The Natural Chicken Keeping thread - OTs welcome!

[Shan30]

I hatched silkies a few times... The first time was my 1st hatch every and not one hatched ... It was a real bummer .... but the 2nd one 2 hatched ... then I got some free local silkie eggs and almost all of them hatched!  Shipping does a real number on the eggs.  Once I got my hatching skills up I ordered some from Catdance and had a good hatch maybe 7 or 8 out of a dozen ... and then I did it again and with more or less the same results ...  but I put a few of those under a broody hen who got confused and switched nests. Silly girl.  Barnyard is a great way to start as they are easier to hatch as they haven't been damaged in the mail.  There is a great thread that shows you what the inside of the egg should look like on each day.  

Anna Are these your first chickens??  Are you fixing the roos so that they wont crow?? I have never tried that but from what I understand it is very expensive, does not always prevent the Roo from crowing and can kill the chicken. just food for thought

Teachick Here is the link to the thread, so that you know what to look for in the egg..... The black dot in the middle will pulse like a heart ..... as the chick grows to fill the egg it will be really dark in there and hard to see anything.  The air sac does not indicate a growing chick it just lets you know that enough moisture has evaporated from the egg to make a big enough space for the chick to turn and pip into & supply it with air until the external pip.  Ok here you go :
https://www.backyardchickens.com/t/...g-candling-pics-progression-though-incubation

Thanks for this! I hadn't seen it before. Just finished reading Gail Damerow's Hatching and Brooding Your Own Chicks which was very informative but the pics and videos in that thread are great!

 

[Anna6]

Anna Are these your first chickens?? Are you fixing the roos so that they wont crow?? I have never tried that but from what I understand it is very expensive, does not always prevent the Roo from crowing and can kill the chicken. just food for thought

I do not think I am willing to take the risk of loosing that many shipped eggs in hatching.Thank you for sharing.

This is not the first time we have chickens but the last time was 19 years ago. My husband bought me 24 Rhode Island chicks from a hatchery as a birthday surprise. We raised 15 roosters and 9 hens. It was supposed to be straight run. They had just started to lay when we unexpectedly had to relocate and I could not take them along so I gave them to my neighbor before moving. I have also hatched some eggs before in an older hovabator without fan and without egg turner. As for caponizing, we will need an option to all those roos that will also hatch. We can have a rooster here but I do not think it will work well to have that many. We will also need to control who breeds with who. This way I can let caponized roos in with the main flock and they can roam till it is time for them to be eaten. I do not plan on eating a little thing like a silkie as I consider them pets..

 

[fenwickchic]

Hmmm I will try some seeds, don't have any calf manna but I might try meat. They clearly like chicken

. I'm considering trapping my big Tom cat in the people portion of the coop for a few days.

That is exactly what I was thinking when you said you had a rat problem. I had mice 1 time in my house (with 5 cats) and realized it was in an area where I kept the door shut all the time. I opened the door some and have never seen mice or mice droppings again!! My cats are very leary of the chickens too, so I'm sure they wouldn't bother them, but I have one cat that would absolutely take on those rats. When we rescued him as a kitten, my husband was carrying him out of the caging area and he saw a mouse in a cage and he nearly leaped out of my husbands hands into that cage. Thankfully, DH caught him on his shoulder just before he could leap. LOL I will never forget it. The right cat would definitely cure your problem! You would just have to be absolutely certain the cat won't harm your chicken. My mom HATES cats, but she didn't hesitate to borrow one when she had a temporary mouse problem. Problem cured.

 

[fenwickchic]

If I went to the bait store, about how much would I expect to pay for minnows/crickets, etc...and what amount would that give me?



And, yes...unfortunately I called several bulk distributors of DRY mealworm that do them in larger quantities (like 5 lb, 10 lb, quantities) and I was told in no uncertain terms that there are no DRY mealworm suppliers except in China by every company I called.

Now the LIVE mealworms are grown in the US in various places and various substrates.


Thank you - @fenwickchic for checking w/your supplier. I'll be waiting to hear what they say.

Sometimes they will buy them from a US distributor but the distributor gets them from China. If I can find a US source they will get my business.

Sorry this took me so long to get back to everyone, but the mealworm news is not good. Here was my reply:

Connie,

Thank you for your inquiry. The mealworms that Red River Distributes are imported from China and packaged in the USA. There isn’t a grower in the USA that can grow mealworms to meet the large quantity demand.

