggressive turkeys. Bad! (Once a turkey tom or chooks perceives you're making a reply to its noise, it will often reply in kind; it's not uncommon, and in the case of a tom they will likely then view you as a tom).

The noise your husband is provoking them to make is a compulsive reaction for some chooks, and once you get the noisy ones to go off like that, they can just start setting the whole flock off, over, and over, and over, again, until culled. I have found the only way to stop them once the behaviour is ingrained is to kill them. Silkie/banty mixes and layers were the worst for making raucous, endless 'panic' noises over nothing whatsoever.
Makes me wonder how they can be 'high quality' --- looks alone do not equal high quality in my book. But I have an idea why they might have such high mortality: weak membrane structures in the eggs. Maybe what other eggs cope with is fatal to them because they can't take the usual movements an egg experiences when brooded, since a brooding hen also turns the eggs as she gets on and off the nest and shifts.

Once they hatch, they live.

Good show silkies are hard to hatch. Probably due to the very large vaulted skulls. My silkies lay really well, and are very thrifty - but to hatch a SQ silkie is not as easy as a non-SQ silkie.

The silkies you keep where you are in Australia are a totally different bird.

Also, yes I meant DP as in eggs and meat. I can not stomach a DP bird that is not slow cooked. It tastes like tough leather.

To each their own. Almost everyone I read from in the meat bird section describes how much better conversion ratio meat bids are.

 

[AlmaB]

Hi, I'm new to chickens and ducks but I'm totally enjoying raising them now! I'm so happy to share with you my backyard flock and the non-feathered helpers (dogs)

Ginger, one of my two Olive Eggers

Mathilda, our other Olive Egger

Jazzy Barred Rock

Sunny, Buff Orpington

Pasty Buff Orpington

Candy, Lavender Orpington

Chick, Easter Egger

Dixie, Easter Egger

Coco, Chocolate Runner

Fuffy, Golden 300

Lucky, Cayuga duck

Buffy, Buff duck

Lola, Boston Terrier

Wendy, Chocolate Lab

Rocky, Maltipo

[/IMG]
Hens house

Flocks Run with Hen's house enclosed.

 

[aoxa]

Hi, I'm new to chickens and ducks but I'm totally enjoying raising them now! I'm so happy to share with you my backyard flock and the non-feathered helpers (dogs)

Beautiful birds and really great photos! Your dogs are adorable!