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I don't want one weakling to survive to make fifty more of the same...and only make my life and theirs miserable. Quality of life enjoyment has to be factored in. Not every bird that hatches should live...we take on the responsibility and duty of care of that particular animal/bird when we let them procreate. WE are their god and we are their protector and life ender or extender. Everyone has their own opinion of this and animals and birds are property under the law...for us humans to do with as we please (past cruelty or abuse of course!).
Coddle one weakling, breed from that, coddle many more. You choose your own future fate in most cases.
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And yeh, that's a felt marker I use...in many different colours too...no dang pencil, my old hands won't cooperate much and I will poke a pencil thru the shell...yeh...FELT MARKER--most often the brand is Sharpie (nfi)... what I do is test and test and test the poor birds here from DAY one...if they survive moi, they are strong... Good to go. I want birds that THRIVE under my conditions. Not a whole buncha weaklings that can't make it under my care or lack there of. Now I don't ABUSE my dependents, y'all need to get that part...but I don't cuddle and coddle and create a line of cripples that if I sneeze they all die of heart attacks or grow out to have busted limbs. We can leave those practices for the commercial factory farmers to do...feed antibiotic feeds so they can get them to market weights and out to the masses' tables for consumption or pump out swiller eggs with nothing left of themselves after the fact. We like to see seven and eight year old birds here, living the good life, healthy and happy...living on clean air, water and good food enjoying squishing mud between their toes and webbers and chasing bugs, sleeping in the shade and soaking up the sunshine. Living REAL.
I do not want a bunch of barely able to make it birds here...I want birds that thrive and survive despite me and all my failures. I have that tough love attitude, that if you are so weak and snivelling...up and die already and get it over with thanks! ...
I believe that every one of us that breeds birds, that allow lives to happen, that we should show due diligence in knowing when to end a life (pain or suffering, no quality of an existence) and when to help a life live long and happy. Just because ONE bird quits laying, I do not have the heart to thwack their heads off...I guess because I too am old but still manage to have value past my prime and supposedly productive expiry date. LMBO
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Artificially incubated hatch rates should be about 75 percent or more and under fifty percent is considered poor...a hen hatches roughly 89% of her set eggs. Expect at minimum, seven percent of your day olds to die before maturity...birds are simple creatures and some should not have hatched as they were messed up and doomed not to thrive from the get go. Nutrition and genetics play a big role. Minute differences in feeds for each species are paramount...I don't buy into that one food for all concept. Greens, bugs, proteins, trace elements...waterfowl does not prefer to live in a jungle and landfowl does not happily visit the swamp--your birds should POP outta the shells full of vim and vigour...over 14 hours of natural daylight for male fertility...you hatch in the off seasons from what the wild birds are doing in YOUR area, you are bucking Nature. Here most wilds are hatching round about June and such...everything nicks from the feeds readily available to the weather. I only see people needing to hatch say in January if you are showing in fall shows, large fowl birds and want a bigger specimen. Hatch eggs from two year olds, by them just being this age, proves disease resistance, fertility, vigour and you can judge things like twisted feather (a proper suit of feathers is not jest a show thing--good insulation to heat and cold, inclement weather means less wasted feed for the bird to feel well enough to be productive and make more of the same, eh) and know which are the best birds by looking AT THEM in their peak prime...not guessing what a juvenile bird will produce. Make more of the same from ones you SEE are the ones you want and have history on...the ones that up and die before two years of age...glad they are long gone, thanks. I don't want those kinds. I want to see quick decent moults--feathers on and off and back into production, ones that thrived thru stressors like moulting, surviving winter and wet springs, summer's heat and fall's cold snaps...survived breeding and egg production, would put decent meat on your plate in culls you decided were not quite near enough to make more from. Raised young and did it well, birds with temperaments that make me adore them, not wonder why I have them. When you love going to visit with them, you need to have more of these lovelies to enrichen your life.
Stress in any amount for any reason (from running out of water, to weather changes, to night time temperatures from day to night even, never mind to being picked on) lowers a beast or bird's ability to resist getting ill; two causes of illness are indirect (stress which lowers resistance to disease) &/or direct which causes the disease. Diseases are simply anything that causes a being to not be healthy with normal body functions. The happier you can keep your fowls, the more prosperous your endeavours will be.
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Doggone & Chicken UP!
Tara Lee Higgins
Higgins Rat Ranch Conservation Farm, Alberta, Canada