We appreciate your business.


Regards,

Debby Hanneman
Red River Commodities
Wild Bird Food Division
[email protected]
Phone #: 800-437-5539


Now isn't that sad! Why can't they find a group of mealworm farmers or encourage someone to farm them? Good business to try to run if you lived near Red River Commodities. And I fed that Chinese crap to my flock. Ugh.

 

[ChickensRDinos]

(Sorry I may have missed this earlier on but) Is there a reason you prefer to buy dry mealworms over farming living ones yourself where you can control all of the factors?

 

[aoxa]

(Sorry I may have missed this earlier on but) Is there a reason you prefer to buy dry mealworms over farming living ones yourself where you can control all of the factors?

Time, space, ick factor?

 

[LeslieDJoyce]

Sorry this took me so long to get back to everyone, but the mealworm news is not good. Here was my reply:

Connie,

Thank you for your inquiry. The mealworms that Red River Distributes are imported from China and packaged in the USA. There isn’t a grower in the USA that can grow mealworms to meet the large quantity demand.

We appreciate your business.


Regards,

Debby Hanneman
Red River Commodities
Wild Bird Food Division
[email protected]
Phone #: 800-437-5539


Now isn't that sad! Why can't they find a group of mealworm farmers or encourage someone to farm them? Good business to try to run if you lived near Red River Commodities. And I fed that Chinese crap to my flock. Ugh.

Just because it is Chinese doesn't mean it is necessarily crap, but it does mean it has to travel an unnecessarily long distance to get to your North American coop ...

 

[ChickensRDinos]

Time, space, ick factor?

lol. Fair enough. I thought I would be grossed out by them at first but now I am sort of into it. They have be wanted to try breeding new bugs. When I was just starting out with the mealworms I left the lid off on accident and caught my dog snacking on them.

 

[aoxa]

lol. Fair enough. I thought I would be grossed out by them at first but now I am sort of into it. They have be wanted to try breeding new bugs. When I was just starting out with the mealworms I left the lid off on accident and caught my dog snacking on them.

Henry snacks on things like that too. He's a weirdo.

I would raise them if I had time, and space.. and not so much on my plate as it is... I keep forgetting to rinse the sprouts...

 

[Jewelwing]

Quote:

Apparently, I cooked the eggs I was hatching for DS.
I candled the other night and thought I had some that were pretty viable and others that looked pretty clear.
Today was day 26 and I started doing egg-topsies; one of them had something in it that looked like blood on the yolk and maybe a little bit of development, but I'm not sure. I wish I'd taken a picture of it, but I was so upset all I could do was get through them all and then shake my head (and cry). I guess the crock pot got hotter than I thought, b/c there was pretty much no development and the eggs I thought were developing when I was candling were just cooking very slowly.
Ugh!!!
A friend of mine is going to hatch my next set of eggs. I'll set some in a different incubator and then I'll use some to see if this incubator is really viable or not.
IDK; I'm pretty upset, feeling especially awful b/c these weren't even my eggs, they were my kid's!!!

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humph!!!

I'm so sorry!! I know how awful that feels to mess something up for your kids.

In other news, this morning I have one Speckled Sussex (one of the ones who's been laying for a couple of weeks but didn't lay yesterday) who has very labored breathing and poop like water. She also frequently makes a noise like a cough or sneeze or hiccup. Her crop is more than half full, her cloaca looks fine, and she did drink lots of water this morning. No mites or scratching. I'm going to scramble up an egg for her. She looks so miserable all fluffed up and breathing so labored.

It got down to 0F last night, but in the negative teens with wind chill. I had a heat lamp in the coop, and it's pretty well closed up from drafts, and has some ventilation up at roof level on one side of the coop.

The girls don't want to go outside today, so I put some more wood chips down to freshen things up, and tossed some dried meal worms and scratch on top. They get so freaked out when I bring the bag of wood chips in! The all scrambled up to the roost when I did that, and only a couple of them came back down for the meal worms.

I have the water outside, so every few hours I bring a warmed up glass water dish with fresh water and let them drink inside the coop. I don't want to leave it there because I don't want to add any more humidity, and it will just get wood chips in it anyway.