Hatch Is Over

[airedale]

Always have a few chickens here on the farm mostly American Gamefowl because of their toughness and ability to survive  dealing with predators as free range birds. Also raised quite a few different game birds over the years such as assorted Pheasant breeds, Quail, and Merriam's Turkeys. Kind of got out of it in recent years but after acquiring a new Setter pup last summer I thought I would get a few birds to help me training her for this fall's hunting season. So I ordered me up a bunch of assorted hatching eggs and fired up the old incubators and had at it. Purchasing hatching eggs are always a big time gamble mostly because of the rough way they are handled during shipping by the US postal service, I have had some eggs not hatch at all and some batches hatch at close to 100%.

Anyhow the past few days the hatch has taken place with typical mixed results with some batches yielding little success and some doing pretty good.

First photo are of mostly Butler Quail chicks sleeping in their typical outward facing circle as they do in the wild. Butlers are the largest of the Bobwhite breed averaging around a pound. There is also one Gray Partridge which at one time were in decent numbers in northern NY and four valley quail.

Next photo is to show some scale in size difference, on the left are the Quail and on the right black Jersey Giants and Malay fowl both reputed to be the largest chicken breeds, they are a first for me so it will be interesting to see how big they grow,

The bottom photo is the what I ended up with  in Pheasants,  3 Bianchi and 2 Zurundnyi

Raising chicks are work but it is something I like doing.

Al

 

 

[grampy]

Looks like ya got a real nice set up for the chicks. Hope it all works out with the birds and the pup! Pretty cool!

[growalot]

You'll like those jersey giants, I have them and Plymouth rocks. One nasty bird that has always given me problems is the Rhode island reds...They have killed other birds and notorious egg eaters at least for me...Ah and they always are the ones to fly at the coop door,talons first when they hear me coming

Edited May 26, 2017 by growalot

[Paula]

I miss my chickens. I mostly had the reds and those roosters were nasty mean!

[Elmo]

Looks like a lot of fun.  Would love to have enough space one day to raise a few.

[WNYBuckHunter]

I got into chickens and turkeys this year. I currently have 21 chickens, mostly Rhode Island Reds, with a few Bantams, some Australops, a Plymouth Rock and a White Silkie. Two more chicks from my girlfriends daughter's school project were added, no idea what they are. I also have 4 Narragansett and 2 Royal Palm turkeys. I got the first group of chicks a couple of months ago, and the Narragansetts a week or so after them. The second group of chicks and Royal Palms are a few weeks old now. So far I have 2 roosters, a Bantam and an Australop, which have started crowing. One of my Narragansett turkeys is definately a tom and has started strutting and gobbling, a second one has started strutting, so I think that one is also a tom. He hasnt started gobbling yet though.

[Core]

I'm working my ass off trying to get some land so I can get chickens (among other things on the land). 

I'm want 3-4 chickens! And I am going to give them stupid names.

[Doewhacker]

I'm waiting on a small Turkey hatch, I have a couple of chicken hens doing the brooding for me. We did some candling and things look good on four of them so I might try and hatch some more too. I think I am skipping the game birds this year because we have a vacation planned for July and I don't want to task someone with caring for our regular flock of birds and a pile of Chukkar.

After that we will doing 100 meat chickens in two batches of 50. I have found that raising and caring for birds is great for the kids and I really enjoy it too.

We run a variety of chickens, 3 ducks, two turkeys and one Banty rooster that keeps all of em line. We had a mess of other Roosters and I finally had enough of them last week. I am considering adding Guinea hens to the mix to free range for ticks.

Last summer we had 120 birds at one point, fun.

[Paula]

25 minutes ago, Core said:

 

I'm want 3-4 chickens! And I am going to give them stupid names.

I sold my eggs, I made up a flyer saying my hens were named not numbered. I had " til of the hen", That's the only name I can think of

[airedale]

Every now and then I get a goofy idea, the plan for this winner is to make a cross of the Jersey Giant and a Malay should make for something interesting and "BIG" I think.

Al

Edited May 26, 2017 by airedale

[Paula]

I would love one of those if they were not mean, but I could have a big cook out.  Lol

[Elmo]

40 minutes ago, Core said:

I'm working my ass off trying to get some land so I can get chickens (among other things on the land). 

I'm want 3-4 chickens! And I am going to give them stupid names.

"I'm going to pet him and kiss him and love him and squeeze him and hug him and call him George."

[Doewhacker]

We only name some of them, Snowwhite because she's a white leghorn. Then we had an Elvis cause he was a hunk of burning love. He left the building last week in the purge. 

We have Big Red who is a Bantam Roo. 

Had a Donald at one point, his comb flopped over which turned into me calling it a comb over which led to thoughts of Donald Trump. 

Sweetpea the hen turkey. 

Tater the Tom turkey. 

Brownie, because shockingly, she is a brown hen. 

Had a cool looking one named Checkers because she had a crazy color pattern like a multicolored checker board. She escaped and something got her one day. 

 

Thats all I can think of at the moment. 

[WNYBuckHunter]

The kids have named some of ours.

Snowball is our little white Bantam hen

Penny is our Bantam rooster. (Haley thought it was going to be a hen)

Penguin is our Australop rooster.

Mystery is our White Silkie.

Storm is our Plymouth Rock.

Chipmunk is an unknown breed chick.

Brownie is another unknown breed chick.

No names for any turkeys yet lol.

[Marion]

No names for any turkeys yet lol.

Thanksgiving & Christmas

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[WNYBuckHunter]

3 hours ago, The Jerkman said:

 

Thanksgiving & Christmas

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LMAO. From what Ive been reading, the heritage breeds generally dont get to their full size until their second year, so I am not going to eat any this year. I also want to breed them, so I need to let them all live this year. I have either 2 or 3 toms and 3 or 4 hens, which should make for egg and poults next year. Then once I see what I get out of that, I can kill some of the second year birds for meat, and let the poults grow and breed, and so on and so forth. Hopefully Ill end up with enough poults to sell a few of them as well.

[Adkhunter1590]

Cool to see there's plenty of other bird keepers on here!

We have been raising chickens for almost 4 years now. Been a lot of fun and the eggs sure are delicious. We recently lost half the flock to a fox so my wife picked up 12 baby chicks from a friend of hers that breeds all sorts of fowl. We also have one of our original hens that's gone broody and has so far hatched 2 eggs but only 1 has made it so far. She's got 2 more underneath her that look like they will hatch any day now.

On top of those we decided to give guinea hens a try and picked up 6 of them. Not sure how it's gonna go since I've heard plenty of bad things about them but figured what the hell we might as well try and find out for ourselves.

Next on my list is turkeys, and then maybe some quail or pheasant if I get ambitious enough and build another pen for them.

[E J]

I have had a terrible problem with minks getting my chickens this year. One got five in late February before I killed it and another one earlier this month that was really sneaky got one a night for four nights in a row before I moved the remaining survivors into my garage so they didn't all get their heads chewed off. I got that one too and it was huge!