CHICKENS

[Maelstrom]

Also the eggs have less white to them, so they give that strong yolk flavour.

Silky is the only banty I've had, I got them to cross with the blue eggers, I thought a fluffy white cute little chicken that laid blue eggs, would sell well to the 4H-ers but mother fought me on it she doesn't want me raising chickens to sell I have no clue why? Normal people are quite nuts sometimes.
Anyway back to the subject silky eggs were fairly big for a banty and I saw no real difference on looks or taste in the eggs...the only down side is they live forever after laying quits, if the forever gene in hamburgs worked with them they would be a great deal....wishful thinking maybe?

 

[Elemental]

Many frizzles:
https://www.google.com/search?q=fri...EwjB0N7E6IjJAhUKPiYKHaNWD5U&biw=1920&bih=1006

They're a great bunch! The ones with like bobble pom-poms on their heads, Polish Bantams: I had a pair of those called Olga & Lech. Not all the birds had names; there were 45+ at one time including 9 spare cockerels but some of them did

 

[Maelstrom]

They're a great bunch! The ones with like bobble pom-poms on their heads, Polish Bantams: I had a pair of those called Olga & Lech. Not all the birds had names; there were 45+ at one time including 9 spare cockerels but some of them did

Did you see the row of silkies dyed to look like a rainbow towards the bottom, very funny, a good idea for a petting Zoo maybe you could dye sheep pink and blue too...pre-dyed wool Or get some fluffy white alpacas and dye them too.
What is that chicken that looks like a bowl of orange tan noodles?

I would like to breed some miniature East Friesian milk sheep too...but don't have enough room for them.

my two silky hens names were marshmallow and Cossack...Cossack was the cutest but died at the age of 3

 

[Cosmophylla]

Not satisfied with our seven week old chicks, I went and bought three more four week olds, haha. They are so pretty, though.

Here are the first four.

And here are today's additions. A bit of pekin in there as well.

 

[Marmot]

There's nothing funnier than watching a flock of chickens peck at a Belgian waffle with whip cream and cherries on top, as they don't seem to have any depth perception when it comes to the whip cream part.......

 

[Cosmophylla]

View attachment 21787

RIP little brown and black speckled chick... Killed by an unknown assailant.

 

[tree]

RIP little brown and black speckled chick... Killed by an unknown assailant.

I'm sorry.

 

[Marmot]

RIP little brown and black speckled chick... Killed by an unknown assailant.

I asked a friend of mine once to chick-sit for me over a weekend: How could someone possibly screw that up, right ? Well, when I got home the following day there was one less chick in the box and there was no possible way that one could have climbed out so it appeared as if it had been vaporized, transported, or stolen. This was until it came time to change the water out and when we lifted up the one gallon waterer, well we found the missing chick: Poor little girl didn't stand a chance against something 3,000 times her mass......

 

[tree]

When my mother had to be away for a day or 2 she would get someone else
to tend her chickens. She said she could always count on things to be messed
up somehow. A six hour delay in getting water/food would show up in the egg
count.

On a brighter note---

[Well, it is brighter, unless you put yourself in Henrietta's place.]

 

[zurb]

To encourage my bantams to lay, I carefully blew an egg, and then filled it with putty. For the sake of time, the hole for filling was enlarged to maybe 5-7mm. This super heavy egg was then placed in their laying box.
We went on holiday, and someone else stayed in our house over that period. When we came back, my egg was gone. Turned out they had broken it in their attempts to cook and eat it!
I would've thought it was pretty obvious from the weight and holes that it wasn't eatable!

 

[Maelstrom]

Not satisfied with our seven week old chicks, I went and bought three more four week olds, haha. They are so pretty, though.

Here are the first four.

View attachment 21787


And here are today's additions. A bit of pekin in there as well.

View attachment 21788

Cute what is the little black one? You can buy a chunk of chicken wire fold the corners in and wire some sticks around the bottom for a safe grazing cage to move around on your lawn...if you want to get fancier you can make a flip up lid on the top so you can feed or pick up the chicks, and you can wire a warming light in one corner with a little cardboard nest box under it for them to go warm up under I usually throe a old towel over the nestbox corner to protect them some. You do need to protect your chicks from cats until they are two or three times as big as a robin...and keep any non mothering chickens away from them until they are that big too.

 

[Maelstrom]

To encourage my bantams to lay, I carefully blew an egg, and then filled it with putty. For the sake of time, the hole for filling was enlarged to maybe 5-7mm. This super heavy egg was then placed in their laying box.
We went on holiday, and someone else stayed in our house over that period. When we came back, my egg was gone. Turned out they had broken it in their attempts to cook and eat it!
I would've thought it was pretty obvious from the weight and holes that it wasn't eatable!

That was pretty clever...I never thought of that...I just dumped a old golf ball in the nest it seems to work okay...I was going to lathe? a wooden egg and paint it white but the golf balls seem to work well enough,

 

[zurb]

Haha, too much work. Next time i'll just use a golf ball. Its less likely to get cooked.

