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Its looking pretty darn rooish to me, but its a little too early to be positive. I don't suggest putting the rooster up on craigslist, there is a really good chance that he'd end up with someone who is involved in cockfighting, and wants a roo for their fighting cock to beat up on. Really, your best bet is to either process the guy yourself, or find someone else who will do it. Its sometimes possible to find a home with someone who needs a flock-husband, but that is hard to do, and best done through somewhere like BYC.
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Jun 7, 2012 00:05
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A bit of a chicken update. A guy I know from BYC had a bunch of cockerels that he didn't want to process, most of them were barnyard mixes of cuckoo marans and something else, but there was also a very pretty Barnvelder in there. He was really pretty, and they're supposed to be quiet and docile, so we are going to try having a roo again. I hope he's quiet and doesn't crow all day long. Today I saw him giving treats to some of the younger girls, so I think that is a good sign. We've named him Malcolm. :3
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Jun 14, 2012 04:44
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Barnvelders are supposed to lay fairly dark eggs, although I've heard that a lot of the ones in the US don't lay as dark. Next time I talk to the guy I got Malcom from, I'll have to ask how dark an egg he hatched from. I've got four Easter Eggers, two of which aren't laying yet. Oh, I forgot to mention, last Monday I got 2 chickens from these hipsters who were going on vacation for a month and couldn't find anyone to watch their chickens, so they were giving them away. So I got another Easter Egger, who lays really nice minty green eggs, and a Rhode Island Red who isn't laying right now because she's finishing up a molt. But yeah, I might have to try hatching out some Olive Eggers. I'm just scared that if I start hatching, I'll never want to stop.
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Jun 15, 2012 01:21
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Zeta Taskforce: The only problem with that is that you'd still need a way of cleaning up the poop that ended up falling through the wire. Just leaving it there would get really stinky and breed flies like crazy. Cleaning off a poop board isn't that bad, it takes me about five minutes to do it, I use a cheap rear end whisk broom and dust pan, and a putty knife, for scraping any stuck on poo. Greycious: I think that would make a really sweet coop. Go for it!
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Jun 29, 2012 00:31
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Poor Spaghetti  She's had such a hard time, I hope she feels better soon.
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Jul 2, 2012 06:35
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D'aww. I love seramas. They are so little and cute, and the colors are beautiful. If I had the space for 2 flocks, I'd have egg layers, and raise seramas for fun.
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Jul 2, 2012 18:29
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I put out parrot grit (I buy it at the feed store for 10 cents a pound) and oyster shell both. They seem to only eat the oyster shell when they need it.
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Jul 5, 2012 18:31
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So sorry to hear about Spaghetti. Its always sad to lose a pet, no matter the species. I lost my big Buckeye hen, Jean Grey, I think to heat. The rest of them are doing ok with misters and shade, I think she was just too big and overweight to handle the heat, especially with her little bitty pea comb. I'm sad, since she was a sweet girl and a very good broody hen.
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Jul 12, 2012 08:21
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18 weeks is well into 'point of lay', which is when you want to put them on layer feed. Most sources I've seen say to start to transition them to layer feed at 16 weeks. If you want to keep them on starter, get a dish of oyster shell, so they get extra calcium.
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Jul 12, 2012 20:38
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Silkie chicken tastes like chicken. The black bones are really freaky. The meat isn't totally black, more of a very dark gray, but the tendons and stuff is black. Still freaky though. And yummy. Oh, so yummy.
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Jul 26, 2012 04:13
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Please do steal the name, I'd be honored. The only thing that kept my Inara in the coop was putting bird netting over the top, so she couldn't fly over the top. This was after she was flying over a seven foot fence.
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Aug 4, 2012 15:18
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Congrats on the fluffy butts! How exciting. Getting baby chicks is the most awesome. Picesbobbie: Nah, I named her after the character on Firefly. Because she was very pretty, and surprisingly good at flying  I should clarify that she wasn't flying over the fence. She fly up about six feet, grab onto the wire, and then flap/climb up the last bit.
