Recent content by NatJ

It usually works best if all the eggs in one incubator hatch at the same time. If you have two incubators, it can work well to put in eggs once a week. Eggs of different ages can all incubate together in one of the incubators. Then once each week, move the due-to-hatch eggs into the second...

Unfortunately, I am not good at recognizing most aspects of good or poor quality in a chicken.

It looks like that is meant to be mixed into the birds' drinking water. For that, you would mix it at the recommended dosage, and provide that as the only source of water for her to drink. For a single hen, mixing 1/4 teaspoon in 1 quart of water, then using that to refill her water dish each...

I wasn't sure what kind of terms you were asking about, so I was trying to cover some terms (like breed, variety, bantam) that I had not yet seen in any responses, in case the one you needed might be one of them.

Are the offspring fertile? As in, can those offspring produce babies of their own? I think horses and donkeys have always been considered separate species, ever since the concept of species was around at all. And it has been known for thousands of years that donkey x horse produces a mule...

Again, some things will be more applicable than others, but in most cases broiler chicken studies will be more useful than cattle or pig studies. Since there are usually no studies on chickens kept in typical backyard flocks, the broiler studies provide more information than the "none" and "a...

Here is a link to a post I made a few months ago, for someone else with a similar request: https://www.backyardchickens.com/threads/bbs-breeding-and-dilute-white-splash.1608685/page-7#post-27444190 That post includes some discussion of how to use a chicken genetics calculator, but I don't think...

I would see what your smallest measuring spoon is, and try mixing an amount that uses that. 1 gallon uses 1 teaspoon 1/2 gallon uses 1/2 teaspoon 1/4 gallon = 1 quart, uses 1/4 teaspoon 1/8 gallon = 1 pint = 2 cups, uses 1/8 teaspoon 1/16 gallon = 1 cup, uses 1/16 teaspoon In most sets of...

I think it would depend on what information you are trying to find. If you want to know what foods will kill a chicken, and what foods will cause major harm to a chicken, and what foods appear safe for a chicken, I think the broiler studies should be just fine. They will be much more useful...

Bantam means a small chicken. Standard can mean a big chicken (not a bantam.) Standard can also mean several other things, as other posters have said. Silkie is the name of a breed. The Silkie breed has several color varieties: White, Black, Buff, Partridge, and some others. The Silkie breed...

For that exact set of genes, I don't know of any breed. But if you add Co/Co (Columbian), you have any of the blacktailed red chickens: Rhode Island Red, New Hampshire, Production Red.

The genes involved would be: E^Wh/E^Wh (Wheaten, affects how the black and red are arranged) Co/Co (Columbian, makes the chicken have less black and more red) Mh/Mh (Mahogany, turns gold into red) i+/i+ for Rhode Island Reds, I/i+ for Red Sexlinks (absence or presence of Dominant White.) All...

I am not familiar with that product. I found this page that I think is the same: https://www.mbarcpet.com/products/paw-hand-sanitizer The list of ingredients includes "Benzalkonium Chloride 0.13% (Antimicrobial)" So yes, that would probably work. I notice the directions say to apply it to skin...

If you use just RIR and Red Sexlink, I think your birds will all be E^Wh/E^Wh ( pure for Wheaten). Regarding feather colors, Red Sexlink hens should be genetically the same as Rhode Island Reds except that Red Sexlinks usually have Dominant White, and Rhode Island Reds never do.

Yes and yes. As regards coloring, the Red Sexlink should get what you want faster than the White Leghorn. But if you want some of the other Leghorn traits, like temperament, you would obviously want to use the Leghorn. Of course you could do some each way and compare the result: it would be...