Washingtonians Come Together! Washington Peeps

[Chickielady]

hahahaha...Champion Modern, a Birchen Pullet...cute !

 

[Chickielady]

I hope Jen doesn't mind my reposting some of her pictures !

Here is the Champion:

 

[Chickielady]

You guys let me know if you want to see water fowl winners....I gotta get up & go do something ...my bum... is going numb....NUMB BUM>>>>

here is a very nice duck though...

Champion Medium duck, a Cayuga Hen

 

[pennyJo1960]

oh my gosh and we shopping for groceries all day

everything I missed
I did go to the show it was very hot that day and we did not stay long
but now I have bragging rights correct cuz I have 9 little pullets from her

 

[CarolynF]

@Chickielady , have you ever had to deal with depluming mites?

I have a hen that's lost most of the feathers on her neck. At first I thought she was molting but it didn't progress in that fashion. Then I noticed a messy vent and feather loss there too. She got a bath and I've treated her, and the others, with Sevin and now Frontline (actually another brand but same active ingredients). I'm wondering how long it will take for her feathers to re-grow. She's a little over 1 year old and hasn't had a full molt yet.

I've also cleaned out the coop and nest boxes, sprayed with neem oil, and dusted with sevin. I'll spray with Neem again tomorrow, and again next Sat.

 

[pennyJo1960]

@ Carolyn
Not too certain never had them on mine
but sounds like you are running the right way

 

[Duck Drover]

We had ducklings hatch today so we have them making a fuss in the bird room since they were taken from their mamas. I have been hearing boy and girl peeping sounds (thankfully ducklings can be voice sexed pretty accurately right away) but I was also hearing another peeping sound. Sure enough, my daughter has a hatch due on the 11th that is hatching today. The chick that is already out came from a beige shell and it is light colored like a splash Orpington but she has also set some Orpington/Quechua cross eggs and this chick almost has faint chipmunk markings that make me wonder if it is a cross. The splash Orpingtons hatch out a light silver color and this chick has a bit of a darker head and back than I would expect. I can't tell if it is bearded yet but it has Orpington legs and toes with the gray legs and white toes and it is clearly from an Orpington egg so it is either an Orpington or an Orpington cross.

I am actually hoping it is a cross just so I know my Quechua rooster is doing his job but then I am not sure what to do with the chicks. I will probably have to sell them cheap as crossbreds or mutt Easter Eggers since they should lay green eggs (blue to beige) but they won't look like a hatchery Easter Egger that is more of an Ameraucana body and feather type. I am curious to see what they mature to look like in order to know if I should give the Quechua rooster more Orpington hens or not. The Orpingtons are so large that when I had accidental crossbred roosters (Easter Egger hen under Orpington rooster) they brought good meat prices but I sold the pullets to someone who wanted them and never saw what they looked like full grown. As long as they are just used as layers for people who can't keep roosters to breed it won't matter as much that they are crossbred because an egg is an egg. They just have less value than something that is purebred so I don't usually waste my time hatching crossbred chicks.

I had wanted to sell the two black hens I gave him already but their eggs have been contaminated with crossbreeding instead of laying fertile purebred hatching eggs for a period of time so I decided to wait to sell them once I know what the cross will look like, unless someone just wants to eat their eggs and not hatch them. Whenever I sell a hen I am also selling her fertile eggs, which is a good deal for people who want to hatch chicks but can't have a rooster because they can recover the cost of the hen by hatching her eggs while she is fertile. Not only is someone getting a nice young laying hen, they are also able to hatch around two dozen chicks from that hen in order to start an entire flock from a single hen. I will only sell hens in pairs, though, so they are getting two hens and around 4 dozen chicks if they have an incubator or a broody hen for hatching.

I don't usually crossbreed chickens because my goal is to preserve a heritage breed but I did not want so many blue Orpington chicks this year since I want to maximize our splash chicks. I have made it to the point where I will only hatch blue and splash chicks now so I don't necessarily want to part with all my black hens but I also don't need them producing all blue chicks with our splash roosters. The goal was to go back to using a blue rooster once I have more splash hens to keep but my splash roosters are grandfathered in so that may limit my future goals from materializing unless I can swap my roosters out without anyone noticing.

Technically I can only hatch chicks to sell because I can't add more adults than what I had when the code changed but my hope is that as long as I keep my numbers the same it will be hard for my neighbors to know how many of each color I had grandfathered in before the code was changed. Young birds don't count until they are mature so I can raise as many chicks as I want as long as my adult flock does not grow in size. I would have far fewer birds if the code had not changed and I did not need to guarantee my property rights but for now I have to keep my numbers up so I don't lose my right to have our birds.

Then again, I may eventually sell off the chickens and just stick with the duck project since there are no laws against having drakes and we had far more ducks than we ever wanted grandfathered in thanks to our young birds being counted at the time the code changed. We raised out our blueheads and silverheads to decide which ones to keep as breeders so technically we can keep them all instead of reducing to the size flock we actually wanted. The ducks have so much color variety that it will be hard for anyone to track which specific ducks were here and which ones are replacements.

Only roosters have obvious age indicators with their spurs and they are the only ones no longer allowed under the new code so if we do switch out roosters we either need to go with older roosters or raise up young roosters to the age where they gang up on the older roosters enough to take over breeding before they go to auction. I have not tried AI with chickens but from what I have seen it is not too hard. It is just so much nicer to have a guardian rooster or two running with the hens.

Well, we can't count our chicks until they hatch and then we will have to decide what to do with them. It might be a perfect opportunity to get my Silkies off nests and let them mother the crossbred chicks because we don't let them keep the Silkie chicks they hatch.

 

[pennyJo1960]

Duck Drover

Sure seems like allot of work but I sure can appreciate the thought
and planning of the breeding program and all the effort being put to
that end goal

 

[Custerchick]

Hi from Custer! Question: how do I start a new thread? Or post. ?

 

[junebuggena]

Hi from Custer! Question: how do I start a new thread? Or post. ?

Click on the Forum tab at the top of the page. Then, choose the board that best pertains to your question. Then select the blue "start a new thread" button.