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Soooo DP said we should get 4 more from this lady (spoke to her today), she said they might be malting & going off the lay but they WILL lay again but I might take some of my birthday $ and buy myself a silky :) she said they are just going on the lay now, is $30 a good price for 6mth olds???
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Sooo ladies we ended up with 3 white silkies & 2 hy-lines.
The Hy-lines are bigger than our girls and our girls know it, 2 of mine have started fights with the biggest.
DD1 has named her silly PRINCESS, I might just name DD2's FLUFFY so it's easy for her to remember & I haven't named mine yet.
I've put all 5 new ones in a separate room so our girls don't fight, how long should I do that?
Will check the new ones aren't fighting amongst themselves too.
Our girls are out free ranging but I might give the new girls a week inside to get used to it first?????
Anything I should know about the silkies?
Also when we do get eggs should I use a grey lead and write the date on them, how long do they stay 'fresh'?
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i found my chooks had a tussle while they worked out the proverbal "pecking order" then calmed down. and i've added twice to my brood
AFM - the baby chooks are still alive and kicking - kinda sad that they are the "weaker" ones (well delta's not. but still) my chooks down the shed have stepping stones and a wooden ladder to get in and out with all the flooding we've had. once its dried out more i'll be getting some sandy lome (sp?) for the floor to raise it up and re-doing the roof, and looking into some nesting boxes slightly off the ground - so that we can have baby chickens again (not any time soon LOL) and go from there. i might also look into a better drinking system then a few old bowls and a handless pot for drinking. feeding will be all kitchen scraps and grain. but until then...i'll be sloshing it out in the mud to feed them. at least spot servived it all - him and chook and casper almost ended up in the laundry!
The girls have names - Hird The Bird & Charcoal are DP's and FIL's and they are the hy-lines.
Princess, Fluffy & Elina for our pretty new ladies :)
Will give them tonight to settle in then just let them all in together and hope for the best do you think? but wont be letting hte new girls outside for a week or so.. just to be sure.
Got some cute pics on FB, will add to my album here tomorrow.
The girls love the new silkies.
The hy-lines seem quite large, Hird the bird is massive.
ETA: Does anyone know a good poultry forum, there's one on tapatalk 'poultry matters' and then backyard chickens but am I right it's American?
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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?
Have not dealt with an impacted crop before - hope you can get if fixed Jennifer.
As for forums, there is the Backyard Poultry one. I tend to only read though when it comes up in Google searches. Found there is a fair bit of conflicting advice, but in most cases you can find some of the info you are after without having to actually post. Earth Garden has a poultry section, they are (or where in the past, been awhile) quite knowledgeable and friendly.
We are seriously looking at culling our flock and starting again. We got in a couple of dud batches of faverolles eggs and the girls have not been good. Two very undersized, who have both since died. Sweet little girls, just wish I separated them sooner for their own safety. They would have been no good for breeding, but would have made someone a nice pet. Also had crooked beaks in other birds. Add to that we have egg eaters. Hard to pick which ones are doing it, so for all the food, we are not getting many eggs. Probably need $500 for the better incubator and to bring in eggs from a more trusted source.
Jennifer13 i'm sorry to hear that, hopefully the oil and massage helps, if not have you got a local vet you could take her to?
Thanks Astrid, i might poke around them a bit for information, i just want to get some info on the silkies really and maybe even some more ideas with the 'chicken hotel'.
I am planning on running some 'ladders' up to the perches as i don't think the silkies will like how high they are so thinking some flat board with some smaller rungs nailed on will be perfect, might also entice our girls to use them and stop pooping ontop of the nesting boxes and IN them :wall:
I've also found their feed seems to be disapearing quite quickly so i don't know if our girls just had a bigger than usual appetite or if the little sparros are getting in and eating it (maybe even mive or rats), the grain mix is in a feeder lifted off the ground at chook head height so we are going to look at getting netting for the holes in 1 side of the roof and also for the front wire of the cage as they are quite big holes and birds fly straight in, if we use some netting then it's still nice and open and airy for the girls but other birds wont be getting in.
I am thinking of maybe even getting a signe made up to hang near the door 'CHICKEN HOTEL' and writing the girls names on the back of the door in permenant marker :) is that silly?
Astrid - how many birds do you have at the moment, what breeds do you have?
