Our next to last clutch of chicks are now in their teenage phase. Wanting to start mating, the new Roos of course, and starting to lay little tiny egglettes.
Not sure on breed, but these speckled hens(6) and Rooster are very tame and loving.
These 2 are small, bantams, though skittish, same...
We’ve never tried a hatchery, always Rural King or TSC, so wind up with at least 2 out of 6 being cockerels.
We do have a incubator, though haven’t used it yet. With me being out of town and my wife being busy handling the day to day at home it’s tough to monitor as I’ve read we would need to.
Our bantam went broody 2 months ago. She kept nest hopping and we kept putting the marked eggs back under her. After 2 weeks there were none of the 9 marked eggs left in the nest. Although she is still broody .
It’s good to be cautious, but seems to me that they are doing well.
We usually remove the lamp once we see that they aren’t using it. We had a clutch stop going in the coop due to the lamp, once we removed the lamp they started going back in.
I’ve found that , mostly, they know what they need...
Great article.
Here in Central Florida we set our coops up as a breezeway style/ open air with 2 walls and roof and open/ hardware cloth screen door on both ends.
Our ladies still dug under the shed to get more shade.
We tried tarps to create shade but the donkeys keep trying to eat it and tear...
SO found a person that is looking for roosters and swears they aren’t going to eat them, that’s her only stipulation on giving away the roosters.
We don’t have the heart to cull them , but we have way too many, and for the sake of our ladies backs we have to do something. That and I’m working...
Here’s hoping Relish makes the best of it, sounds like she’s adapting well so far.
Those are some good looking birds.
Not all of our chickens like to roost, though our turkeys roost in the coops with the ladies every night. If Turks refuse to go into coops at dusk we will find them roosting in...
At that age you should keep them in the coop , locked in if possible, so they know they are in their forever home. That also depends on if you have bigun’s in with them.
When we put our RI Blues in the big coop last weekend they stayed in the coop all day as the big girls walked in and out, and...
We have some twerps from the last clutch of 26 that still aren’t roosting at 4+months. They stand on top of the nesting boxes or on the ground while the big girls are roosting on the bars. We’ve gone into the coop at night and picked them up to put them on the roosting bars where they stay until...
Our turkeys are very protective of any chicks we put in the yard. We have 3 grown Toms ,a teen Tom , and a female tween.
They are all watchful of the pullets we have and will puff up and circle us when we are handling the chicks. Our bantams will stand under the Tom’s when the bigger hens pick...
We have two hens in a store coop in the barn that went broody, so we closed the gate to separate them from the others. Now they are wallowing in filth of broken eggs and poop as they will not leave the nest and get almost violent along with the screeching if we try to look under.