The Natural Chicken Keeping thread - OTs welcome!

[MumsyII]

Kass...cute picks

on getting rid of the bees..almond oil wiped all over makes them move.
Hope your baby's hatch soon..I am getting excited.
That silkie should recover quickly with your quick help. I also have one with wry neck. He/she was jumped on by one of the broody hens when they were to close to a chick.
yeah on the silkie eggs developing.
use almond oil..they will move the nest and no injury.

I know many different kinds of bees. Honey bees have become exceedingly rare. I celebrate when I see them. We have two kinds of hornets. Yellow Jackets and Bald face. Not any of these. It is a small bee and a small nest but it happens to be under the porch to my barn and this is where all my pens, flocks, and I go in and out of the barn. I will get some "Almond oil today. I want them to move ASAP. No time to spare. I can't deal with getting stung or my flock under attack.
Couldn't sleep with disturbing dreams. Woke to hear cheeping in the incubator. Twenty four hours from internal pip to external pip and then sixteen hours for the first chick to hatch on the twenty third day. It is beautiful and perfect. Large vaulted skull. A second chick hatched an hour ago from the
same 'Miss Peggy'. Looks normal and very vocal and active. The only other egg with external pip I can see is from Catdance 'Miss Bonney'.
So out of eighteen eggs with 100% fertility, I had one quitter day 5. It was a dark shell and I put a question mark on it and then at day eighteen I removed it, opened, and examined it.
Seventeen viable eggs with normal air cell and development went into lockdown on day twenty. Only two chicks hatched out on day twenty three is out of my experience. I do not doubt my Genesis. It is running flawlessly. That these two chicks pipped normally and hatched normally reinforces that feeling that this is not incubator error or mishandling. I collected the eggs each day and kept them clean and rotated. They were each numbered and the leg band of each hen and pullet added to the egg too. The eggs were less than ten days old.
My cock is the Catdance boy I bought. Miss Peggy is a pullet I hatched from Sheryl Butler eggs. There is only one Catdance hen egg pipped right now on day twenty three. Good thing I am a fiend at note keeping. It is important to breed vigor, vitality, fertility, and hatch-ability into all of my flock.
It will be interesting to see how the three broodys on the same eggs from the same four Silkies will do in hatch out.

So...Two chicks out. Fifteen to go. *sheesh*

 

[aoxa]

It's my third night with chickens and I just saw a grey fox in the nieghbor's yard across the street! Teeny thing...thought it was a cat, at first. So glad I built a ridiculous "fort" coop. Also very grateful my dog decided to obey and "stay" instead of chasing it to God knows where.

P.S. Aoxa, I changed my avatar.

Thanks for the heads up lol

I know many different kinds of bees. Honey bees have become exceedingly rare. I celebrate when I see them. We have two kinds of hornets. Yellow Jackets and Bald face. Not any of these. It is a small bee and a small nest but it happens to be under the porch to my barn and this is where all my pens, flocks, and I go in and out of the barn. I will get some "Almond oil today. I want them to move ASAP. No time to spare. I can't deal with getting stung or my flock under attack.
Couldn't sleep with disturbing dreams. Woke to hear cheeping in the incubator. Twenty four hours from internal pip to external pip and then sixteen hours for the first chick to hatch on the twenty third day. It is beautiful and perfect. Large vaulted skull. A second chick hatched an hour ago from the
same 'Miss Peggy'. Looks normal and very vocal and active. The only other egg with external pip I can see is from Catdance 'Miss Bonney'.
So out of eighteen eggs with 100% fertility, I had one quitter day 5. It was a dark shell and I put a question mark on it and then at day eighteen I removed it, opened, and examined it.
Seventeen viable eggs with normal air cell and development went into lockdown on day twenty. Only two chicks hatched out on day twenty three is out of my experience. I do not doubt my Genesis. It is running flawlessly. That these two chicks pipped normally and hatched normally reinforces that feeling that this is not incubator error or mishandling. I collected the eggs each day and kept them clean and rotated. They were each numbered and the leg band of each hen and pullet added to the egg too. The eggs were less than ten days old.
My cock is the Catdance boy I bought. Miss Peggy is a pullet I hatched from Sheryl Butler eggs. There is only one Catdance hen egg pipped right now on day twenty three. Good thing I am a fiend at note keeping. It is important to breed vigor, vitality, fertility, and hatch-ability into all of my flock.
It will be interesting to see how the three broodys on the same eggs from the same four Silkies will do in hatch out.

