Post by cowgirlup on May 25, 2012 16:49:30 GMT -7
Now about chickens...SORRY THIS IS GONNA BE LOOONG!!!
I don't know what comes first, the chicken or the egg,...so I am going to assume everyone will start with grown birds as they are the easiest and cheapest to aquire and take care of. HERE we go...
Laying hens will lay eggs with or without a rooster, but seem to lay approximately 20% MORE eggs if there IS a rooster present. However he only serves a few purposes: breeding, alarm clock, butching, crowing at night when somethign is messing around the chicken house & they are disturbed, attracting predators by crowing. However during the day, a rooster will also alarm hens when there is a hawk hunting by making a gravely sounding squak that sounds a LOT like the word HAWK drawn out (haaaaaawk). hens will run for cover and roosters of certain breeds are known to flog hawks when they try to swoop in, and some will even try to fight foxes. A roosters gets hackle and saddle feathers. The hackle feathers grow on the neck and the saddle feathers grow on the back. These can be cut off and used for making different kinds of fishing lures, and they will grow back...just snip them off, do NOT pull them out. They are long and thin with almost a soft hair like feel to them. Hens do not get these. When butchering a chicken. the feathers from between the legs back to the tail will be fluffy looking. These can be pulled dry and collected and work wonderfully for placing in a pillow or cloth package to absorb fluid such as from a large wound.
You can look at a hen and tell at what stage she at in laying. These are the ways:
1)if her legs have a yellow color to them then she is either molting or just starting to lay, the more she lays the more the yellow tint will go away. This yellow is actually where the yolk gets its color from.
2)If her comb (top of head) and wattles (under beak) are bright red and waxy, she is laying eggs, if theese are dry & shriveled looking, she is either molting or not laying.
3) if you hold her upside down, she will go limp, spread the feathers away from her butthole. if it looks large and moist, she IS without fail a regular layer. if her butt looks small, puckered and dry, she has not laid an egg in a long time, possibly due to molting, age or she simply is not a layer.
If all 3 of these are combined and a hen fits all 3 layer catagories, she will lay approximately 6 out of 7 days, anything less and it may be due to her being old, young, molting or simply a bad hen. If she is old, get rid of her, sell her, put her in a slow cooker, whatever. All she is doing is eating your feed and not earning her keep. if she is young, she should start laying from 6 months old to 1 year old, depending on the breed. I prefer hens that wait until they are a year old to lay, as they have a longer laying cycle, longer life span, bigger eggs, more consistant pattern, better producers, and generally have better health. If a hen is not laying by the time she is 15 months old, get rid of her, she is no good. A LOT of people swear by using younger hens, but I don't...some breeds are meant to lay early, like leghorns. but they generally are to skinny for butchering and getting a good meal and they don't lay well in the cold or extreme heat. I like a dual purpose breed. They mature slower, lay in any weather condition, make excellent butcher birds, and tend to make good broody hens (settin & hatching chicks) if you don't want to use an incubator. I like these breeds: Rhode Island Reds, Dominique (dominicker), Barred Rock, Well Summer, Buff Orpington, California Whites & Cochins. You can tell what color eggs a hen lays by the color of her ears. If her ears are white, she lays a white egg. If they are ANY other color, chances are she lays brown eggs, unless she has Auracana or Americana in her, in this case she can lay pink, green, blue or gold tingted eggs.
If you live in a climate where it gets EXTREMELY cold in the winter, consider a breed with a rose comb meaning the comb on its head will be a gathering of bumps sitting close to the head. A single comb will stand up straight off the head and in very cold weather, these combs will frost bite and turn black or grey, but will not fall off. I don't have bad super winters, but keep a 40 watt light bulb above my roost pole in the winter to avoid this problem. Large breeds only need about 8-10 inches of roost space on a pole PER bird. They will gather close in all seasons for the warmth and protection. I like to have a couple of exrta roost poles in case it is very warm & they want to spread out a little or I want to add new birds. You must teach young birds to roost...simply go after dark to the house and place tehm gently on the roost poles and slowly let go making sure they have their balance. Some birds it only takes once or twice, others take a week or two.
