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This is my chickens' first summer and I’ve been procrastinating on building something for shade and roostiing/climbing in their west-facing run. Procrastination pays! I just hit a few yard sales and picked up an old wooden coffee table and some old school chairs for less than the cost of 3...

Starting to raise chickens has provided entertainment from something that hasn’t been fun since I was a child. We called them June bugs until someone corrected us. Apparently June bugs have a wider body and iridescent exterior. Then we started calling them just hard-shelled bugs. As a kid I...

Not exactly an emergency or disease, more like a curiosity matter on my part; but this was the most fitting forum I could see to ask. I have a young flock of Barred Rocks and ISA reds (Rock hatch didn’t go so well, so I picked up the others at TSC to have something to raise with the few I...

I need recommendations for a reliable brand/model of heating pad for outdoor brooding. The "mama heating pad" tunnel is the idea, but nights will still be frosty, so it can’t decide to shut off on its own, etc… Y'all know what I need. There seem to be a million options and I’m not certain about...

I have a Coturnix hen sitting on eggs. I noticed her pulling feathers and collecting the eggs in a pile over the weekend and decided to leave her alone and see what happened. Well, she went full on mama mode. While I think this is kinda cool, I have no idea what to do if she manages to actually...

I’m preparing to get my first chickens, soon. Pretty sure I can figure out the keeping them alive part but I don’t want to start out with a bad choice. My priorities are, in this order: Weather hardiness… We get some nights at or below 0° F every winter, many summer days every year above 95°...

I’ve been on BYC for a year now but keeping to the quail forum where I belong. Now I’m looking to get into chickens and know BYC is the place to look for guidance. I’ve been around chickens a bit, but never been the one really responsible for managing them. What I have seen are problems I would...

I have 37 chicks about to go out to the grow out pen. 2 weeks old today. These are from the hens that produced my 14 oz breeders for next year and from those younger, larger gals themselves. The larger of these chicks now will likely be the larger adults. I’m breeding for size because I want...

My second post tonight, but on an entirely different topic. When I started with quail this time last year it was with the understanding that jumbo strains had been developed and that with such a fast breeding cycle, stock size could be optimized rapidly. I started this spring experimenting with...

I’m a year into this with quail now. I’m starting to get the processes refined. Teaching them to drink a few different ways at stages of their growth is in the playbook. They start with a gravity trough under a mason jar; pebbles for the first day or two, then without. Around day 4 or 5 I...

Been a few threads about various aggression issues lately, so just a little anecdote: I culled a few extra males Saturday. In this heat, was only cleaning a couple at a time. When I went back after finishing the first two I opened the cage and reached in to grab a third… just as I was getting...

I wish to utilize horizontal drinking nipples for my jumbo coturnix. This being a half-cooked notion, I looked around the interwebs and found a cheap bag of no-name, plastic threaded ones. These seem way, way too tight for my quail to use. I could see chickens using them, but… nah, not quail...

Hatch began yesterday, this morning I found one I’d seen pipping last night; did a jailbreak for it, let it dry…. early this afternoon I transferred them all (or so I thought) to the brooder. After, as I sifted through eggs and shells, found another one stuck but still moving, shell half zipped...

Got home a bit ago to find the third one just escaping the shell. gonna be a long night of playing midwife (I hope) with 48 more eggs.

This post is just for gits and shiggles. If ya have quail, maybe you can appreciate it. With 23 jumbo coturnix hens I collected 22 eggs today. I’ve learned that while there is an average, there is no normal for their eggs. Every day yields a few freaks. For today it was these three. For those...

Just putting this out there... I keep jumbo Coturnix and made a bad pick for breeding stock. I picked these at 6 wks old around Halloween to be my winter breakfast egg layers and breeders come spring. One male didn’t keep growing like the other choices and I’ve eaten the options since. He's of...

Greetings. I joined a few days ago and just now found this to post an introduction. I’m fairly certain my intro is not of much interest to anyone, really, so I’m just using this to try to figure out how to use this site's forums. If I can upload a pic or video, I will. But so as not to buck the...