Sorry i'm a bit behind with who has what.
It scares me to think of spending so much money on chooks but i could honestly see myself getting quite addicted to making things better for them or buying more etc etc....
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.
"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!
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?
Dansta - i saw on FB your going to start letting the fuzzbutts out in the play pen?
Well we got 2 eggs in 2 days so either another girl is laying or 1 of the girls is ramping up her efforts, the girls are still so excited about finding eggs and caring for the girls, it's quite nice to watch them.
All 9 girls are out free ranging during the day now, i find the silkies tend to be in before the others and often as it's gotten dark i go down and they are alreayd inside waiting for me, otherwise they come running as soon as i open the gate.
DP has 2 big trailers in the paddock so i am wondering if we move it if there might be eggs under there, i don't really want to get down on hands & knees and check in case there is a snake under there.
All in all i think the girls are going well though and i'm happy they seem ok.
ZF if u see ur chooks under there ever, u can be pretty certain there r no snakes there. The chooks would avoid it like the plage :)
We got our first Silkie egg on the 20th, the girls are ever so excited that their little ones are laying :)
It's starting to get a bit colder here over night and in the morning so hopefully it wont be too bad for the girls as the chicken hotel is quite open!
Still not 100% sure on WHO is laying and although every 2nd day we get an egg in the nesting boxes twice in 2 weeks we've had a random egg behind the door, we also found a silkie egg along side 1 this week :)
Can i just say though, how cute & small are the silkie eggs :p
My poor Mrs Slocombe isn't well. She's had something wrong for a while - I suspect it's a cancer of her reproductive organs or similar (often how hens die) - she has considerable ascites (fluid in her tummy) and has been having a bad week every now and then and then rallying and being really active again for a few months now. This past week though, she's just continued to go down hill. The fluid is really bad, she's very heavy and can no longer get up on the perches - she is sleeping in the nesting box instead.
She's still eating alot an always has a full crop in the afternoons, but she is very slow and wobbly because of her fat tummy.
It makes me so sad to see her like this, she's my favourite girl....I think if she hasn't either improved or passed by Saturday, I am going to have to do the deed because I can't let her suffer....:(
zf: yep the fuzzbutts have a play pen. that i move around the house yard - i'm looking into a rabbit hutch for them to move into very soon as they currently 'roost' in the bath! tilli is a friendly one. she'll come running to me and will sit on my sholder for a while before flying back down the ground. they're also in love with munching on milipeads.
Ausgirl: aww :( i'm sorry to hear that hun :( we've lost two chooks n 12 months. one was littarly keel over a die and the other a stray cat got her. *hug*
AFM: been busy with the fuzzbutts. they're three weeks old now and really cute. tilli is the friendliest of them all. and she'll come running to me. the others run away from me though unless i have oats. they love oats! the chooks in the shead are going well. off the lay it seems - dont really blame them with the weather we've had. hopefully next week i'll make up some roosting boxes for them and fix the chook run up so they cant escape - so then i can 'lock them up' for a week or two so they can learn where to lay - again. one of the chooks. dusty who was one of 4 chicks from hudini is now 3 months old - when can i tell if they're a rooster? im thinking spot maybe (who was from eather chook or casper) a rooster but its hard to tell! the dog chased bandit under the house today...didnt hurt her just scared her. but hopefully he'll grow out of it! i'm also going to look into getting some isa browns (the big friendly ones) so the kids can have some chooks to 'pat' (as the fuzzbutts are bantom/silky/mungrel chooks LOL) and i can also have bigger eggs. i've worked out 1 bantom egg = 1/2 a isla egg haha.
Our Isa Browns are great with the kids, as soon as they hear us coming they wait at the gate and then follow us in (even without food), they are still quiet flighty though in the sense of patting them and you'll probably have more luck with the kids patting your little hand reared fuzzbutts in the long run.
The silkies aren't too bad as they don't seem to see you coming so Miss Z has actually been quick enough to catch one and they are ok to give a quick cuddle and a pat and they don't flap around on her too much.