Keep in mind MITES love to feed off chickens. They can and will suck a chicken to death if left untended and will decimate a flock. Chickens infested with mites are very poor layers. I use a simple 5% Seven dust for poultry once a month. I go in during the day and sprinkle it in the nest boxes, on the floor & roost poles and even sling it in the air to get on the rafters. I return after dark and doing EVERY SINGLE CHICKEN I will take them gently and calmly off the roost, turn them upside down dust all the underfeathers & turn them over & dust the back. MAKE SURE it gets to the flesh not just on the outside of the feathers or its a lost cause. This keeps the mites off my birds and it is a cheap way to help keep them healthy. A mite is to a chicken as lice is to a human...remember that. The best thing to do is dust them regularly reguardless of mites or not, since you must have VERY good eyes to see them. The best way to check is by holding your bird by the legs upside down and spreading the feathers away from the anal opening, you will see TINY little critters move towards the feathers...but sometimes this doesn't even work. Just dust them to be safe.
A GOOd hen will generally lay for 6-9 months before going into a molting process. She will loose her feathers in stages: wings, neck, back, tail, legs. They will grow back in the same order, she will look rough and messed up for about 2-3 months sometimes up to 4 months. Generally you will be lucky to get 1 egg a week out of a molting layer, UNLESS you feed a pelleted laying feed. Then if you are lucky, you may get 3 eggs a week. I will discuss feed shortly. A hen will start laying again regularly as she ends her molt. However even the best of hens will decline in production after EVERY molt. If she laid eggs 6 days a week before now she will lay 5 days a week, next time 4 days a week, and so on. I get rid of hens that reach 4 years old reguardless of how good they are laying. These can be sold as producing hens and bring anywhere from $7-$20 per bird depending on breed. hens will molt every 6-9 moths regularly after teh first molting.
A hen must have a rooster to produce fertile eggs. You will know an egg is fertile when you crack it open to eat because of the little white spot on the yolk. This is NOT the sperm, but the embryo. The yolk is what feeds the embryo. The whites of the egg are what cushions the embryo from the shell.
A hen will pick a spot and start collecting eggs to set on when she is ready to go broody. She will gather anywhere from 8-15 eggs before she starts setting. You will know a hen is getting ready to go broody when you approach the nest and she will not leave it, but instead, tuck her neck in, fluff up her feathers and make a growling sound as you approach her. When she is setting or has hatching eggs, you may even get pecked (rather hard) and it can be startling if you don't know what to expect. If you have thin skin or easily bruise, WEAR GLOVES!!! I will take a black wax crayola and mark the eggs as she is gathering them. I pick which ones I want set on, and add them from other nests. Ones I don't want set on, I remove daily as other hens will lay in her nest as well. Even when she is at full brood, other hens can and will run her off the nest and "break her up" meaning she won't set the nest and the eggs are a total lost. I will let her pick the nest & when I see she has no intentions of leaving her nest, I will use a sour cream container for water and set it in a front corner of her nest with water in it and place a handful of chicken scratch (mixed corn chops and millo) in the other corner and place a piece of wire grill or hardware cloth over her opening. Other birds cannot bother her and she can eat & drink in piece. A hen will loose a LOT of weight setting. She will go the last 2 weeks without EVER leaving the nest if given the option and other hens leave her alone...but they won't. I feed & water her every morning. I replace the pine shavings in my nest boxes about every 3 months and add to them as needed, but I make sure she has all clean bedding right before she goes to brood. When the chicks hatch, I take them away at 1 day old, but it may take up to 4 days for all her eggs to hatch. Chickens are carnivorious. They LOVE to eat mice, insects, etc. Other chickens will eat her young, I have seen this happen MANY times, but generally only in birds that are kept confined. Besides, my brooding them will let her start laying within a week and keep predators such as snakes, rats, and other things from eating the chicks. It takes 21-23 days to hatch them whether under a chicken or in an incubator.