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Aug 6, 2012 22:34
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So much chicken drama the last few weeks. I think I mentioned awhile back, but I had to get rid of my Barnvelder roo, to avoid drama with the one neighbor who had a problem. Anyway, a friend of mine hatched six chicks, one of them had to be put down because of a severe cross beak, and the first night that I had them back at my house, one of them tried to get out of the brooder, got stuck, and died of exposure. And, to top it off, all four of the surviving Olive Egger chicks are starting to look like they're boys. I am going to get at least a couple of new pullets out of this, though. At the same time that my friend hatched out my eggs, she also hatched out a bunch of eggs from The Aloha Project. Basically, its a bunch of people who are trying to create a breed that is similar to Swedish Flower Hens, but with bolder and brighter patterns. The breed standard that they decided on calls for yellow legs, and one of them has willow legs, and the other slate, so they're out of the program. They look like they're going to be really pretty, though, and should be good layers.
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Nov 27, 2012 07:20
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Muffy: She looks pretty normal for an Andalusian. They're pretty small, skinny birds, because they're bred to lay eggs, not for meat. My Andalusian hen, Inara, is three and she's not much heavier than that. And no one is going to keep her from eating if she's hungry 
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Dec 1, 2012 05:54
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In my experience, a mellow chicken is a quiet chicken. Some breeds, like Barred Rocks, and Rhode Island Reds tend to be noisy and also tend to be aggressive. Brahmas, Wyandottes, Ameracuanas and Easter Eggers all tend to be mellow and quiet. But all of these are just a guess. Willow, for example, unlike the other two RIRs I've had, is quiet and mellow, and Inara is a Andalusian (a lot of people will tell you that the Mediteranian breeds are flightly and noisy), the top hen, and she's not that loud.
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Dec 3, 2012 06:45
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http://greenfirefarms.com/store/category/chickens/orpingtons/ Just because I care, Alterian, just because I care  Greenfire Farms is hella expensive, but I've noticed that once Greenfire has done the hard work of importing the birds, a few years later other breeders are selling chicks for a less breathtaking price. There are a bunch of people in the US who have Lavender Orpingtons.
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Dec 11, 2012 08:28
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This sounds totally awesome, and I want to do this with my chicken. But I suck at thinking of cool fortunes, so if anyone has ideas, that would be awesome.
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Dec 27, 2012 07:44
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Velvet Sparrow had some good suggestions, but sometimes, you get a really stubborn egg eater, and the only thing to do is cull them, because eventually the other hens will learn the behavior from them.
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Jan 4, 2013 08:15
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The Schweizerhühner are really nice looking birds! I googled the name, to see if they were in the US at all, and since none of the pages were in English, I'm guessing no. Whenever someone from Europe or the UK post about their birds, I get serious chicken envy, since there are so many cool breeds and varieties that just aren't in the US. I know several people who have tried to raise Appenzeller Spitzhauben in the US, and they all found the ones in the US to be very weak and illness prone, probably because the ones in the US are so inbred.
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Jan 18, 2013 20:33
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In general, egg production drops about 10% each year, so if you get 300 eggs in the first year of laying, by year ten you'll be getting about 30 eggs a year.Getting heritage breeds is the best choice if you want long term production, you get about the same number of eggs over the lifetime of the chicken, but heritage breeds are longer lived and so keep producing for longer. The other thing to consider is that eggs typically get larger after the first year, although you get fewer of them. Laying is also more sporadic, lots of eggs in the spring, very few in the fall and winter. Whether or not that is worth it is a personal choice, and kind of depends on how much space you have, how many eggs you need, and how attached you are to the chickens. Personally I have a couple of favorites that I'll keep until they fall off the perch, and the rest I rotate out by selling them to people who want a laying hen once they start to come up on two. I can only have ten, and I need good production out of my flock.
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Apr 23, 2013 07:45
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I'm so sorry to hear about Roo. He was a cock among cocks.
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May 5, 2013 08:15
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Mypetchicken offers sexed bantams, which is nice. FWIW, I've ordered from both MPC and Meyer and haven't had a problem, so although what happened to Chido's chicks really and truly sucks, you don't have to worry about it too much. Unlike some of the other big hatcheries, which seem to have problems with delays, missed addresses and sickly chicks quite a bit. In other news, I'm going to (hopefully) have some Easter Egger chicks in a couple weeks. I hadn't planned on chicks this year, but Anya (the Barnvelder/California White mix) decided to go broody. And since I'm emotionally incapable of trying to break a broody hen, I got her some fertile eggs. She's been sitting on them like a champ for the past week, so I'm optimistic that some of them will hatch out.
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May 9, 2013 06:36
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How many days behind the eggs in the incubator are the one's under the broody? If you stick the chicks under her as soon as the ones in the incubator hatch, she might abandon the unhatched eggs. Otherwise, as long as the chicks are under a week, just stick them under the broody at night and they should bond without a problem. If her own chicks have already hatched, it can help if the chicks you are introducing are similar in coloring and markings to the already hatched chicks.
