Viva Las Vegas!

[whatthecuck]

Ive been using poly vi sol. its not the + iron kind just regular poly vi sol but it does have iron in it should i stop giving it to my chickens and chicks?

 

[muckmuck]

I just set these today in my incubator, can you guess what they are?



Max

 

[vegaschick]

Ive been using poly vi sol. its not the + iron kind just regular poly vi sol but it does have iron in it should i stop giving it to my chickens and chicks?

I don't know. I have never used it although I have heard good things. Maybe you could start a thread asking about it, then those that have used it may be able to advise you. Let us know what you find out.

I just set these today in my incubator, can you guess what they are?



Max

Shut the front door!!! Are those BARNVELDERS? They are on my wish list! They look so cool! Where did you get the eggs? I think you mentioned that you knew a guy.....? What line are they from? Are you gonna breed them? Okay, I'll stop for now. But seriously, cool, real cool!

I may be getting rid of my young Blue Copper Marans roo tomorrow. He hatched April 4th and is already trying to crow. I'm hoping to trade him for a mature Splash Copper Marans roo to protect my flock out in the boonies. My Aunt has hawks living in her pine trees next door and although I have netting I want a back up roo to help out.

Here's the daily dose of Broody Mama Drama...
Casino is doing great, stuck like glue. Widget is doing a great job of brooding wooden eggs and tonight....she is joined by Viola, a Delaware who was a successful mama last year about this same time. She got the cheater route last year because after about a week I stuck 2 feedstore chicks under her fluffy butt at night. She was a good mama though. I'm betting that the two on woodies will probably break when we try to move them. If not, I'll have to see if I can round up some eggs or chicks. With my luck, everyone who's threatened to be broody will try again. I hope not. I need some eggs to eat for the summer!

 

[muckmuck]

In addition to all of the other varied things I feed my chickens I decided to try fermenting scratch for them.

I am using the same nested buckets, shown above, that I had used when I fermented cooked rice. Has anyone else tried this?

Max

 

[daegorn]

Hi all! This is awsome! I love the NV thread but having one for us tooo hot folks is great. I have new BCM chicks and I'm waiting on a batch of EE. for those of you that don't know I'm in Pahrump. I have in my barn chickens, rabbits and ducks. I have to rehome my Americana Roo. He won't stop killing the baby bunnys and he is just not nice. I had big hopes for him but it's just not working. If any one wants to give him a try let me know, Monday he is going to the store to be sold.

 

[vegaschick]

In addition to all of the other varied things I feed my chickens I decided to try fermenting scratch for them.

I am using the same nested buckets, shown above, that I had used when I fermented cooked rice. Has anyone else tried this?

Max

Not only have I never tried it, I have never heard of this! What are the benefits of fermenting scratch or rice? How does this set up work? So interesting....

Hi all! This is awsome! I love the NV thread but having one for us tooo hot folks is great. I have new BCM chicks and I'm waiting on a batch of EE. for those of you that don't know I'm in Pahrump. I have in my barn chickens, rabbits and ducks. I have to rehome my Americana Roo. He won't stop killing the baby bunnys and he is just not nice. I had big hopes for him but it's just not working. If any one wants to give him a try let me know, Monday he is going to the store to be sold.

Hi daegorn! So glad to see you here. I'm sorry to hear about your baby bunnies and your bad roo! Sounds like you should eat him!

What store do you sell to? Is it in Pahrump? I'm waiting to see some photos of your chickens, rabbits and ducks. Your photography is so awesome!

 

[whatthecluck12]

We have a silkie chick (4-5 wks old) and while we know she's probably not ready to be re-located outside just yet, we were wondering if any other Vegans have any experience with Silkies outdoors in our climate. Since she hatched she seems to run warm...panting 3 days after hatch in a 95 degree brooder. Obviously we turned her heat down and now at 4-5 weeks the light is off during the day and only on at night when our house temp drops to the low 70's. Her banty companion gets a bit cool and is often found snuggled up under the silkie to keep warm AND it's a bit older than she is! I'm concerned that we may have to have an inside bird in a bird cage though that wasn't our original intent. Are they very heat tolerant? Anyone keep them outdoors?

 

[vegaschick]

We have a silkie chick (4-5 wks old) and while we know she's probably not ready to be re-located outside just yet, we were wondering if any other Vegans have any experience with Silkies outdoors in our climate. Since she hatched she seems to run warm...panting 3 days after hatch in a 95 degree brooder. Obviously we turned her heat down and now at 4-5 weeks the light is off during the day and only on at night when our house temp drops to the low 70's. Her banty companion gets a bit cool and is often found snuggled up under the silkie to keep warm AND it's a bit older than she is! I'm concerned that we may have to have an inside bird in a bird cage though that wasn't our original intent. Are they very heat tolerant? Anyone keep them outdoors?

Haha! Sounds like my older sister!

I don't have any but I think that evonne and Holly31 both do, and keep them outside. Hopefully they will post and tell us how they do it.

 

[whatthecluck12]

Ok, here's another question for our Vegas peeps...
One of our chickens has been sick for some time now. We've done EVERYTHING, but she looks like she is on her way out.

However, at around the same time (maybe a week later) another one started having facial swelling. We assumed it must be mycoplasma, medicated our water and figured some make it through and some don't. Our girl with the swelling also developed little black dots on her ear area and maybe face (I will have to look closer and take a pic). I've also noticed a large scabby area on her upper head for the past few days. I didn't think that the two would be related or I'd have posted this sooner. I'm now thinking it's fowl pox. Come to think of it, there were a few mosquittos flying around the coop when I cleaned it about 2 weeks ago. I thought they came to us vaccinated (we got them from a feed store that got them from a hatchery) though. Does anyone know of a vet that treats chickens without charging so much. I'm sure our regular vet treats birds, but I can barely afford to take the dogs and cat there let alone a $3 chicken. While the one is very sick and probably dying, the other (with the dots and swelling) seems fine other than the obvious signs/symptoms. She's eating and drinking great (actually she's a little piggy!

). She has been a bit less active, but it could just be the heat lately. We are fairly new to this and never would have guessed that so many chicken illnesses existed in the world. The other 3 show no signs. I know that they should be separated, but we don't have a set-up to accomodate that. We're just small backyard chicken folk that live in a sub-division complete with HOA here. In my previous post I mentioned our silkie and her banty friend. They are currently kept inside <phew>. That being said, the silkie for sure hasn't been vaccinated (we hatched her ourselves) and I thought that banty's were too small to vaccinate at the hatchery. Hopefully I'm wrong about that...meanwhile, we'll definitely want to get the silkie vaccinated. Any info would be tremendously helpful!

 

[muckmuck]

In addition to all of the other varied things I feed my chickens I decided to try fermenting scratch for them.

I am using the same nested buckets, shown above, that I had used when I fermented cooked rice. Has anyone else tried this?

Max

Not only have I never tried it, I have never heard of this! What are the benefits of fermenting scratch or rice? How does this set up work? So interesting....

There is a rather large thread on fermented feed in the "meat birds" section. I also read a very good blog post http://scratchcradle.wordpress.com/2012/06/08/fermented-feed/ about the subject. Fermenting is supposed to boost the available protein and the probiotic properties of the feed. As discussed in the comments of the blog I'm not sure whether the process you are trying to achieve is a yeast based fermentation, such as in brewing, converting the sugars and carbs or a bacterial fermentation, such as in vinegar, acidifying the feed and making it more friendly to beneficial bacteria. So far my girls go crazy for the stuff but then again I never understood all these posts about my girls don't like this or that. I look at it like raisin kids, their gonna what I give em or they aint gonna eat.

Max