__________________
I don't know what comes first, the chicken or the egg,...so I am going to assume everyone will start with grown birds as they are the easiest and cheapest to aquire and take care of. HERE we go...
Laying hens will lay eggs with or without a rooster, but seem to lay approximately 20% MORE eggs if there IS a rooster present. However he only serves a few purposes: breeding, alarm clock, butching, crowing at night when somethign is messing around the chicken house & they are disturbed, attracting predators by crowing. However during the day, a rooster will also alarm hens when there is a hawk hunting by making a gravely sounding squak that sounds a LOT like the word HAWK drawn out (haaaaaawk). hens will run for cover and roosters of certain breeds are known to flog hawks when they try to swoop in, and some will even try to fight foxes. A roosters gets hackle and saddle feathers. The hackle feathers grow on the neck and the saddle feathers grow on the back. These can be cut off and used for making different kinds of fishing lures, and they will grow back...just snip them off, do NOT pull them out. They are long and thin with almost a soft hair like feel to them. Hens do not get these. When butchering a chicken. the feathers from between the legs back to the tail will be fluffy looking. These can be pulled dry and collected and work wonderfully for placing in a pillow or cloth package to absorb fluid such as from a large wound.
You can look at a hen and tell at what stage she at in laying. These are the ways:
1)if her legs have a yellow color to them then she is either molting or just starting to lay, the more she lays the more the yellow tint will go away. This yellow is actually where the yolk gets its color from.
2)If her comb (top of head) and wattles (under beak) are bright red and waxy, she is laying eggs, if theese are dry & shriveled looking, she is either molting or not laying.
3) if you hold her upside down, she will go limp, spread the feathers away from her butthole. if it looks large and moist, she IS without fail a regular layer. if her butt looks small, puckered and dry, she has not laid an egg in a long time, possibly due to molting, age or she simply is not a layer.
If all 3 of these are combined and a hen fits all 3 layer catagories, she will lay approximately 6 out of 7 days, anything less and it may be due to her being old, young, molting or simply a bad hen. If she is old, get rid of her, sell her, put her in a slow cooker, whatever. All she is doing is eating your feed and not earning her keep. if she is young, she should start laying from 6 months old to 1 year old, depending on the breed. I prefer hens that wait until they are a year old to lay, as they have a longer laying cycle, longer life span, bigger eggs, more consistant pattern, better producers, and generally have better health. If a hen is not laying by the time she is 15 months old, get rid of her, she is no good. A LOT of people swear by using younger hens, but I don't...some breeds are meant to lay early, like leghorns. but they generally are to skinny for butchering and getting a good meal and they don't lay well in the cold or extreme heat. I like a dual purpose breed. They mature slower, lay in any weather condition, make excellent butcher birds, and tend to make good broody hens (settin & hatching chicks) if you don't want to use an incubator. I like these breeds: Rhode Island Reds, Dominique (dominicker), Barred Rock, Well Summer, Buff Orpington, California Whites & Cochins. You can tell what color eggs a hen lays by the color of her ears. If her ears are white, she lays a white egg. If they are ANY other color, chances are she lays brown eggs, unless she has Auracana or Americana in her, in this case she can lay pink, green, blue or gold tingted eggs.
If you live in a climate where it gets EXTREMELY cold in the winter, consider a breed with a rose comb meaning the comb on its head will be a gathering of bumps sitting close to the head. A single comb will stand up straight off the head and in very cold weather, these combs will frost bite and turn black or grey, but will not fall off. I don't have bad super winters, but keep a 40 watt light bulb above my roost pole in the winter to avoid this problem. Large breeds only need about 8-10 inches of roost space on a pole PER bird. They will gather close in all seasons for the warmth and protection. I like to have a couple of exrta roost poles in case it is very warm & they want to spread out a little or I want to add new birds. You must teach young birds to roost...simply go after dark to the house and place tehm gently on the roost poles and slowly let go making sure they have their balance. Some birds it only takes once or twice, others take a week or two.
