LFG

I turn mine with a tractor

I really like the white in those chicks, they are marked well. On the ones that are mossy, that will blend more into the background as they grow. It will still be there, but you will have to look to see it.

Absolutely. No matter how bad a day I may have, an hour with the chickens will make me forget about it all for a while

I have a whole "area" built by my pens, too. It's so relaxing. I have two chairs, a loveseat, and a cooler I built all from pallets around a fire pit. I have 5 pens, so the biggest chore was lugging feeders and waterers out every day. Now I have hanging waterers gravity fed by 5 gallon buckets, and my feeding stations are 4" PVC pipes with a "Y" at the bottom to keep the feed from spilling out. Now all my feeding and watering can be done from the outside, and that cut my chore time by about 75%. All of my nest boxes are accessible from the outside as well

I had to learn that they require much less heat than people think they do. I've had customers send me pictures of their brooders with a 250 watt red bulb hanging 12 inches from the floor, then ask me why their chicks are dying. Yes, they need to be warm, but not all the time. If you have more than 5 or 6 chicks then their body heat is usually enough in the springtime, like you said. I love that coop, BTW Going by your tail feather guessing, if that holds true then I have 13 girls and 3 boys (two died the day after hatch). I don't believe for a minute that I had an 80% female hatch, but I sure hope you're right

Petee, I remember you saying you initially used the lights on the stove for heat. How are you heating them now? For years I used the red heat lamps that everyone sees, but two years ago I switched to a warming plate. It's basically an upside down hotplate that only gets to 95 degrees, and the chicks can get under it when they are cool, but immediately leave the heat if they are too hot. The plates are kind of expensive, but the same thing can be accomplished by using an electric blanket, one the size of a throw is the best. A heating pad will also work. You make a little cave out of the blanket, and the chicks can come and go as they please. It's also much less of a fire hazard, and uses about a quarter of the electricity. The reason I'm bringing this up is our chicks are just getting to the age that they start getting a little rambunctious, maybe a little flighty. This was the biggest advantage to switching away from the heat lamps. The constant light seems to leave them a little agitated, and I was surprised at how much they actually tried to stay away from the heat. The plates seem to give them comfort, like being under a mama hen. My chicks are now much more calm and come to me when I open the door rather than running the opposite direction. They are always going to be a little wild as "teenagers", but switching from lamps to the plates (or cave) has made a world of difference

You know Fed is only in the debate forum and not here to defend himself, right?

well, we could see if someone would post a picture Could you email them to Steve and see if he could post them?

Sometimes I tell my wife I was happier when I was just collecting eggs. Breeding is fun, and challenging, but sometimes it makes you think too much. That's why I keep telling Petee that none of this matters if you aren't showing, but I get the feeling she's like me. I don't show, but I like knowing I have good stock, and I like being able to sell to people who may show

Another thing you will see in the picture with the black rooster is the totally black hens. You don't want them totally black like that, I'm hoping he will help them throw some chicks with better coloring in the hackles. I think all of your chicks are from that pen, and I've decided to keep the ones I hatched for myself, so it will be interesting to see how the colors turn out as they grow. I see you're calling the sex of the chicks based on the appearance of the tail feathers. I've tried that, and it doesn't always hold true, but I hope you're right On mine that are the same age, I'm starting to get decent guesses by the appearance of the combs. The girls' combs will stay small much longer than the boys', and if any of them appear black that is almost guaranteed a girl. Sometimes they will be a pale pinkish/orange. At 3-4 weeks, the boy's combs will start becoming more prominent; thicker, redder, and taller. Wattles (red lobes under the chin) will start appearing much earlier than the girls'.

