The Natural Chicken Keeping thread - OTs welcome!

[aoxa]

That is hard to do when you do it for others for a living. I looked at your website..very nicely done. You are pretty creative in every thing you do.

You are so sweet

I've been working at it quite hard. We already have 41 likes on our FB page that we created on Friday.

Going well! I have like 150 chicks on order already. My head is spinning, and I need to build those breeding pens!!

@_@

My nephew's here today too. Talk about distraction lol.

 

[delisha]

Quote: At your prices I would imagine your bator will be full all the time. Talk about busy..time to start to fill it up. You need to add duck and goose eggs on your site. You need more Muscovys too.

 

[Mumsy]

Well, please report any finding about a relationship you might find with FF and fertility.
Aoxa has improvement on Female to male percentages, and I have also. It seems we now get more female chicks from hens that are on FF. It is early yet, only a year. We need mre information from others who hatch when hens are on FF.

My incubuator is set with fourteen eggs. First eggs from my flock that have been on FF for over two months now. I will make sure to post the results here to add to the information pool. Pullet eggs X a two year old virgin roo.

 

[aoxa]

At your prices I would imagine your bator will be full all the time. Talk about busy..time to start to fill it up. You need to add duck and goose eggs on your site. You need more Muscovys too.

I won't be selling goose eggs, as I would be ticked if someone else hatched better birds than me. I still owe a gander to someone, and I need to get a couple more girls out of it. But I will sell duck eggs. Though Calls are really terrible layers

And I would love a muscovy drake, but they are big, and I'm afraid they would interbreed my chickens (it's happened to me before!) That's why the male duck I keep is a call. He's too small to mount my hens.

I do have someone I'm going to trade call duck eggs for muscovy eggs.

Does your drake bother your hens?

 

[RosecombRIR]

I'd like to add ACV to my new chicks water. How much should I use?

 

[delisha]

Quote: No, he has more than enough of his own hens to keep him busy. The chickens beat him up, he only loves the baby chicks. My chickens are mean to the ducks. But these ducks were chicks here and beat up all there lives by the chickens so they pretty much leave them alone. My drake is getting old. I do not even remember how old he is. I need to think about replacing him this year. I don't want to. He is such a good drake.

 

[delisha]

I'd like to add ACV to my new chicks water. How much should I use?

I have the little waterer and I add one cap of ACV.

 

[delisha]

Quote: My bator has 40 eggs..all shipped but two. I sure hope I have a good hatch.
One shipment I added a heat pack, one I did not. I want to know what works best.
The air cells look pretty good.

 

[Mumsy]

My bator has 40 eggs..all shipped but two. I sure hope I have a good hatch.
One shipment I added a heat pack, one I did not. I want to know what works best.
The air cells look pretty good.

Do you mean you can add the heat pack when you ordered the eggs? This is an added charge? This is interesting information. I would like to know about how that works out too.
I wrote the date, intials of hen, and x and o on each of my eggs with a wax crayon. My poor eyesight makes it impossible for me to read pencil through the bator windows and I need reading glasses to read it with the egg in my hand.

The probe in the homemade water weasel is reading a steady 100 degrees and the reptile cage gauge is registering 99.5. This is a dry run. I have added no moisture at all. The 30% humidity comes from the house humidity. The bator is sitting in a cardboard box. Ph = Phoebe and E = Edith. Date they were laid as well. I only collected eggs for seven days and kept them in a unheated dark closet in the house with a temp of 58 degrees.

 

[countrygirl74]

In relation to the feeders for ff, I have been using glass casserole dishes as that's all I had on hand. I had the regular chicken feeders for dry feed but not sure those would work very well with ff... anybody have experience with those. they are the plastic feeders with the red tray on the bottom, also suitable for hanging. Also, how often do you clean your feeders when using ff??? I gave the first ff to my ducks this morning and they were less than impressed... waiting to see if they will eventually take a liking to it. Chickens seem fine.