i am getting 37 chicks today and i dont think i will have time to get to the tsc by my house today. i was wondering if anybody knows how to construct a temporary chick waterer.
chick
A shallow tuna can or a shallow canning lid will do nicely. Tho, make sure you put in a stone or something if it's deeper than an inch to keep them from getting in and drowning. Good luck on your chicks too! Where'd you order them from? Mine are coming on July 21st from Cackle Hatchery.
oh, that sounds good, mine are coming from mcmurray hatchery.
What kind of chickens are you getting? I am ordering some blue laced red wyandottes from McMurray this spring.
i am getting a brown egg layer special and some RIR's and some white leghorns. i think i got a buff orphington and a black star too, but if you place an order the wrong way, the hatchery will contact you, right?
Did you order online? I assume that they would contact you, but I'm sure it wouldn't hurt to contact them just to make sure they received it. I personally haven't ordered with them before, but I am this coming spring. The chicks I'm expecting are buff orpingtons, dominikers, silver and golden wyandottes. Tho, I'm thinking of adding some sort of white chicks too. Either white giants, white rocks or white wyandottes, tho I don't know if these breeds are confinement tolerant or docile and quiet.
If you get your chicks online, you have to make sure that they don't have pasty butt disease. ( I'm sure that isn't the real medical term.) Basically, they poop and it gets stuck on their little behinds and blocks up their pipes and they die! All you need to do to fix it is use a wet paper towel to moisten and remove the, er...plug. My neighbors did lose three chicks from Murry MacMurray due to this problem.
Have fun with the babies!
Yes, I had that with one of my chicks that I got as a day old. But I noticed it was having problems and cleaned the 'plug' off and its fine now - about 8wks old now.
my neighbor just gave me 4, 6wk old chicks. is there any way to tell females from males. for example, two have combs that are developing quicker than the others ones, does this mean anything, genderwise?
I think it might, in conjunction with other things. You could build a strong circumstantial case, anyway. I look for chick size ( bigger are male) and more aggressive behavior as well. If you startle them, do any look more alert rather than hiding? These are things I have tried with some success, but they might be old wives tales that just happened to work out ! :)
I know that professional chicken sexers ( what a job title!) look at ovaduct vent shape, but it is a mystery to me!
Dingy, you are not far from me! Do you have any trouble with the chickens in the dead of winter? I worry about the cold freezing combs, etc. Perhaps I simply worry too much. But, reassurance is always a comfort.
And you, Halnik, how cold does it get where you live? Gets pretty cold here, sometimes. I am pretty well up in age to want to start building (with no experience) and starting up a chicken flock. Oh well, a person must have dreams, right? Who knows? I might turn out to be a great chicken house builder! LOL! BAM
Bam, I think of it like this, some songbirds are out in the cold all winter, and they are fine, right? Feathers are built for all temps. As long as you provide a nice house with no drafts, and lots of water and food, your girls should be fine. I haven't had any troubles with my girls and winter, and my weather is probably a lot like yours. If you are worried, you could always build in a heat lamp for super cold nights.
I worry about my girls, too :) but they are tough little biddies!
bambamdryad
Your temps are very simalar to mine
I'm on the North shore of Oneida lake
Some breeds do better in the cold than others
Small combs and wattles make it easier than ones with long wattles and large comb
Not as much frostbite
I have some birds that have to have a heated barn......
others that roam thru the snow and are not bothered at all by the cold
Even my peacocks wander thru the snow and cold
as for a waterer ,they make heaters to keep the water from freezing
BAM,
We ordered mostly rose combed hens, but we have a friend in Croghan, NY and he has the Red Star hens and he has no heat for them and they have done fine. Tho, we installed places for 2 infrared brooder bulbs that we can hook up if it gets too bad. We didn't insulate the coop, just used bat and board. Wyandottes were orginally bred in New York, so I'm sure they'd be especially hardy in this weather.
That sounds like a great setup!
my 37 chicks are growing fine. does anybody know if dark cornish r good layers? i got the brown egg layer special from mcmurray hatchery and i think i got 6 of those.
Sorry for the delay in responding - my modem got 'fried' by lightning.
I've only had chickens for the past winter and it was a 'mild' winter. We didn't get alot of snow. I had 2 Barred Rock hens for the winter and they didn't seem to mind. They kept on laying. They were good friends and 'snuggled' together.
By the way, hunter, I was just looking at some of the old posts on here and came across the one when you asked for some good points about chickens that you could use in an essay. You obviously passed since you have chickens now. Congratulations and enjoy.
thanks, everything is going well, my chicks are 2 wks pold now, when can they live outside? weve been having 90+ degree weather. most of them have adult feathers everywhere but their necks.
Oh, I'd say with this heat they could go out. If you hear really loud kind of siren-like peeping at night, they are too cold. As long as they have a choice of shade and light during the day, and plenty of water, I'd say they are fine.