INDIANA BYC'ers HERE!

[cganote]

I started sand this year. So far, it keeps up much better than the shavings; the constant rain has created some muddy sand areas though. I think it probably needs raking more often than I do it.

 

[kittydoc]

We lost our blue English Orp roo Junior recently. He was Cogburn's son and a wonderful boy, not quite as big as Cog but with a better comb. With all the rain, I had been avoiding the chicken yard and he was so fluffy Jay didn't notice until he was seriously ill. Crop impaction AND sour crop. I put him on Nystatin and he was better for a few days, then crashed and burned. He died in my arms. I'm still pretty busted up about it. I have no blues to replace him with, but I think I'll keep a solid chocolate cockerel and have mauves. I may hatch a few this season with my choc cuckoo boy and my four blue hens. Anyone interested, potentially?

Lots of chicks hanging around and in need of new homes. Chocolates and chocolate cuckoos mostly. I am redoing my lav breeders and will have some still quite productive lav hens for sale to people I know later on this year. They still lay great, but we are full with young girls.

I have a lovely but lonely choc cuckoo pullet available. Hatched 1/31. @ellymayRans has a pair of her siblings and @Mother2Hens also has one from last season (Mocha, seen in her last post); she also has one of my chocolates, Zipporah. They are so pretty! This pullet is living alone and not liking it. Would give listers a deal on her!

Our Australorp layers are very productive, as our silver grey Dorkings. The latter get boyfriends next week, so I'll have SGD chicks next year. They are SO sweet. They adore DH. I'm getting some LF Cochins and Hamburgs just as pets, all females.

We finally had such a hardcore Orp broody I had to give her eggs to sit. No idea if any will hatch. We'll find out late this week. If it works, it will be our first natural hatch. I hope it works out. We only gave her four eggs and two have gotten soiled, so keep your fingers crossed.

 

[Finnie]

I'm so excited! I have 10 buff Ameraucanas coming today from Frozen Acre Farm in Pennsylvania! The tracking says estimated delivery is noon. But the frustrating thing is, usps never updates their tracking info! Usually there is some kind of update in the middle of the night, but I got up this morning and checked, and there was nothing new. The last update was 2pm yesterday.

Also if anyone is interested in buff ams, I'm going to mention it here first for my BYC friends before I put them on CL or FB or whatever. Minimum to ship was 10 chicks, and I really don't have room for that many. I ought to grow them out and pick my faves before I sell the extras, but I think I will just try to sell 5 right off the bat and only grow out 5. Ideally I want to keep a trio.

So there will be 5 straight run if anybody wants to PM me. These were not cheap, so they will cost more than your average Agrarian chick. But, they come from a show breeder and they are a rare color. Although she did warn me that she hasn't gotten the blue egg color to where she wants it yet.

 

[Faraday40]

Funny story of the day.....

My kids came along when I taught a preschool class last week. It was a great time & DD had Bubbles do her psychic chicken card trick. She's got a serous fan club around town. (Both the hen & DD) My youngest son wanted to make the craft the other teacher had prepared, so he did. I thought it looked cute & hung it up at home.


Today DS asks me, "Why did you hang that up?"
Me "Because you made it, and it's very good."
DS "Mom, you know that poster's impossible, right?."
Me "What do you mean?"
DS "Duh! There's no rooster, so the egg's not fertile. It would never hatch!"

He's right!

Two college educated women didn't even think about it, but a 7 yr old points out the obvious.

Tomorrow's hatch day. I can't wait to hear what the kids will have to say.

 

[pginsber]

Anyone familiar with what frizzles look like at like... 7 days old?




Is this one? I know the chicks father was for sure

Looks like a frizzle to me. Here's a pic of a frizzle silkie chick we had that was about the same age. For grins, I included the after picture of what he grew up to look like, too.

 

[racinchickins]

Quote: Heritage turkeys take about 9 months to grow out as opposed to a broad breasted's 4-5 months. They are also quite a bit smaller than broad breasted, you're not going to get a 25lb+ heritage turkey unless it's a male that is several years old.

Turkey eggs can basically be treated as jumbo chicken eggs. They cook up pretty much the same. You won't get as many eggs though because they are seasonal layers.

I've found the males pretty much ignore chickens unless a rooster gets in their face, then he's in for a flogging. The females are the ones that can harass the chickens if any of them are going to do it. Most of the turkeys I've had tend to leave the chickens alone, but I've had to separate some females before they killed whatever they had decided to pick on.