So...Two chicks out. Fifteen to go. *sheesh*

How many of the eggs locked down had internally pipped?

I am having similar experiences unfortunately. Last hatch I got 10 white silkies out of 20 eggs.

I haven't candled the current hatch at all. They are on day 15 now. Seeing if it makes any difference at all.

 

[lalaland]

Is her comb pea? I wouldn't call her legs slate. They look yellowish pink to me.


EEs come in every size. Her colour does look classic EE to me, but could also be a poorer example of partridge. Are you sure she is a bantam, and not just delayed?

She was a golf ball size chick compared to the other chicks who were 2x her size. I am totally unfamiliar with banties and have never been interested in them, but I would say she is banty and not runty. not a gold brown at all , more of a milk chock brown.

Her legs are not black slate, like an auracana, but are grey. not pink at all, not yellow, not white.

Her comb is so hard to see at all! I would say it is pea.

 

[aoxa]

She was a golf ball size chick compared to the other chicks who were 2x her size. I am totally unfamiliar with banties and have never been interested in them, but I would say she is banty and not runty. not a gold brown at all , more of a milk chock brown.

Her legs are not black slate, like an auracana, but are grey. not pink at all, not yellow, not white.

Her comb is so hard to see at all! I would say it is pea.

I'm going with EE then. Especially if the comb is pea.

I've had many bantam EEs.

 

[MumsyII]

Thanks for the heads up lol
How many of the eggs locked down had internally pipped?

I am having similar experiences unfortunately. Last hatch I got 10 white silkies out of 20 eggs.

I haven't candled the current hatch at all. They are on day 15 now. Seeing if it makes any difference at all.

On day nineteen, none had internally pipped. On day twenty I was starting to get nervous so when I saw one internal pip, I locked the whole thing down. Slowly built up humidity from 40% to 62% and it has held steady. That first chick to hatch with the big vault is much larger than the second that hatched with no vault. Humidity with subsequent drowning in the shell and big vaults were issues to getting typey White chicks to hatch for me in the past. Seeing these two gives me hope for more chicks. If the three broodys are able to hatch these eggs easier than it is turning out for me with the Genesis, I will no longer bother using the incubator for the Whites. The twelve Catdance chicks I hatched brought home from the farm, only one White from three W marked eggs. And he is Mr. Nasty the biter. My breeding quint are really sweet birds and so easy to handle. Hoping for chicks from them to be my foundation stock for White Silkies. At this rate, it may take a while.

 

[armorfirelady]

I actually just dealt with some ground dwelling flying insects. Pretty sure they were yellow jackets. They dug a hole in my flower bed right by my sidewalk where my kids go all the time and the chickens love to dust bathe. So they had to go. After dark, I put a big glass bowl over the hole so they couldn't get out. The next day they were ******! But they were trapped. It was really warm and they were obviously trying to evacuate. The next day was the same with no noticeable difference in amount of wasps. So that night I stuck the hose under the bowl and ran it for a good 5 minutes, took the bowl off, dumped a cup or so of ammonia in the hole, and flushed it again with the hose. Bowl went back on and the next day there were definitely fewer. Repeat the flooding that night and left the bowl on for a few more days just in case. They are gone now. These techniques were all natural ones I found on the web. I would try spraying with ammonia. Or ammonia mixed with water. The ammonia didn't seem to hurt my flowers at all and since I flushed it down into the hole, I'm not worried about my chickens either. Or my poor daughter who is very attractive to bees and wasps and always gets stung.

Thanks for the natural way to rid bees. I was searching the web and found several similar ways to remove them.

Delisha thanks for almond oil idea, do you just put a few drops down the hole to get rid of them?

