The General Chat Thread (2016-2022)

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Lynne Guinne said:
@SatNavSaysStraightOn, you are one good chook momma. Still, blow drying a chicken is seriously :roflmao:
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yeh - I know. Summer time I would have just wrapped her up and dried her off with a towel and put her out to dry out outside but winter? that's another matter entirely. I have 9 chicks to get done in the next few days as well. We were out on Saturday and they couldn't go outside for their dust bath, so they did it in the wood shavings and chick shit... needless to say they are dirty and smelly now! I feel like I have a whole load of children on my hands!

Frizz1974 said:
Wow. That's dedication. How many do you have? Do you keep them for eggs?

We have a single lonely chicken. Our female staffy had a worm infestation this time last year, went mental and killed 2 chooks (actually one was a beautiful Rooster, but that's another story) and we lost our oldest girl to old age.
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Err. well. We started off with 2 this time last year. Gained 3 rescue chooks after that from someone who was a breeder and was clearly out older chooks from her flock (she's now a good friend). Then we adopted a rooster after one of the females got vicious... she ended up being rehomed.
then one of the rescues went broody on us and I have 11 broken ribs at the time, so we just got eggs for her and ended up with chicks.
we also rescued some ex-'free range' hens (horrible conditions and I wish we could have taken more).
I bought 2 more in January... (I do hope you are keeping up here...) that would come to lay around now, to cover the older chooks I had in the flock - top chook was 6 years old, she was the broody one.
Then a friend gave me 13 in exchange for some bike maintenance I did for her in Feb. so I was up to somewhere around 24 of so by then.

Then we had a fox attack which reduced our numbers considerably. the main flock is currently at 10 because of that... Virtually all of my layers and POLs were taken. Though I have been taking roughly 18 or so eggs a week through the whole of winter, and am up to 28 a week right now because all but one POLs are now laying.

Because of the fox attack, I borrowed my friends incubator and put all of the viable eggs (less than a week old) into it and now have 9 surviving chicks (living in the house literally because its too cold outside of them yet)... And then on Saturday we went to our friend taking with us the 2nd of our roosters (she had one from me a few weeks ago) and as my husband phrased it "how many are we coming home with?' I wasn't expecting to come home with any. But this is my friend we are talking about. We came home with 6 pullets all around POL. So there are 10 in the main flock right now, (not counting the one that went to hers).... 9 chicks in the house of which I believe 4 are pullets, 4 are cockerels and 1 is unknown at present, but they are only 6 weeks old so it is a case of wait and see! and then there are 6 pullets in the quarantine shed we have...

So if you are either needing a home for one or wanting one, we are not that far from Sydney and I really do need to visit some friends there - we have only seen them once in the year we have been here and I am more than happy to give you a pullet should you want one (or take off you your single lonely one if you no longer want chooks).

They are all egg chooks. We have quite a few eggs. One of our older girls has started to lay again, in fact of the 9 that can lay, 8 are. the 9th is still a pullet and should be laying by now but isn't so in theory will actually lay eggs for much longer in life (assuming she ever starts!)....

My friend is clearly out her chooks because she is trying to go over to breeding a single breed rather than crosses now and as such needs a home for her remaining pullets. But she can't stop herself putting eggs in an incubator. I took her a dozen blue eggs on Saturday and they all went into her incubator there and then. My rooster has a very high fertility rate! Of the 20 eggs I put in when I lost half my flock, only 2 were not fertile and that was a pullet who had just literally in that week come to lay and only 50% of her eggs were fertile. every other egg was fertile which is exceptionally high as I am sure you know.

So we, unofficially of course, give eggs away to people! Once they are all laying come the spring I am going to be taking well over a dozen eggs a day, if not closer to 18 a day. We should have around 19 or 20 chooks (female) and the one rooster by then (I'm not counting the 4 or 5 cockerels that we will have to rehome as well).
 
BLUE EGGS?!?

When my daughter was little she bailed up a lady in the library who mentioned blue eggs, the following week we were gifted 2 but no incubator here or real knowledge of chooks really.

We do talk about stopping with the chooks... I want a smaller & easier to maintain home for them, as the cleaning is left exclusively to me, though the chooks are technically my teen daughters. We only had one old girl left & my daughter came home with 4 chicks.

We need something that has wheels & could be moved about. The coop has been moved 3 times over the 10 years we have had chooks but it takes 6 strong adults to do this and I don't think it could cope with a fourth move.

There is an old swing set here that could be converted... but I'd love something like this.


