The Natural Chicken Keeping thread - OTs welcome!

[Leahs Mom]

And the Swedes


Gray






Orange







Rooster Boy

 

[dcba flock]

And the Swedes Gray Orange Rooster Boy

Beautiful birds love the 1st one amazing color!

 

[SallyinIndiana]

Thought I'd share that there's a new HINGED treat ball out. Just saw it today.

http://www.treatsforchickens.com/hinged-treat-ball/

It looked so cute that I got one a while back. my chickens did not care for it. In fact they ignored it even.

 

[jlynnet]

BDM, I hope your little one gets better very soon! Hospitals are no fun to be in and I work in one! My chicks are really growing fast. The darn rain needs to stop so we can get building.

Vicki and Justine the new chicks are so cute! Great hatching!

LM I hope some of SFH are as beautiful as yours are.

 

[Bulldogma]

LM - Looks like Little Black lost all her white. Hope you can find out what she is! She's pretty even if she isn't a SFH. The others are growing up so beautifully!

armorfirelady: Thank you for the well-wishes for my little one. We are hoping they'll release her tomorrow. Totally NOT looking forward to all the equipment cluttering up the house, though! The oxygen machine is the size of a large suitcase and noisy as a diesel truck and the "PulseOx" which measures her O2 sats just means more wires on a kid who really doesn't like being "tied down."

She wore them for a while last year and did OK, but hit her limit when the docs wanted her to wear a C-PAP at night. We had better luck getting the cat to wear it than our kid! (The cat... yeah... it was an "example" thing... )

 

[brandislee]

I just wanted to say I liked your blog.. nice.. we sing in the same choir.. ; )

Thanks! I'm super sporadic about posting, sometimes I just feel like I have nothing to say, or I get frustrated that I spend that much time and effort putting that info out there and no one is reading, or they're reading and just thinking I'm CUCKOO!

 

[BlueMouse]

Mumsy, Your potager garden is just lovely. I hope mine looks half as nice in a few years once it's settled in!

Aoxa, Henry is the cutest dog ever. Just look at those feet! he may be growing quick, but you're so talented with a camera, you'll have lots of lovely photos to remember all his "stages" Some of them (with dogs and kids....) are much cuter in retrospect! I'm thinking particularly of the stage that my blue heeler went through where he took zippers out of everything he could find. He would also chew the hems off pants.....

The older chicks are going out free ranging every day that it's over 40 now. I have them in the kid's fenced play area. I ended up trimming the leghorn's wings because she kept flying over the 48 inch fence

I just trimmed her wings like I trim my parrots, and now she can do "flap assisted running" just fine, but not get enough lift to get over the fence. HAH. I'm worried that the production red is going to turn out to be a rooster though. it has a much redder comb than the other two, and has spur buds. Hoping that it's actually a pullet and I'm just confused!

Tomorrow we're all going out to the local poultry swap, which is always fun. It's a good group of people. I have an EE chick on hold, and may pick up a few more. I would like to get a couple POL hens as well, so we have a few more eggs now, as well as the ones that will be laying in september. I'm going to take a calculated risk because I do not have the facilities for quarantine. This is the last time I'll do it though. This summer as part of the rebuild the garage (A tree went through it in the flood...) I'm going to have my husband build me in some quarantine cages for new birds, or sick birds. I've been inspired by Mumsy's cabinet style grow out pens, especially nice with the built in heat lamp up top. I'm thinking pegboard sides, with a hardware cloth front, and wired in heat lamps like mumsy has. Should be useful for a number of things. DH will probably want to build a micro computer to read temperatures and turn the heat lamps on/off though....

 

[brandislee]

General guide is start at 85-90 under the lamp and reduce heat by 5 degrees a week. I do it MUCH faster like a broody momma does. I have 3 week old chicks outside with a lamp that heats to about 50 degrees under it. They only go under it at night or if it is real cold out, like today(started at freezing)

I do the same- outside with a heat lamp, depending on the outside temp, sometime between 2 and 3 weeks (well, my very first chicks I didn't do that, but I was a nervous first timer- those spoiled babies still had a heat lamp when they were like 9 weeks old!). They feather out so much faster when you do it quick!

I also don't actually monitor the temp inside the brooder. My brooder is in a drafty old uninsulated shed, although the sides of the actual brooder are solid to keep drafts out, and it's been in the 20's here. Because I wasn't thinking about 1 thing when I built my brooder (which is 18 inches deep and covered by hardware cloth) the heat lamp has to go inside, so I put it in one corner, which is REALLY close to the birds (no they don't burn themselves), so I know it's probably warmer than ideal right in the middle of the light, but there's plenty of room for them to get away from the light. Later when it's warmer out (hopefully!) and they're older I'll move the lamp to the top of the hardware cloth.

Anyway, my point to that ramble is you don't need to monitor the temp, you just need to watch the chicks. If they're huddling under the light and cheeping a lot, they're too cold. If they're panting and huddling away from the light they're too hot.

 

[Leahs Mom]

Quote:
When I first used my treat ball they didn't pay attention either (it was summer time).

But... I got it for winter when they would not go out as much and when there wouldn't be anything green outside. In the winter I started putting in lard cakes and kale and they ATTACKED it. It was a great way to feed items like Kale, cilantro, etc. as they can rip off pieces like they would if it were growing outside. In the winter they would empty the balls in less than 10 min.

 

[Pozees]

And the Swedes


Gray






Orange







Rooster Boy

These are so pretty! So, will Roo x Grey = Orange?