Keep in mind MITES love to feed off chickens. They can and will suck a chicken to death if left untended and will decimate a flock. Chickens infested with mites are very poor layers. I use a simple 5% Seven dust for poultry once a month. I go in during the day and sprinkle it in the nest boxes, on the floor & roost poles and even sling it in the air to get on the rafters. I return after dark and doing EVERY SINGLE CHICKEN I will take them gently and calmly off the roost, turn them upside down dust all the underfeathers & turn them over & dust the back. MAKE SURE it gets to the flesh not just on the outside of the feathers or its a lost cause. This keeps the mites off my birds and it is a cheap way to help keep them healthy. A mite is to a chicken as lice is to a human...remember that. The best thing to do is dust them regularly reguardless of mites or not, since you must have VERY good eyes to see them. The best way to check is by holding your bird by the legs upside down and spreading the feathers away from the anal opening, you will see TINY little critters move towards the feathers...but sometimes this doesn't even work. Just dust them to be safe.
A GOOd hen will generally lay for 6-9 months before going into a molting process. She will loose her feathers in stages: wings, neck, back, tail, legs. They will grow back in the same order, she will look rough and messed up for about 2-3 months sometimes up to 4 months. Generally you will be lucky to get 1 egg a week out of a molting layer, UNLESS you feed a pelleted laying feed. Then if you are lucky, you may get 3 eggs a week. I will discuss feed shortly. A hen will start laying again regularly as she ends her molt. However even the best of hens will decline in production after EVERY molt. If she laid eggs 6 days a week before now she will lay 5 days a week, next time 4 days a week, and so on. I get rid of hens that reach 4 years old reguardless of how good they are laying. These can be sold as producing hens and bring anywhere from $7-$20 per bird depending on breed. hens will molt every 6-9 moths regularly after teh first molting.
A hen must have a rooster to produce fertile eggs. You will know an egg is fertile when you crack it open to eat because of the little white spot on the yolk. This is NOT the sperm, but the embryo. The yolk is what feeds the embryo. The whites of the egg are what cushions the embryo from the shell.
A hen will pick a spot and start collecting eggs to set on when she is ready to go broody. She will gather anywhere from 8-15 eggs before she starts setting. You will know a hen is getting ready to go broody when you approach the nest and she will not leave it, but instead, tuck her neck in, fluff up her feathers and make a growling sound as you approach her. When she is setting or has hatching eggs, you may even get pecked (rather hard) and it can be startling if you don't know what to expect. If you have thin skin or easily bruise, WEAR GLOVES!!! I will take a black wax crayola and mark the eggs as she is gathering them. I pick which ones I want set on, and add them from other nests. Ones I don't want set on, I remove daily as other hens will lay in her nest as well. Even when she is at full brood, other hens can and will run her off the nest and "break her up" meaning she won't set the nest and the eggs are a total lost. I will let her pick the nest & when I see she has no intentions of leaving her nest, I will use a sour cream container for water and set it in a front corner of her nest with water in it and place a handful of chicken scratch (mixed corn chops and millo) in the other corner and place a piece of wire grill or hardware cloth over her opening. Other birds cannot bother her and she can eat & drink in piece. A hen will loose a LOT of weight setting. She will go the last 2 weeks without EVER leaving the nest if given the option and other hens leave her alone...but they won't. I feed & water her every morning. I replace the pine shavings in my nest boxes about every 3 months and add to them as needed, but I make sure she has all clean bedding right before she goes to brood. When the chicks hatch, I take them away at 1 day old, but it may take up to 4 days for all her eggs to hatch. Chickens are carnivorious. They LOVE to eat mice, insects, etc. Other chickens will eat her young, I have seen this happen MANY times, but generally only in birds that are kept confined. Besides, my brooding them will let her start laying within a week and keep predators such as snakes, rats, and other things from eating the chicks. It takes 21-23 days to hatch them whether under a chicken or in an incubator.
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