Torn Eyelid

[gander007]

Coming along nicely great job

 

[Duck Drover]

The blue rooster is starting to collect a group of hens and I have seen him mounting more than one now, which usually brings the black rooster running to chase him off. I had stopped hatching while I was changing over roosters and then my fertility was low but it looks like I am getting fertile eggs now so I will probably end up with a bunch of black chicks since he is over black and blue hens. I have some pullets that just started laying so I have not put their eggs in the incubator due to the smaller size (and a few bullet shaped ones). I am still getting alot of blanks so I will need to run both roosters for awhile until the clear eggs are few and far between.

I am hoping to be able to use the blue rooster with the black rooster and then sell the black rooster when I sell hens again. With black hens, I don't need a black rooster but there are plenty of lavender projects that need a nice black rooster. I need the blue rooster to get blue, black, and splash chicks but I am really wanting more splash pullets to keep and the black rooster will not produce splash chicks. Most of my splash chicks have been roosters so I only have two dilute splash pullets and this blue splash pullet for now. I am raising up a group of older chicks so hopefully the splash chicks in that group end up being pullets. I have not seen another rooster as promising as this blue rooster so he really needs to behave himself if he wants to hang out with the hens.

 

[gander007]

The blue rooster is starting to collect a group of hens and I have seen him mounting more than one now, which usually brings the black rooster running to chase him off. I had stopped hatching while I was changing over roosters and then my fertility was low but it looks like I am getting fertile eggs now so I will probably end up with a bunch of black chicks since he is over black and blue hens. I have some pullets that just started laying so I have not put their eggs in the incubator due to the smaller size (and a few bullet shaped ones). I am still getting alot of blanks so I will need to run both roosters for awhile until the clear eggs are few and far between.

I am hoping to be able to use the blue rooster with the black rooster and then sell the black rooster when I sell hens again. With black hens, I don't need a black rooster but there are plenty of lavender projects that need a nice black rooster. I need the blue rooster to get blue, black, and splash chicks but I am really wanting more splash pullets to keep and the black rooster will not produce splash chicks. Most of my splash chicks have been roosters so I only have two dilute splash pullets and this blue splash pullet for now. I am raising up a group of older chicks so hopefully the splash chicks in that group end up being pullets. I have not seen another rooster as promising as this blue rooster so he really needs to behave himself if he wants to hang out with the hens.

Duck Dover, why don't you put up some photos of your black hens and roo you are intending to sell so we can all see them and just maybe a buyer might get excited over them

 

[Duck Drover]

I already have someone coming from across the state for some of them and then I need to decide what ones I am selling after they are gone. He put a deposit on them so I am just waiting for him to come get them. He likes the roosters he bought from me so much he asked me to let him know when I had hens for sale. I had two lines because I hatched my own Korfus line, then traded ducks for another line, then I was able to buy some Korfus hens so I don't have to buy hatching eggs to get more Korfus and now I am selling off the second line so I can keep the Korfus because I like them better. I was fine with hatching and raising my own flock but I ended up with some crosses by mistake and that made me decide to get the hens so I know what I am hatching. The person I got them from is working on other color projects while I want to stick with the BBS myself because I like the blue and splash best.

I am getting far more eggs than I can fit in my incubators so I thought about getting more incubators for now, then selling the black hens and rooster together once I have a bunch of black chicks to raise. I like to be selective about what I keep and I was getting mostly blue chicks so I sold most all of them as chicks and kept some for myself. Then I ended up selling all the blue chicks I raised when I got a new batch with more splash. I will probably end up selling most of them now that they are coop ready and just keep the splash pullets for myself. They can be tricky to sex so I want to wait to be absolutely certain which ones are pullets so I don't accidently sell a cockerel as a pullet. The English Orpingtons can fool you because pullets will look like cockerels and cockerels will look like pullets if you are just looking at combs and wattles. They are slow to feather because they are large fowl so they can't even be feather sexed until the saddle feathers come in. I can usually tell with most of them but when I guarantee pullets I don't want to be wrong.

When people come out to buy hens raised by someone else and they see the pullets I have raised, they like mine better and want to buy them instead. They are some big beautiful birds! I won't have any trouble selling the black hens when I decide to sell them. I basically have to replace them with their offspring before I am willing to part with them, though. I will have more chicks soon and I may sell some Silkie hens so I have fewer Silkie eggs to hatch, unless I decide to invest in more incubators and wait to cut back. I am also hatching ducklings so this is a busy time for hatching. I don't need as many laying hens as I have right now but I am going to wait to sell any until after the ones that are already sold are out of here.

 

[Duck Drover]

Here are updated pictures taken today. I have the hen back out in the yard to enjoy the beautiful we are having today but I am not sure if I am going to put her in the coop tonight or back in the cage. I really want to get her back with the flock but I also don't want her gettting injured again.

 

[gander007]

Oh that eye looks much better

 

[Duck Drover]

I took an updated picture of the injured eye. You can still see where the tear has healed and the skin sags instead of being tight but it does not look too bad. It still seems to be watering but what surprised me is that the brown color is returning to the eyeball so it does not look as damaged as I had thought.

 

[Dee Dee 2]

Looks like you did a great job ! Hopefully she can still see out of the damaged eye. If not she will adapt.

 

[rnchick74]

I've been following this post & I have to say that you have done a wonderful job in nursing her serious eye injury. The eye looks wonderful & you might be surprised that she may have some sight in that eye after all!

 

[Duck Drover]

I am hoping that the eye is still functional. When it was white and cloudy looking I read that fluid can cause the eye to look cloudy and I knew it was not cataracts but I assumed the surface of the eye was damaged. At first it looked like her eye was missing it was so bad and the entire eye socket was full of puss. I kept cleaning it out and yet it would fill up again because there was puss behind the eyeball that I had to keep pushing out. It was semi-solid so I actually used tweezers to grab chunks of it out of the eye socket. I assumed she would be blind because it was so bad but I did what I could and hoped for the best.

There is just a speck of the white cloudy color left now and she gets around great so I think she has vision in the eye. She hides alot and won't always go in the coop at night but hopefully in time she will take to the rooster and I will be able to get fertile eggs. She is not laying yet, as far as I can tell, since her comb is not red and waxy looking. I will be keeping her because she has been so sweet through it all. I hope I don't regret my decision not to suture the tear. It has healed nicely except for the sag but as long as she can blink and the eye stays clean it should at least be functional, even more than I expected.