Miss A doesn't seem quite so sure about them though which is funny as she picks up any other living creature! :rofl:
Of the four ISAs we've had, two hand reared, one of the hand reared ones was okay with being picked up by anyone, the other can only be picked up by me but loves a scratch around her head. Our friendliest hen is one we got at point of lay, she will let just about anyone pick her up and hold her. Our flightiest is another from point of lay. I think it's down to personality as well as raising them.
we lost two more baby chicks. one was due to her getting out of the play pen and nextdoors dog playing with her. and tilli last night :( tilli had a growth on her neck (was really big saturday) and she seemed to be getting weaker and weaker. last night she was so tired. i put her in her own box under the lamp. checked on her at 3am and she was alive. by 7am she'd passed :( so two babies left. and casper is sitting on another lot of eggs. i told DH that after this batch of caspers eather no more or i give them away...i feel so crappy tilli passed away. but thease chicks where the weaker of that brood. so i'll bury her tomorrow...*sigh*
My Mrs Slocombe died on the weekend :(
So sorry ladies.
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Oh dear it's a sad chicken thread and I'm afraid I have bad news too. :(
On Friday morning a dog got into our yard and there were no chickens to be seen and a whole lot of feathers near the fence.
After I walked DD1 to school I looked around the neighbourhood and eventually found our poor Gemma lying upside down in a front yard around the corner. I thought she was dead, legs in the air, but when I picked her up she was somehow still alive. I carried her home to die in dignity. Kept giving her some water by syringe for the day, put her in a cage covered with towels for the night and was very surprised she made it through.
Took her to the vets for ABs on Sat morning, vet not hopeful, but gave her a shot of steroids and ABs and sent me home with syrup to start Sunday if by some miracle she made it. She was a bit more encouraging when she weighed her at 1.8 kg and we found only two puncture wounds (neck and one leg).
Sunday she started eating a bit, by Sunday afternoon she looked much brighter and I thought she'd turned a corner.
She's getting there, wounds healing nicely and eating more. She is perching okay in the cage, but not walking because of her sore leg. But there doesn't appear to be nerve damage, so we'll just have to let her recover at her own pace. Chicken physio twice a day. Lol
There's no sign of the other two, one of which we raised from a chick. :( I put a sign on our fence and we've told the neighbours. Christy suggested phoning vets but no luck yet. I'm very glad DD1's favourite is home and I think she was the only one injured (no other feathers anywhere i could see) so hopefully the other two have found somewhere to stay. But if Gemma recovers and they're still not back we'll have to get her a new friend.
I'm alternating between delight that she looks like pulling through and sadness that our other girls aren't home.
And looking after her is time consuming! I am taking a variety of food out to her every hour, twice a day medicine, cleaning the cage out, getting her out to sit/stand on the grass a bit, I could make it as a chicken nurse!
Oh Jennifer13 :(
So sorry for all the chicken sadness ladies.
We've been getting a few eggs, we had 3 the other day & randomly get an egg other days :)
The girls love finding the eggs & even better they like eating them!
Penelope seems to have lost quite a few feathers, the others don't seem to be molting as much but hers are quite noticeable, is that normal?
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zf: yay on finding eggs! and the girls eating them too. always a good thing! as for the feathers i have no idea :dunno: maybe shes getting tussles with the others?
AFM: i think this time next week all the fuzzbutts will be gone. ying and yang both have growths on their chests - that are only getting bigger and poor yang has an air bubble on her right leg :cry: its huge. i've preaced it twice with a sterile pin and it made no differance. if they get worse i'll be ending their lives as i cant allow them to live with this - knowing the growths may well kill them when they cant breath/eat (and neighbours have said this is most likely what'll happen) im angry 'cus they didnt drown in the floods but will most likely have to die any way. and its even worse that i've put so much into them and this happens. ARGH. casper is sitting on 6 eggs so hopefully we'll get some baby chicks from her - after that i'll be taking eggs away so we dont end up with too many chickens and any we do end up with - i'll be giving away.
Oh no, Dansta. :( I hope the new chicks to come have a much better run.
Still no sign of our two missing girls and I've rung around all the vets in the area with no luck.
But Gemma is improving day by day. She's trying to move around more although she still can't balance properly. But she can stand up now and her wounds have almost healed over. She's in good shape overall so it's just giving her some time to recuperate. I'll move her into the coop on the weekend if she continues to improve, at least during the day. I'm confident she'll be back to her normal self eventually. It's a bit of a miracle actually, considering last Friday morning I found her upside down legs in the air and more than half dead.