If you guys are bored with this, let me know, but here's a couple of pictures to tell you what I see when I look at my roosters This black rooster has better color than my blue. That copper in his saddle will keep getting longer, and his overall color will be a nice mix of black and copper. His hackles "neck" are a good mix, and there are no straw colored feathers. His eyes are bright, and he has a really nice uniform comb. The things I want to improve on him are mostly about his body type. He's a long, lean bird. His back and neck are a little too long, chest is a little thin. You want them to be a little more thick Ok, here's the blue with pretty much opposite qualities: His body type is almost perfect. He's a little more compact, nice full chest, holds his tail at the perfect angle. He has the prettiest eyes of any rooster I've ever had, and his foot feathering is exceptional. His drawback is his color. Almost no copper in the saddle, and you can see the halo in his neck. That's more common on the blues because of the lighter feather color, but still could be improved. I will keep the best birds from each of these pens, then cross them to each other to see what produces the best results

White streaking is good, those chicks usually seem to color in the best. The best seem to have the lateral streaks around the eyes. Sometimes the ones with too much white on their entire head will grow out overcolored. You want a nice mix of dark copper and black feathers as adults, you don't want their necks entirely copper, or so much copper that the bottom of the feathers start turning a straw color. That's called a "halo". It's hard to tell which hens throw mossy and which ones don't. If you hatched 10 chicks from one hen, they would all have different "faults". Mossy is not an egregious fault, and I'd say less than 10% of my chicks hatch that way. I'm actually keeping a few mossy hens on purpose, because my main blue rooster is just a little undercolored with copper, so those mossy hens will help add to that. Like I said, if all you want is jumbo dark eggs, none of that matters, but once you start breeding you just look at them differently. The thing that changed the most for me when I started breeding was how I look at roosters. I used to want all girls, now I actually hope for a good number of boys so I have more to pick from for the following year. The rooster accounts for 50% of the genetics of all your chicks, so a good rooster is the biggest need when breeding. If you decide to start breeding those, those roosters will carry some really good genetics As far as belly color, it seems that the ones that look a little yellow grow out with a better coloring than those that are stark white, but none of those rules are set in stone.

Copper spots in the wings this early is good and bad. Thats usually a sign that the birds will be "mossy", a little coppery sheen in the black feathers as adults. Thats not desirable for show, you want the black feathers to be a pure black, but mossy hens typically lay a darker egg

I'm very curious to see if that holds true for you. I've never been able to accurately sex them before about 3-4 weeks old. If you're sending that rooster back, start mixing butter and Lowry's seasoning salt into his feed

That could be possible about the eggs being smaller, but I never start setting pullet eggs until after they've been laying 6-8 weeks. Eggs of the same size hatched, and the roosters are still not full grown, so they aren't abnormally large compared to the hens. Usually my chick sizes correlate with the size of the eggs, but that is a possibility. Both of my last hatches were 18/24, so even with the non hatches a 75% hatch rate is still very good for BCM.

If you send those roosters... Only 6 of the 12 large eggs in this week's set hatched, and the no hatches were mottled. All 12 of the younger girl's eggs hatched. Haven't done the eggtopsies yet, I will tonight, but there may be something going on. Thanks for the heads up. The 6 that did hatch are gorgeous, and are the fattest day old chicks you have ever seen. 2 are blue, and so cute, so just let me know if you want to try again. Maybe by the time you are ready, I'll have figured out which girl is having issues. I know the rooster is getting them all, so maybe she's not totally healthy. In the past when I have lower hatch rates I have put the hens on Nutri-drench and that seems to help, especially in the warmer weather, so it may be time to start again

BTW, you DooBwazzers strike me as my kind of people, so I assume you guys like to grill a lot. Have you ever seen a smoker like that? It's called an Orion, and will smoke a 15lb turkey in about an hour and 45 minutes. I'm not going to say it's as good as the turkeys my grandma slaved over for 6 hours every Thanksgiving, but it's darned close, and so easy it's like cheating

We had a simple graveside ceremony

I have to admit, there was a certain satisfaction to lighting that fire

My favorite rooster name so far was the one that kicked me the most. I named him Smokey, then fattened him up for 2 months

Just the roosters. I named them all when I first started, but it got to be too much to keep up with after about 20 birds or so

I hope you are right about the 4 girls and 3 boys. Is 4 what you wanted?

Ok, can't help myself, here are Petee's nieces and nephews. If anyone else is like me and looks for minute details in the pictures, the chick that looks like it needs a proper cleaning does. That is a phenomena with a highly scientific name called "pasty butt". Some chicks will get a little buildup in their fluff for the first couple of weeks, and you have to dip them in warm water and clean it. It can actually dry to the point that it impedes...progress... and make the chicks sick.

Sometimes I email them to myself and choose a smaller size. Someone smarter than me could probably tell you how to edit on the phone