What is your "If only someone had told me!" moment?

[Dee-Chick]

I wish someone told me about watering in the winter.....not fun. That cleaning the chicken yard and talking to the ladies would be therapeutic!

 

[Blooie]

I wish someone told me about watering in the winter.....not fun. That cleaning the chicken yard and talking to the ladies would be therapeutic!

Boy I hope that's theraputic.....I think after getting into all of this I NEED therapy!

 

[Blue chick]

I have had sever chick's over the years with legs that are too spread out for them to walk. I tried several things. But the best thing is to buy some wire fencing that has the very smallest squares. Cut it to fit the inside of an aquarium/terrarium. And make sure there are no poking edges. They can get traction and hold themselves up on the chicken fencing wire and after about a week they are strong enough to hold themselves up. It has worked really well for both chickens and turkeys.

 

[lucky fowl]

I wish someone would have told me that they will eat anything that will fit in their beaks. So clean the area of things you don't want your chicken eating.

 

[lsmith]

I wish someone had told me that lining my brooder with newspaper under the saw dust meant that the chicks would shred the newspaper. Lol

 

[Jaimn]

I haven't researched it, but right now we are taking care of an ugly chicken - err - a baby duck. The two mama hens that we have brooding a dozen eggs and six chicks also hatched a duck, but were scared of it's not-chick-like quacking. So the duckling has come inside and become the darling of our home.... and I thought that I was passed "bathtub babies" once we raised our brooders! So chickens will hatch but not raise ducklings - duly noted. Now they will hopefully hatch the other two duck eggs and then our "ugly chicken baby" will have some buddies.

 

[chickisoup]

Quote: Sadly, you are correct in the practices, MOST OF THE TIME. Hatcheries can be, and often are, the puppy mills of the poultry world. BUT Not all hatcheries are this evil. And, even so, the large hatcheries were created as a business to supply the large commercial egg and poultry producers, not the small scale farmer or, more recently, backyard hobbyist. They are not in the business of caring about breeding quality past what the large scale producers care about which is short term, high volume egg production and/or rapid weight gain. Some of them recognized the emerging market for the return of small scale hobby farms and new interest in heritage breeds and backyard flocks.

That said, there are hatcheries out there that do NOT keep their own breeding stock, or get them from those that function, as you described. There are hatcheries out there that truly careabout poultry and work closely with the breeders that supply their eggs and take pride in supplying quality chicks that are good representations of the breeds they represent. (I know of at least one if you wish to pm me). Do your research tho because there are also operations out there that are nothing more than go betweens, just taking your order and passing it on to who knows who but making you think you are buying their pretty little fluffy butts.

 

[SLOchicks]

Thanks deb for that bit about laying down, legs out back, beak down behavior. Only one of my three (Winnie, the buff orpington) does this and only when I have them outside in the sun. The first time she did it, I thought she was dying or playing dead!! My three are 4 weeks old now and are getting bigger every day. I've started introducing new treats every day. I have a mixture of sand, oatmeal, mealworms and cherrios that they get when out of the brooder.

Yum!

 

[chickisoup]

Thanks deb for that bit about laying down, legs out back, beak down behavior. Only one of my three (Winnie, the buff orpington) does this and only when I have them outside in the sun. The first time she did it, I thought she was dying or playing dead!! My three are 4 weeks old now and are getting bigger every day. I've started introducing new treats every day. I have a mixture of sand, oatmeal, mealworms and cherrios that they get when out of the brooder.

Yum!

I wish someone had warned me about that one too! The first time I peeked into the brooder a few hours after bringing my first batch of babies home I thought I had killed them all!!!

Felt so stupid after scaring them half to death and realizing they were just exhausted and enjoying the warm heatlamp

 

[barbiegirl]

I wish someone would have told me that although a broody hen will let me go in and hold her babies with no problems that she will NOT allow others to do so. My silkie had her chicks and I brought her in with her babies until they were big enough to go outside with the rest of the population. My son asked if he could hold the babies and I said go ahead. She came out with her claws out and tried to kill him. I had no clue she would do that because she was so good with me. My son was ok, I caught her before she got to him.

I wish I knew that the 50% boys and girls in a hatch wasn't always true. My silkie hatched out only males, no girls.