 

[Cosmophylla]

Cute what is the little black one? You can buy a chunk of chicken wire fold the corners in and wire some sticks around the bottom for a safe grazing cage to move around on your lawn...if you want to get fancier you can make a flip up lid on the top so you can feed or pick up the chicks, and you can wire a warming light in one corner with a little cardboard nest box under it for them to go warm up under I usually throe a old towel over the nestbox corner to protect them some. You do need to protect your chicks from cats until they are two or three times as big as a robin...and keep any non mothering chickens away from them until they are that big too.

The chicks are as big as you say...probably four times as big as a robin (assuming your robins are the same size as Australian robins). I've been letting them range on the lawn and watching the cats... The mother cat is curious about them but not interested in catching them, it seems. That doesn't mean I'll be complacent , however! The kitten doesn't really go down to where the chicks are so she hasn't really seen them yet, which is part of my plan. Thankfully the chicks are getting used to me being around, and especially bringing food, so I hope that the cats will see that the chooks are part of the family.

The younger ones have almost caught up to the elder in size, which is nice. They are getting along much better, but still tend to hang out in their little trios.

The black one, I think, has Australorp in her. She has the glossy green iridescence in her feathers. The three are siblings, I believe. Same father, at least.

 

[Maelstrom]

[QUOTE="Cosmophylla, The black one, I think, has Australorp in her. She has the glossy green iridescence in her feathers. The three are siblings, I believe. Same father, at least.[/QUOTE]

Astralorp is a very nice egg chicken I haven't had one yet but friend has some I should check with her to see how they came out on eggs. I've found the listed egg rate doesn't always mean much as they are deducting missed egg days due to broodiness. My Americanas and plymouth Rocks are going full boar almost a egg every day from all of them, at the moment they are matching my old reds and sexlinks egg rates only one of those is still alive. I'm very happy with my new flock so far and my food bill is way down.

I keep a light on all night and the calcium rate fairly high it seems to reduce molting and increase the egg rate.

 

[Marmot]

Let's see what your coops look like: I'll start

For those of you with an attention to detail, you'll see that I made mine a 10:1 scale model of the house. I modeled the whole thing up in CAD so that I had complete blueprints & lumber cut lists, and it comes complete with matching paint, and although you can't see it under the snow, scale model shingles..... Because of where I live, I also needed to make the enclosed run mountain lion proof so I used a tri-laminate of chicken netting, 2x4 wire fencing, and 6x6x.125" dia welded hog fencing that went two feet below the ground at the posts, bent 90 degrees and then came another two feet out (underground). This was so that anything attempting to dig under the fencing would dig & dig and find nothing but more fencing underground.

 

[Cosmophylla]

That's a gorgeous coop, Marmot. I fantasised for ages about building a replica of our house for our chooks but I also wanted something I could hose out easily...not made of timber (our house is weatherboard) which will house mites and other pests. We had a big problem with that before when we had a rabbit hutch type coop. It was cute but a real pain to clean. This time around I wanted something I could walk into, sweep out, hose down and disinfect without killing my back.

And so we built this.

It has pavers beneath it to stop rats tunnelling in from below and the sides of their yard/run has corrugated iron (don't know if it has a different name overseas - it's metal roof sheeting, like the stuff the chook shed is made of) sunk into the ground along the fences to stop foxes.

Above the door you can see wire trellis supported by hardwood stakes... That's my temporary solution to the overhanging thornless blackberry... I want to give the chooks some shelter from the sun but don't have the energy at present to build a proper frame to support the plant. So this will do for now.

 

[Maelstrom]

That's a gorgeous coop, Marmot. I fantasised for ages about building a replica of our house for our chooks but I also wanted something I could hose out easily...not made of timber (our house is weatherboard) which will house mites and other pests. We had a big problem with that before when we had a rabbit hutch type coop. It was cute but a real pain to clean. This time around I wanted something I could walk into, sweep out, hose down and disinfect without killing my back.

And so we built this.

View attachment 21942

It has pavers beneath it to stop rats tunnelling in from below and the sides of their yard/run has corrugated iron (don't know if it has a different name overseas - it's metal roof sheeting, like the stuff the chook shed is made of) sunk into the ground along the fences to stop foxes.

Above the door you can see wire trellis supported by hardwood stakes... That's my temporary solution to the overhanging thornless blackberry... I want to give the chooks some shelter from the sun but don't have the energy at present to build a proper frame to support the plant. So this will do for now.

Very nice Cosmophylla , I think it will do nicely.

 

[hoeffelt]

Ill take pics of my coop tomorrow here are pics of a few of my chickens

 

[tree]

This isn't so much about chickens, I guess, as it is about people.
My mother had 2 dozen chickens and a fine chain link fence around
the coop.
She died a couple weeks ago. My brother-in-law concluded that the
chickens were worthless if they weren't laying eggs. He doesn't seem
to realize that there is a time of year when they don't lay, if they don't
have lights in the coop.
So he decided it would be fine for the hens to run free.
Too bad 6 dogs, which belong to him & his wife, tore apart 5 hens.
Now they are keeping the gates shut again.

He told me that he 'didn't have time to take care of chickens.'
He isn't employed or in school. He says there isn't time in life for
taking care of chickens because the only point of having a chicken is
for her to lay eggs. Oddly enough, he doesn't regard himself as
worthless for not constantly producing [work] or reproductively.