Poultry Keeping General Discussion #1

jen : aww :( poor chook. cant help with what to do...hopefully it gets better :(

Astrid - could you use a warm pets bed for hatching eggs? or would that not work (we've hached all ours under the chooks)

ZF: your white slikys look like the one i had. but she was a japanese silky (i think) called lady. as for the perches they might like something "thicker" to hold onto as they climb up KWIM? my skilys will perch happily about mid-thigh level on their perch (just a fancy H frame but with three cross bars) as for the feed it might be mice? i throw out about 4 or 5 hand fulls of grain each moring and two at night (in the shed) for my girls. they free range from dawn til almost dark (they've worked out how to push the door open, LOL) so they eat alot of bugs

AFM: fuzzbutts are doing well. chaseing bugs that fly around their heating lamp. its quite amuseing to hear them cherping at like 10 at night while one runns around the box with the prized bugg in beak! i took them out side yesterday - for the first time they where on the gass and kinda looked at me like "what the hell is this?!?" and i took some photos (on FB) of them. every time i put the diggie cam down they ran over to it and pecked it! so cute. they still get time out in the kitchen while the dogs locked up. tilli spent some time on my lap last night watching bones. the old man next door told me if i handled them too much i'd "kill them" but they seem to be doing really well. seeing as three out of the four, by rights should be dead as they where the 'weaker' ones! oh well.

now i'm off to draw up plans for the new chook shed and sort out where i'm going to plant some new shrubs for them to hide in!

Hye ladies HERE are a few pics of the new girls - i did have a question with the silkies though - 2 of them seem to have the nice dark 'dangly' bits on the sides of their beaks but 1 doesn't... are these dangly bits part of their''combs' - see i really am a novice.

I can see a big difference in the combs of our new girls compared to our old girls in that they are a deeper red and are not floppy at all, i keep forgetting to get pics of our old girls now to compare to when we got them.
The new girls really are quite big compared to the old ones, i've let them all in together this morning so hopefully they have fought out the pecking order and are all being friendly now, will be letting our girls out soon and leaving the new girls to play inside alone.

Our current perch is about hip height on me so probably a little too high for them, i will add the little ladder and mabe run some bars off the sides for the silkies.

Well, my backyard veterinary skills seem to have paid off. She had done an oily poo during the night and was a bit feistier when I tried to syringe some water into her beak this morning. I left some soft mashed up food for her and shut her in the coop by herself. Went out about half an hour ago and the food was half eaten and she was bashing on the door to be let out! Crop almost back to normal size as far as I can tell, she doesn't want me to catch her now. I took some more food out for them all and she was rushing in along with the others.

Phew! Chicken crisis avoided. I'll keep an eye on her and make sure I offer plenty of alternatives to seed for a couple of days to make sure it doesn't reoccur. If anyone else gets an impacted crop, the warm olive oil down the beak and massage of the crop clearly works.

Dansta - the chicks sound so cute! I loved having our two first chicks as little ones. It was a great way to bring them into the family.

ZF - sounds like the new ones are a lot healthier. My hen that had the impacted crop had a floppy comb at the same time (doesn't usually). I'll watch how long it takes to come back up, but I'm assuming the comb is a sign of health.

:dance: WE GOT OUR VERY FIRST EGG :dance:
I am pretty sure it came from Charcoal but the girls are so excited that they FINALLY got an egg.. so so glad we bought the new girls yesterday now!

It's true, i saw the egg, and it was MASSIVE! (according to ZFs DD1)

That's so cool Zarava! We got our first egg today, from the blue bantam. It was tiny and cute :). Can't wait til the others start laying too.

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It's true, i saw the egg, and it was MASSIVE! (according to ZFs DD1)

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"daddy it was huge, the biggest I've ever seen" :rofl: can get excited the girl!


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Woohoo ZF! Let's hope there are many more.

Our sick girl is def back to normal, was running around with the others and her crop was fine.

I don't eat egg but I had a taste tonight, it was ok.
DP & the girls fried it, seasoned a little and the girls actually fought over it, that's a first.. Might be a chance to get them eating egg ;)


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Congrats on the egg ZF!!

We have 30+ chooks at the moment.
Some full Australorps, the rooster is quite a good specimin, but getting old.
Faverolles (rare breed) - mix of lines at the moment (one of which we regret getting in)
Isa Browns - rescue chooks
Sussex bantam cross (we think with fav)
Cross breeds - Austr x Fav (these come out in many ways and taste really good), Aust x Isa and Fav x Isa. Any crosses with the ISA's seem to be boys.
Oh and 2 turkeys.

We already have an incubator. It is a Bellsouth 100, a white foam box one. Well, priced, but limited life as the foam does degrade. As we have to pay a fair bit of money for rare breed eggs of a good line, we can no longer risk an incubator on the way out, or under a broody. For some reason our broodies hate to be moved, plus some are just crap at it. Our best unfortunately stayed out one night and died in the cold. The old incubator is perfect for the actual hatching, as it has more space for the chicks and they wont mess with the good one.

Got our 2nd egg today :) DD2 found it this time without DD1 and she was so excited.
Going to clean out the water tomorrow, get rid of the poop on the nesting boxes (damn chooks not using the perches) so might let the new birds outside for 20min while I clean then pop them back in.


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Cool ZF, we got our second bantam egg today too. Might crack them both for breakfast.

Girls want to make a pancake with ours ;)
Woo hoo for eggs, how eggciting :rofl:


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Let the hy-lines out with the other girls today but the silkies seem quite comfortable inside so might give them a bit longer before getting them out free ranging.
Found Dora on the other side of the fence today, no idea how she got over but she was wandering around, lucky she didn't fall in the creek :wall:

Fence guy came today and let all three chickens out into the neighbour's yard. :wall: My obedient chicken came back straight away but the other two were nuisances! The one that was impacted finally decided that she would rather be on our side of the fence with the seed so let me catch her but the obstinate one needed to be shown the way back through the gate. Eventually.

The only downside of freeranging in your front yard!

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One of our girls has an impacted crop.. :( i've tried the olive oil and massage this afternoon and will try again tomorrow but I'm worried it won't work.

Suggestions?

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You are doing the right thing - that's about all you can do - lots of massage to break up the mass that's in there. There are surgical methods but I wouldn't like to try them.

Yeah, it worked ausgirl - she's back to her normal sprightly self! Hence today's escape effort. Cheeky girl, only four days ago she was lying in my lap looking very dodgy. :p

SJen&zf - my girls freerange all over our.property...and the.paddoc next door and have been.known to go out onto the nature strip and next door. And drink out of the fish pond too.

Afm fuzzbutts are doing well they have grain and bugs. Im looking at making a play pen for them so they can.spend some time.forageing. Any one know when I can.let them.roam with/roost with my.chooks?