zip ties and friday night fun

[tcmstalcup]

This was a suggestion from another BYCer but I don't remember who. We will be introducing young chickens to our flock of older chickens this week. At the end of the summer we will be rehoming or tamale making with several of our older hens. Since several of our chickens tend to look alike at adulthood (Welsummers all look quite similar) we went out tonight and put zip ties on our hens that are old. We used a pencil to space it so it wasn't too tight and cut it off as close as possible. My 12 yr old son is a great chickenfarmer and we even got dad to hold the flashlight so I could see. It was kinda fun........
BTW we have welsummers, EE's, one barnevelder, one cuckoo marans, and one leghorn in our preexisting flock. They are all 4 and 5 yrs old.

 

[Ariel301]

Yep, we use zip ties as ID bands too. Cheaper than buying the real thing, since we can get a hundred ties for a dollar at the dollar store.

 

[Tala]

I use zip ties on fast growing chicks, coz they have to be changed constantly anyway. Zip ties are good for temporary banding. Right now all of my for sale/for eating cockerels are banded with red zip ties.

I do prefer to invest in a pack of real legbands for the birds that are going to be permanent members of the flock though. They have numbers and my last name. I like having all of my animals ID'd