My Tintin is just as big (small) as his momma now. He became 2 months old last Thursday.
Because Im not sure if I can keep him I bought hatchery egg again when Black was definitely seriously brooding. This time bantam Amrocks.
Ini mini decided to co-brood. But I don’t thrust the outcome at...
Healthy 6 week old chicks are always feathered.
How many chicks do you have?
If you have like 6 chicks and the temps outside are okay they can go outside in a coop/run without extra warmth.
If it’s cold you need to add a heat source for the chicks.
If the chicks start to peep loudly , its...
Usually I gather the eggs too. Leave 1 fake egg in each of the 2 nests to encourage them to lay there. If I don’t leave a fake egg, they often search for other (inconvenient) places.
But when I have an unwanted broody, I take away the eggs in my two favourite nest boxes and lay a fake egg in a...
Maybe you can’t, but I can. If I leave 5 (fake) eggs in a nestbox where they usually lay their eggs + its spring or summer, I always had a broody within a week.
I know it depends on the individual chicken whether she will become broody or not. But it always works with some of my bantam chickens.
Where I live, the sun comes up at 4.30 in June. Way before most people want to wake up. All the cockerels I kept as long as possible started to crow as soon as the sun came op. Day crowing has to be after 8.30 where I live to avoid neighbours getting annoyed.
I have been reading a lot on ‘no crow collars’ and other rooster collars several years ago. I had cockerels each hatch and live in a small town with neighbours nearby. It seemed the collars often were a torture to the cockerels/roosters. Some cockerels got health problems (breathing) and some...
These are better daylenghts for sure. And probably you have more sunny spells too to make a difference in relation to most of us.
Forgot to ask about the breed (some breeds are known to keep laying in winter as others don’t) and the age of the hens.
I had a young hen (Tournaisis) who skipped...
I never realised all these years that you have several bantams. I believe the definition of bantams is under 1.4 or 1.5 kg.
Standard Dutch should be 450 g. My Dutch are too large with 550 - 600 g. Katrientje is about 850 g. Most bantams are about 1 kg.
Where do you live? How mild is mild. How short are the days around Xmass?
Where I live it doesnt get very cold in winter either (around 0 C) but the day length is only about 9 h in midwinter.
I noticed they started to lay sooner in February when it was very sunny. The cloudy weather we had...
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A chicken that comes out of an average chicken-factory after 18 months has lived a very poor life in an overcrowded environment.
I think the way these poor chickens look is caused by a combination of several things. Food is maybe one of them. The stress and feather pecking from the...
It lacks the political will to do anything about it. The pesticide company has an overwhelming lobby apparatus to convince politicians in EU to maintain the allowance of the use of toxins despite what doctors ask for , for our health. And beekeepers for their honey bees and …..
The farming...
It depends on where you live, how high the risks are.
I keep my small chickens in a coop/a net covered run attached. The free range a couple of hours each day in broad daylight when am home / on times when there are noises of people and cars.
The clever chickens flee upon the run or over the...
The results of the inquiry on longevity I mentioned above. Not on a thread of Perris but almost half a year ago in this long lasting thread (thank you Shad for continuing so long!) :
https://www.backyardchickens.com/threads/shadrachs-ex-battery-and-rescued-chickens-thread.1502267/post-27447083
You don't have to reverse. There are still a lot of heritage breeds that don’t lay an extreme amount of eggs in the first 2 years.
Some BYC keepers have several generations of mixes that get old.
I cant tell if the normal live spans of all heritage breeds are all over 8 years. But my tiny...
I had this problem with my previous phone cameras too. But not with my Iphone (4yo now), and mdh bought a new (expensive) phone with multiple cameras that is good in poor light too.
Since we are talking about small machines… Just to share. The cheapest incubator you can buy (new 20€, I bought...
Attract lots of Dutch farmers and flower growers who use an abundant lot of pesticides and other toxins to destroy the bugs on their crops and in the soil. We have only 25% of the original amount of insects in the Netherlands because of all the round up and other poisons.
Serious: You have my...