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May 12, 2013 07:06
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Chicks! I have them I got fertile eggs to put under my broody hen, and she hatched out three of them. Today she had them out of the nest for the first time, and was teaching them important chicken skills, like scratching and pecking. She also fed them a piece of tomato. Watching a mama hen with her chicks is seriously the cutest thing ever, because they are so intense about it.
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May 27, 2013 07:28
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I'd second the suggestion of getting a Ameraucana rooster-so, so handsome and they are usually really nice, gentlemanly roos. I had a EE roo, named Jayne (when I got him, we thought he was a Wheaten Ameraucana, later worked out that he was a Ameraucana/Salmon Favarolle cross), who was a really sweet boy, always looking for treats for the girls and although he wasn't a little, teeny cock, he didn't hurt Inara (Blue Andalusian, weighs about 4 pounds) at all. I'll try to get pictures posted of my broody and her babies. And of my *other* broody sitting on the nest, due to hatch on the 18th of June. This one is on eight eggs that are either Swedish Flower Hens or Swedish Flower/Sliver Laced Brahma crosses, depending on which roo was doing the job.
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May 30, 2013 03:41
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I'm going to have to disagree, there. An Ameraucana is a specific breed, and any chicken who has the gene for green/blue eggs, and doesn't fit the standard for Ameraucanas is an Easter Egger. So there really isn't any way to say what a Easter Egger does or doesn't look like, and a lot of them do have beards and muffs.
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May 30, 2013 08:30
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The only disadvantage I can think of for letting a broody raise chicks is that you can't control when you are going to get chicks. Otherwise, its a lot less work, and integrating the chicks into the flock goes from 'huge hassle and drama' to 'no big deal'. So much chicken drama at my place. I was at the hospital having a baby, and a neighbor was watching the chickens, since we were busy. When I got back, I found out that while I was away, 2 of the 3 chicks that Cordelia was raising dropped dead, although the surviving chick seems to be doing fine, so I don't even know. Meanwhile, Snya got chased off of the nest she was sitting on by Mystique, a blue Marans who just started laying. The switch in hens seems not to have hurt the chicks, because 7 out of 8 eggs hatched on Monday. The person I got them from was pretty sure that they were mostly fathered by her Swedish Flower roo, although she thought there was a possibility that her silver laced Brahma might have gotten in there a couple of times. Whelp, 4 out of the 7 chicks have feathery feet, so it looks like that Brahma made good use of the chance he had to get busy with the Swedish Flower girls. Chido, I really wish you lived closer, so I could give you a huge, funky looking cock.
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Jun 19, 2013 08:45
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| # ¿ Apr 19, 2024 11:07 |
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This seems to be the month for chicken drama. It became really obvious that the Ameraucana I got was a rooster, and he was being a total hormonal rear end in a top hat. Fortunately I found someone who wanted him to make pretty Easter Eggers and who was confident she could get him to calm down. Which was good, because I don't have the time or energy to try to tame him, even if I was allowed to have roosters, so it was a new home or the stewpot for him. On the good front, when I contacted the guy I got him from, to find out if he had any Ameraucana pullets that I could buy as a replacement, he gave me one for free, which was really awesome. This also ended up being another reason to want Roo-boy gone. The girls were relatively cool about the newcomer, but Roo-boy kept chasing her and beating up on her, and generally making integration a ton harder. Now that he's been gone a couple days, things are going much more smoothly for the pullet, who I've named Storm. The Plague of Broodiness is continuing. I like having a broody every so often, but this is getting nuts. Buffy, the creatively named Buff Orphington, decided to go broody late last week. Getting eggs for her isn't an option, since its been so hot (reaching highs consistently over 115) that viability is likely to be an issue, plus everyone's hens have slowed down because of the heat, and producing a lot of thin shelled, odd shaped and generally bad eggs. for the first time, I tried breaking her by slipping icepacks under her, but that did no good. Happily, a friend is ordering in some chicks from Meyer Hatchery, so I'm going to get chick to slip under her sometime next week. I hope that works, because if it doesn't I have no other options. My girls are handling the heat pretty well, I think that is largely because the coop we have is made of block, and the run is well shaded with shade cloth, plus we run a mister during the hottest part of the day, which seems to really help.
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Jul 7, 2013 22:08
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