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Lynne Guinne said:
Did you use Fels Naptha bar soap? I keep that on hand for poison ivy encounters. Also, make sure everything else that might have come in contact gets washed. You can get PI on you hands by tying your shoelaces if you're really sensitive. Happened to a friend.

Also, if you do get a rash, look for a product that includes Jewelweed. We conveniently had a large grouping of the plant growing right in with our poison ivy at the first house. Good thing they like the same growing environment. A health supply store should have soap/salve/lotion with jewelweed extract. If not, the WWW of shopping is always open.
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Thanks, I need to pick up some naptha soap. I noticed yesterday that there's a lot of poison ivy all surrounding my house. We have about a 1/4 acre of woods on each side of the house, and a 1/2 acre behind the back of the property, all loaded with it.
 
Frizz1974 said:
BLUE EGGS?!?

When my daughter was little she bailed up a lady in the library who mentioned blue eggs, the following week we were gifted 2 but no incubator here or real knowledge of chooks really.

We do talk about stopping with the chooks... I want a smaller & easier to maintain home for them, as the cleaning is left exclusively to me, though the chooks are technically my teen daughters. We only had one old girl left & my daughter came home with 4 chicks.

We need something that has wheels & could be moved about. The coop has been moved 3 times over the 10 years we have had chooks but it takes 6 strong adults to do this and I don't think it could cope with a fourth move.

There is an old swing set here that could be converted... but I'd love something like this.


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We are fortunate that we have numerous areas that can be used for chooks. there is the old stable with hayloft that had a guinea pig/rabbit extension built onto it. We took the internal partitions down and moved over to a deep mulch system (for poop) over their roosts. So far I haven't had to clean it out since the end of November. I just turn it once a week. It doesn't smell and isn't wet and hasn't decomposed to compost, which is more or less the clue that it needs removing. It is filled with sugar cane mulch, a friend uses rice husks which she says are even better!

It is the Araucanas or Amerucanas that produce the blue egg shells. Some easter eggers also do, but most EEs produce anything between white and olive green egg shells. I actually don't have any that do yet, bar one girl who is an EE I think and produces almost pure white egg shells. She's my only white egg shell layer but she's not a pure breed bird. the rest lay various shades of brown and I can tell from the egg exactly which girl has lain what. I did have one rescue ISA brown who laid the darkest brown eggs you can imagine - close to the desired colour for Black Copper Marans (famed for very dark brown egg shells).

We have had one of my husband's work colleague who asked for some eggs (in exchange for some trainers) and when we included some of our precious blue eggs (we only had the one blue egg layer at the time) wouldn't eat them because the shells were not brown and actually threw the eggs away because of the blue shells :dizzy:. We just couldn't get our heads around it. I certainly won't be giving anyone I don't know any of my bantam blue eggs! To me, egg shells can be any colour. I grew up with them as white as paper until brown was the latest 'fad' and whatever the reasoning was behind pushing brown eggs shells out across the UK market. I have a friend who used to give me blue bantam eggs and I'm accustomed to speckled brown eggs as well (which the guy queried if they were OK, hence us finding out about the blue eggs being thrown away by him and his partner!).
 
Thank you..

I'm loving this forum...


And I'm not in Sydney, though I was born there, I'm closer to Bathurst... we came up here from Sydney when we were expecting our first child.
 
SatNavSaysStraightOn said:
...It is the Araucanas or Amerucanas that produce the blue egg shells. Some easter eggers also do, but most EEs produce anything between white and olive green egg shells...
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When our children were small (pre-school or kindergarten age), there was a farmhouse a few miles away that would put out signs for whichever color eggs they were collecting that day. Imagine the fun our kids had when we had green-shelled eggs for our supper of Green Eggs and Ham. Of course, we just HAD to read Dr. Seuss that night, too! :happy:
 
Lullabelle said:
Today the sun hasn't been out much but it is still very hot, the fan is on in the lounge and will be on overnight in the bedroom again :heat:
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Also today it was not very hot , but from tonight there are new record temperatures ... tonight I sleep in the cellar.
 
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Lullabelle said:
Today the sun hasn't been out much but it is still very hot, the fan is on in the lounge and will be on overnight in the bedroom again :heat:
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I'm barely functioning in this heat. I had a fan on all night blowing a few inches from my face. And now I'm sitting with a fan blowing directly at me downstairs. Just heard on the news it was hottest June day for 22 years. Its just horrible!
 
MypinchofItaly said:
Also today it was not very hot today, but from tonight there are new record temperatures ... tonight I sleep in the cellar.
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I visited Como years ago, and I found that temperatures below 30 degrees feel cool enough that all I need to stay cool is an open window. But, that's by a lake, and it wasn't quite that hot!
 
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