If you have small chicken doors, the turkeys may have problems with them. I made mine pretty large and the turkeys didn't have a huge problem.

I personally don't have any turkeys at all at the moment, but am thinking of getting some poults soon. I've seen several different varieties on craigslist lately.

 

[wheezy50]

I just put 8 or 9 Midget White turkey eggs in the incubator yesterday. The last batch I tested weren't fertile so hoping for better luck with these.

They are a slightly smaller heritage breed, I think my 1.5 yr old male would dress out around 15 lbs if I were to send home to the freezer. I keep one tom and two hens as pets and/or to hatch eggs from.

I probably will not be keeping many, if any of these poults so I could have some extra in 27 days if the eggs are fertile this time.

They have their own pen now but I've kept them in with the chickens before. They didn't pay much attention to the LF chickens but did harass my bantams from time to time. One bantam rooster was killed, I'm assuming by the hens but he probably instigated the fight. He always tried to show how mighty he was, even though he was a little 4lb OEGB.

 

[CochinCuddlr]

Hey, fellow Hoosiers! We are just west of Fort Wayne.

We've kept a (usually mixed) flock of some sort or other for 25 years, or so. Currently, we have:

- Pair of Narragansett turkeys, with Thomas the Gobbler brooding a clutch of turkey, pea, & duck eggs. His jail-bait wife has chosen the footloose & fancy-free route for the season. This is the first time we've ever had a gobbler go broody!

- Pair of India Blue peafowl (Ricky & Lucy Ricardo), their yearling IB Black Shoulder son Ricky, Junior, & a freshly-hatched peachick, George. Lucy is presently brooding a clutch due to hatch annnnytime!

- One lavender Guinea fowl cock; he needs some wives. Desperately.

- Pair of mismatched ducks: Muscovy drake & Pekin hen; just set 6 of their eggs in my little Brinsea. Waiting for my big Hovabator to arrive to set a bunch more, plus several turkey eggs.

- One going elderly standard Blue Cochin hen; still lays!

- Two barnyard-mix roos & single mixed hen that will be finding new homes very soon (they're blue cochin x ameracauna).

- Arriving between the 16th - 18th: 15 standard Blue Cochin pullet chicks & 2 cockerel chicks.

Blue Cochins are my absolute FAVORITE chooks.

I'm happy to 'meet' everyone, & I look forward to learning more about all of you!

Carlene

 

[jonesfamily6]

Thanks for the input! So it sounds like if we want meat turkeys it's too late to do heritage for Thanksgiving but maybe next year if it takes 9 mths to a year and a half.

On that note, does anyone have any turkey hatching eggs to part with near s side Indy/Mooresville/martinsville or close? What breed and what's your cost on eggs? Then I can research more on the breeds. I saw somewhere in martinsville someone does the bourbon red.

We have an automatic chicken door. It doesn't seem huge. It is 13" high 10.5" wide.

@wheezy50 we might be interested in a few extra. I'm going to read up and talk to the hubby.

 

[ellymayRans]

I have Bourbon red and Midget White. I have Narragansett hens with my Bourbon as I lost my Narragansett Tom. I just hatched 3 Bourbon and have 1 more due along with 3 Narragansett eggs but the 22 I had in my other bator I lost a couple days ago due to the heating element going out and I didn't realize it!!

I haven't started setting any of the MW yet.

I am happy to report that of the 16 shipped Mille Fleur Cochin eggs I have 10 hatching with several still waiting to see how they do.

I collected more eggs today but they are semi muddy. Not sure how they'll do. I washed 2. I also think I got a couple peafowl eggs but I'm betting they're not fertile yet. Also got 5 duck eggs. Not sure if they're from the khaki or Muscovy though. I only have a few Muscovy left in that pen and I don't want to incubate in case they're crosses.

Found my Blue Copper Marans roo dead in their run today! I will have to wait Again for any Marans as I have some chicks growing out that I can only hope for another Roo!!

All this rain is really putting a damper on my spring hatching plans!

A side note. One of the Bourbon poults hatched and it has an eye that it isn't opening. It's not "glued" I checked but it just doesn't open it. It's eye is there and appears fine otherwise. Just strange.

The pics below are of the same chick.

I also moved my quail trio out of the brooder and into a bird cage. Fun!

I realize though that I need to make the floor out of hardware cloth as it currently is just not small enough to be comfortable for them.