The Natural Chicken Keeping thread - OTs welcome!

[countrygirl74]

What a great evening of reading and catching up on here.

Love the videos posted and all the great camaraderie going on today.

It was terribly windy here today!! And after our beautiful 75 degree calm days with all my girls laying - today only 2 out of 5 laid. Temps dropped to 55 and it felt colder with that crazy wind. We lost a portion of our tin roofing on the coop so had to go out and re-secure it. Amazingly enough though, the chickens stayed out in it most of the day. I thought at any moment, I would see one of them blowing past the window. LOL
The babies in the brooder got stir-crazy not getting to go out today. I just didn't have a very protected place to put them outside for the day and it was a little chilly.

 

[gevshiba]

My FF went sour today and I have no idea why. I fed it at 4:30, but when I got home at 8:00, it was slimy and sour smelling. I kept water over it. I'll start over tomorrow. I'll feed them wet feed until I get it going again.

 

[Sally8]

I can't remember who said that they were getting the super blue egg layers but I'm noticing a difference in their combs. 2 have larger 3 rowed combs like the EE and 4 have smaller single rowed combs. Could I have lucked out and have 4 hens? Those 2 with the larger combs run at my hand and peck me when I feed them. It's a good thing I'm after the hens and their eggs.

 

[jendodd79]

The 5.5 week old babies are spending the night in the grow out coop partition tonight. The Houdan and Polish are fully feathered, but the frizzle isn't quite as feathered (so it seems- hard to tell!) Nervous putting the babies out. Today I had them in a little grow out pen in my main coop. The big girls didn't seem bothered with them, so I'm hoping in 6 weeks or so, they will be big enough to integrate easily!

 

[CoopChick719]

Oh boy am I in trouble. Between feeding/watching and chores of "chickenhood" I will never be inside this summer. Today was raining and I still spent time outside. Then when I should be cleaning house I read BDM 'thing' post and all the info it linked to and here it is three hours later!!!! Only been up to stretch and go potty. Knew I was hurting and had to keep getting up (what I thought was every couple seconds) but was surprised to see it was over 3 hours of interesting information!!!!

Now I can blame not cleaning house on her???? LOL

I hear ya BBN! It used to be gardening that kept me outside...and not cleaning house...now it'll be that AND the chickens! It's not even summer and I'm out in the coop or pen watching/feeding/puttering around. Sometimes DH comes to find me!

 

[amberr]

Ok this is by far my favorite thread but man is it busy it's like reading a book every night lol. Now because it is my fav and you guys are so great I am bringing all my "new egg" questions here. Plus I like the natural routes. Is Chicken Health for Dummies a good book? What book would you recommend as the one and only book to have? :/

 

[amberr]

Woohoo just moved up I'm now "just hatched" no longer a "new egg"! Sorry had to share

 

[Leahs Mom]

Woohoo just moved up I'm now "just hatched" no longer a "new egg"! Sorry had to share

Ha ha!!!

I don't know about the dummies book, but my favorite book is The Small Scale Poultry Flock by Harvey Ussery. Natural in approach and lots of good info. Web site has a lot of the contents of the book in the articles at the bottom of this page. http://www.themodernhomestead.us/article/Poultry.html

 

[aoxa]

I can't remember who said that they were getting the super blue egg layers but I'm noticing a difference in their combs. 2 have larger 3 rowed combs like the EE and 4 have smaller single rowed combs. Could I have lucked out and have 4 hens? Those 2 with the larger combs run at my hand and peck me when I feed them. It's a good thing I'm after the hens and their eggs.

The one in the first and to the right of the second are boys.

Super blue layers would be considered EEs

 

[jlynnet]

I gave up on my hatching eggs. Only 2 had developed. I'm thinking they died the last few days, maybe when one of the kids knocked the table really hard and everything got moved around. So sad but I'm willing to try again.