The Natural Chicken Keeping thread - OTs welcome!

[Leahs Mom]

Or...
Get some all-flock that you can feed to everyone. Still add some protein for the babies and put out calcium free-choice for the elders. That way you can just feed everyone the same thing after your "layer" is gone (if that's what you've been feeding).

 

[texasmomma]

Finally finished catching up here!

I tried to hatch some cream legbars and rhodebars, but ended up with a lonely cream legbar cockerel. So, I tried again with some bielefelder eggs and hatched out 7 of the 9 I put in the incubator.

They are eating ff and loving life. They race one another up and down the brooder, which is so funny to watch!

Here they are!


blue female


pink female


Red female


Yellow female


Left leg Yellow male


Red Male

Right leg yellow male

 

[Leahs Mom]

I LOVE that you can sex those babies. That's one of the reasons that I wanted the CL. But I hate crests. Maybe the CL crests don't become excessive?

 

[Leahs Mom]

I sprained my ankle taking a bucket of water out to the hen shed this afternoon. (I think just sprained...I suppose it "could" be broken...)

I had about 1000 things to do out there today. Not to mention that I've been keeping hawk-watch and going out at various times just to change what's going on to keep those preds guessing.

How in the heck do you take care of animals when you can't walk?

 

[subhanalah]

I sprained my ankle taking a bucket of water out to the hen shed this afternoon. (I think just sprained...I suppose it "could" be broken...) I had about 1000 things to do out there today. Not to mention that I've been keeping hawk-watch and going out at various times just to change what's going on to keep those preds guessing. How in the heck do you take care of animals when you can't walk?

hobble? I'll pray for you to have wellness sooner rather than later.

 

[Leahs Mom]

Quote:
Thank you

 

[texasmomma]

I LOVE that you can sex those babies. That's one of the reasons that I wanted the CL. But I hate crests. Maybe the CL crests don't become excessive?

I have 4 Cl pullets and they do not have large crests. That's how I got them for cheap.

Rhodebars and bielefelders are also auto-sexing and neither have crests.

These are bielefelders. If the males grow up to be as large as I read, then I may have found our perfect dual purpose chicken. The chicks are just delightful.

 

[texasmomma]

I sprained my ankle taking a bucket of water out to the hen shed this afternoon. (I think just sprained...I suppose it "could" be broken...)

Urgh. Please try to rest it if you can.

 

[Leahs Mom]

Quote:
What I was hoping for was the colored eggs and the self-sexing chicks. I was, at one time, thinking I'd quit getting ee's and try to propagate the CLs But then I realized they were crested.

 

[texasmomma]

What I was hoping for was the colored eggs and the self-sexing chicks. I was, at one time, thinking I'd quit getting ee's and try to propagate the CLs But then I realized they were crested.

Oh! I misunderstood.

I think that you could find some people that were trying to breed for less of the crest.

My plan is to breed the legbars that I have with the bielefelders to get a nice green egg. The bielefelders lay a nice medium brown egg. Some of them have spots/dots on them that are darker.