****Winter**** Chicken Moma chat thread. Join in the chat!

[sarahannecloud9]

Elly May's crazy double, blue chick with brass, one of the white chicks (turns out she's a cross from the rsl!!!!!!), a perfect blue pullet I'll be able to keep, and the new buckeye that made it!!!!

[sarahannecloud9]

The falled tree:


The soil I'm getting from around that stump!!

[sarahannecloud9]

Fun pics!

[slimy72]

Originally Posted by 3lilbubs I really can't complain about our RIR's too much either, they're good faithful layers. Nice big eggs. I haven't experienced enough of the cold-climate hens to say what would be good for your situation but I wanted to say that the rich yolks is all in what you feed them. A lot of kitchen scraps and access to grass, bugs and lot and lots of greens is what gives that lovely dark orange yolk. I have friends that love their orpingtons, and that they're gentle giants so I would say you probably couldn't go wrong there, but if I can make a suggestion from my own experience in my flock, I would never get just one of any specific breed ever again. Only in pairs. The one "different" girl always seems to get picked on. Good luck and enjoy those chicks, they are so cute!

Interesting about the one odd ball chicken. We've never really seen that. We started with 4 RIR, 1 black SX Link, and my banty/Orpington cross and the RIR never seem to pick on any of them. 1 of the RIR, and the Black one both turned out to be roosters so we ate them, along with our two older wellsummers. And one of the RIRs died for no known reason. So it's been these three for almost 6 months and we've never seen any picking. But maybe we'll try getting two different ones. We'll just see what we find I guess. In the past, we've hatched our own chicks, but I"m just not up to it this year. The feed store just got their first shipment of chicks in so I think we are just going to take the easy way out this year and go up there and buy some pullets.

[sarahannecloud9]

Did you see what I said about the buckeyes. The link is full of great info on them. They are an amazing breed. The lady I got my eggs from this round said hers are all sweeties. Very hearty as well. Do you think they have any buckeyes on hand there? It's a slim chance.

[slimy72]

I read through it, but I was also thinking it was a slim chance. Although I will say our store is awesome! We have three feed stores in town, two of them are just avereage on chicks they get in. The third one has all kinds of chicks though. So many uniquie breeds, so they just might. I'm thinking i just need to go and see what they have. We are thinking about hatching out chicks for meat though. But I want to be sure I have some pullets. We have terrible luck. We used to have ducks for eggs. We hatched out 8 ducks and only got one girl. All the others were boys. Last year we hatched out 4 chickens and only 1 was a girl (it's the cross bred girl I still have the other two came from the store because we didn't get enough girls.) So we're thinking this year we'll buy a few to make sure we have enough girls, and then hatch out a batch and if there are girls great we'll keep what we want but if not it's no biggie and we'll eat them.

[slimy72]

One thing I didn't find on the link, are buckeyes good dual purpose breeds? What ever we raise we like to hatch and raise chicks for meat so we prefer breeds that have decent meat too. I think that's another reason we tend to lean toward the RIRs and Buff Orpingtons. But those buckeyes are pretty and I wouldn't mind them if they have good meat too.

[3lilbubs]

Buckeyes are excellent dual purpose, and they were actually bred for that. In fact, they were what dh and I were considering growing as heritage meat birds because they are said to have a larger breast than most dual birds and good flavor. Most feed stores will take orders, since they are already ordering over 100 birds it doesn't cost them more to get yours too. Just ask that they be marked somehow.

Sorry about all your male birds, that stinks! In my last hatch I got 3 males, 1 female as well. Hopefully the group in have in the incubator now will be better. I do have 2 black sexlink gals and they lay as well as the RIR's but since you mentioned wanting a friendlier hen, I will tell you they quite bold and will take food or anything else they want from your hand and nip at you if they're bored. They are on the larger side. I think it's the BR in them.

Sarah your birds are getting so pretty, and that white chick is crazy cool! She looks like a paint horse! LOL What happened with the white EE? Did it calm down?

Unfortunately, the seller of the eggs I bought believes firmly that I'm a horrible person for asking other customers about their experience. He posted in a thread I had in the incubating eggs forum and posted our private pms and basically just slammed me. Then he carried on and on in pms. I was shocked, I just wanted to cry. I did nothing to this guy, I never mentioned his biz to anyone, never said anything bad about them and was nothing but polite. I think people here know me well enough to know I wouldn't do that. I never asked for my money back (though I should have) or for another set of eggs. He volunteered the information himself in pm that they knowingly have a 15% or less success rate shipping to the west coast and 0% success during winter. With that information, he should not be accepting orders to my area. I spoke to another lady that said her experience was identical to mine, and she'd gone thru 2 sets of eggs with no success. And with that, I had one more quitter egg yesterday, the white silkie. Poor little soul. I feel badly for even setting these eggs now, I knew better. I would never have chosen these eggs out of my own flock to set. So there's one left, just a grey silkie. FX it's female. *sigh* I reported him and the mods removed the thread in the forum, and hopefully they'll talk some sense into him about the posts. I was trying to figure out what I did wrong, but everyone that posted in my thread on the forum was as stunned as I was. What a crazy weekend.

In more positive news, all the other eggs are looking great, happy little jumping bean babies. Can't wait to meet them in 11 days!

[Squeaky McMurdo]

Originally Posted by slimy72 I read through it, but I was also thinking it was a slim chance. Although I will say our store is awesome! We have three feed stores in town, two of them are just avereage on chicks they get in. The third one has all kinds of chicks though. So many uniquie breeds, so they just might. I'm thinking i just need to go and see what they have.

Do you mind sharing which store? I go to Northern Utah fairly often, and getting some chicks during one of our runs would be fun.

[slimy72]

The IFA in Ogden has a really good selection of different breed pullets. They aren't all in yet, and it will improve in a month or two, but even right now they have quite a few.