The Natural Chicken Keeping thread - OTs welcome!

[stonykill]

Somehow I just can't see Mr. Stonykill batting his eyelashes and squealing "OH! It's so cute!!" LOL!

Stony - hope you know how well you and your input are loved on this thread! We're not a ribbons and bows thread... we're a torn denim and old boot leather thread... and we're going to stay that way. Gotta keep it real.

I am not the only one who has been here since the beginning and has commented on what I said yesterday. It has been said before. Even you have said it, or at least stopped the behavior. Simply put I just plain don't have time for it.

 

[aoxa]

anytime between 4 and 10 weeks old. My big broody baby gives me a faint quack once in a while. The Khaki Campbells are 8 ish weeks old and both quack and squeek.

I have and it isn't really that much different. Plucking is rougher but made easier if you add a little Dawn to the hot water. Helps cut threw the natural oils.

Thanks!

Pekin X will be 6 weeks old on Friday. It is bigger than a full grown Khaki Campbell now. Hopefully soon we will hear quacking.

 

[stonykill]

x2. And I'm sorry to anyone this offends, but all the OMG CUTE! posts annoy me a little. They're easy enough to just skip, so no one should feel like they need to stop posting them on my account (although really, do we have to quote them 50 times? Especially the ones with 10 pictures?). But we need people like you here to balance it out!

I have commented SO MANY TIMES about the repost repost repost repost repost repost repost repost repost of pictures. Makes my eyes bleed and I just skip to the end and don't read. Here is the thing and Del has said it as well. WHY must every other response , which is normally OPINION get challenged ? SMH......

 

[stonykill]

That sounded really catty... don't worry, I do like to see pictures. I've had a rough couple days (my dog is really sick...) and I'm getting kind of snippy. My apologies.

it did not at all. It sounded honest to me

 

[SallyinIndiana]

Delisha next summer I plan to get more meat birds and not from the hatchery if possible. I will keep you in mind.

 

[lalaland]

I'm sorry to hear that. The quoting a lot of pictures also irks me. One or two is fine. But when you get into the very long quoting of so many pictures at once, it's hard to read between them.

Maybe it is time for a reminder on how we can reply to posts with a lot of texts or a lot of pictures!

If you are quoting a post with more than one pic, try this:
click on quote
this brings up the box with the quote and all the pics.
Click on each picture and hit delete.
If you must leave a pic, choose just one pic and leave it. Your choice to leave all the pics, but....it can make it harder for everyone else to get through the many many posts each day on this thread.
You can make the pic smaller!
Erase/delete text that you don't need - sometimes you are replying just to one or two sentences, or a particular paragraph, and you can get rid of the rest

Editing the "quotes" makes it easier for everyone!

just a suggestion! love how active this thread is and everyone's posting on it is wonderful.

 

[brandislee]

Since I did 14-16 week old sexing tips on the EEs, here are some earlier indicator illustrations I just put together:





Hope this helps at least a little for those of you with young Easter Eggers.

Sorry this doesn't help those of you with solid white EEs. Go with the combs and thickness of legs. You won't be sure until week 5-8 at least with solid coloured EEs. Sometimes later, sometimes earlier depending on the individual bird.

Thanks, these pictures are really super helpful... I should be able to tell more with mine in a week or so. Only my rooster is solid white.

 

[Bulldogma]

New thing up! See the link in my signature (the part with a similar name to this thread).

Love the photos, Aoxa!

 

[brandislee]

Maybe it is time for a reminder on how we can reply to posts with a lot of texts or a lot of pictures!

If you are quoting a post with more than one pic, try this:
click on quote
this brings up the box with the quote and all the pics.
Click on each picture and hit delete.
If you must leave a pic, choose just one pic and leave it. Your choice to leave all the pics, but....it can make it harder for everyone else to get through the many many posts each day on this thread.
You can make the pic smaller!
Erase/delete text that you don't need - sometimes you are replying just to one or two sentences, or a particular paragraph, and you can get rid of the rest

Editing the "quotes" makes it easier for everyone!

just a suggestion! love how active this thread is and everyone's posting on it is wonderful.

Right... I try to do that. And really, do we need to reply with "cute!" at all? Do any of us need that kind of ego stroking? I get where Stony is coming from... both on defending his position and this thread devolving into a "look at my cute chickens" thread. There are 50,000 "look at my cute chickens" threads on this site. We don't really need (much) of that here. But I don't want to sound like I'm anti-pictures because there are a lot of pictures here that are really helpful, and I'm really enjoying seeing the progress of aoxa's barn (which is also informative, because I like her layout and may steal ideas from her someday). And I don't think we need to be super militant about keeping things on topic, either, because since we all have similar goals and values we can learn a lot from others in other areas of life. BUT I think we're loosing a lot of valuable old timers from this thread, one's I would like to continue to learn from, and I don't want that to happen. So do ^^^ when quoting. And if you're just showing off chickens, do it in another thread. And be nice. K???

HOWEVER, one thing I've noticed is this- some people will question practices all day of other people and freely and openly express their own opinions and share their own beliefs (all great things...), but they get super defensive of others doing the same to/around them. I'm going to use Bee as an example (mostly because she's no longer here, I don't think, and because it's the first one that came to mind). In the Road less traveled thread she readily and freely expressed her opinions and views on things (as well she should)... but then she got really offended when someone brought up zombies. If you're going to insist on your right (which we all should have) to express our own opinions and to vocalize our own values/beliefs, as she was so vocal in doing, then you have to take the reverse of that, which is people you don't agree with doing the same (I also use this example because it's kind of silly, no one "believes" in zombies...). If you don't approve, don't engage unless you plan to have a healthy two sided discussion with someone. But the street has to run both ways. Of course, then we all have to realize that there are times to agree to disagree, drop the argument, and realize you can't change everyone's mind, nor can you know exactly what it's like to be in their shoes.

Basically see the bit again about being nice

 

[Sally8]

Hi everyone, I have over 700 posts to catch up on and I see many that catch my interest. Presently, I waiting for this next storm to pass over, yesterday was awful. Stony, Melabella, I wonder if they got you also. They sure were heading East and intensifying. The night before I finally separated the chickens in the appropriate pens and then it poured. No one got along, so I spent over any hour in pouring down rain. All evening long, the down pours and then sun and humidity. I felt bad for the newbies but after all, they are chickens. Someplace that expression, "mad as a wet hen" came from somewhere besides my Grandmother.

Stony-Did you know possums were on the endangered list? Not sure why, but that is what DEC says. I know they are endangered if they come near my chicken coops. Also, Rattlesnakes and again, ALL snakes are endangered near me. I have an official snake chopping hoe just for that purpose. Supposedly, we have rattlers but I've never seen one on our property.

This is what mad as a wet woman looks like after chasing chickens for an hour in a downpour (With thunder and lightning)