Mumsy glad to hear your chicks are hatching

 

[Barbians4]

Hi all! I'm new to chickens, just got three 10-month old Red Star hens about two weeks ago, but I am ALWAYS reading all I can about natural chicken keeping. No antibiotics or anything else for us. I do make our own anti-bacterial (think Neosporin) salve for my family. If needed, could I use it on the girls? And I am very interested in hearing how much ACV you use in their water. I use it all the time for my family and these girls are family already. It seems that finding organic layer feed around here is darn near impossible and shipping costs will kill ya! Holy cow! I made up some of my own feed yesterday based on some recipes found in a thread on this site and they seemed to like it. Obviously though I don't always have the time to make up batches and would like to have some pre-made organic feed on hand. They are outside all the time, from early morning until they go in to roost, but are penned in. Granted, it's a big area and there is plenty for them to forage but we don't know how they will do free-ranging since they were in a much smaller area before they came to us. I can post pictures later. Any suggestions for the southeast Wisconsin area? Or are any of you around my area?

 

[aoxa]

On day nineteen, none had internally pipped. On day twenty I was starting to get nervous so when I saw one internal pip, I locked the whole thing down. Slowly built up humidity from 40% to 62% and it has held steady. That first chick to hatch with the big vault is much larger than the second that hatched with no vault. Humidity with subsequent drowning in the shell and big vaults were issues to getting typey White chicks to hatch for me in the past. Seeing these two gives me hope for more chicks. If the three broodys are able to hatch these eggs easier than it is turning out for me with the Genesis, I will no longer bother using the incubator for the Whites. The twelve Catdance chicks I hatched brought home from the farm, only one White from three W marked eggs. And he is Mr. Nasty the biter. My breeding quint are really sweet birds and so easy to handle. Hoping for chicks from them to be my foundation stock for White Silkies. At this rate, it may take a while.

Waiting for them to internally pip had really increased my hatch rate in the silkies. All that internally pipped hatched last go around. It's before they internally pip I have the issues.

You hand turn right? I do not, so if you hand turn and are still having issues with hatching the whites - I am not sure what is going on. Do you think hot weather has anything to do with it? Jamie told me hatchings this time of year don't do very well for him.. though earlier in the spring his hatch rates are much better. He was surprised when I told him how they keep dying in shell. I'd like to see if time of year really does change things.

I am not good with my handling of eggs right now. The silkies actually bury their eggs. I found FIVE from one pair yesterday. No idea how old they are. I put them in her nest so she is enticed to go broody. Otherwise I am done hatching for the year.

I only have two silkies laying right now. Everyone else is broody.

 

[elmtree]

Hi all! I'm new to chickens, just got three 10-month old Red Star hens about two weeks ago, but I am ALWAYS reading all I can about natural chicken keeping. No antibiotics or anything else for us. I do make our own anti-bacterial (think Neosporin) salve for my family. If needed, could I use it on the girls? And I am very interested in hearing how much ACV you use in their water. I use it all the time for my family and these girls are family already. It seems that finding organic layer feed around here is darn near impossible and shipping costs will kill ya! Holy cow! I made up some of my own feed yesterday based on some recipes found in a thread on this site and they seemed to like it. Obviously though I don't always have the time to make up batches and would like to have some pre-made organic feed on hand. They are outside all the time, from early morning until they go in to roost, but are penned in. Granted, it's a big area and there is plenty for them to forage but we don't know how they will do free-ranging since they were in a much smaller area before they came to us. I can post pictures later. Any suggestions for the southeast Wisconsin area? Or are any of you around my area?

Hello!! And welcome! For the acv I usually do a glug or two in a gallon waterer. Keeping them in the run area is a good idea for a few weeks so they can get used to their new home. That's awesome you make your own organic feed. I get my organic feed from Countryside Organics, 29$ for 50#. With three chickens, if you bought a 50# bag It would last you awhile! There may be a Wisconsin thread so you can do a search for that and something should pop up. We need pics!

 

[Vigar49]

Im getting ready to build a coop and wondered what size to have the nesting boxes.