Introspection edition
bump
i love chickens /an/
>hearing the bok bok of my neighbor's chickens from my kitchen window while I do my daily choresfeels comfy
check out my new watering systemNext upgrade: a float valve
>>4748166Quite the ingenious idea, anon.I'm sure they will eventually find a way to fill each cup with dirt, but until they do, it's much better than the traditional gravity waterers.
>>4747759>hearing the COCK-A-DOODLE-DOOOOOOOO of my neighbor's rooster at 5 AMHelp me.
are chickens better fathers than mothers
>>4748316Yes. Chicken mothers are notoriously pretty shit
>>4747047>Mindless shitting machines that only desire foodI can't get myself to like chickens
>>4748602I have the same opinion on Americans
>>4748611Why do Americans live rent free in your head?
>>4748602I'd rather them starve and die desu
>>4748611hahaahaha>>4748673why do chickens live on in yours?
>>4748611
Dropping this banger of a webm
Day 20 and I'm starting to get some pips. First time incubating chicks since I was a wee lad, so I'm delighted.
>>4747047buc buc buc BUHCAWK!buc buc buc BUHCAWK!buc buc buc BUHCAWK!>>4748316"I'm doing the best I can ok!"
>>4748967smallest white cock
>>4749874Nice! A new chicken general! I've collected about 400 eggs over the past few days and I'm going to incubate them in my new brinsea 500 egg incubator tonight or tommorow!! A wide variety of laying chickens. Very excited. Will post pics of soon!My bresse should start laying eggs any day now, and I am going to select the 2 or 3 to put in a dark room with unlimited corn porridge for the next 3-4 weeks before slaughtering. After dry aging for a week I will make the traditional french dish where you poach the chicken in a pig's bladder for my birthday!
I took some chicken pics recently, so I'll post a few. :D
They're a fun subject to photograph, and the bresse are very pretty birds.
Look at this guy. The roosters are big! I am going to caponize my meat roosters. Should be an interesting thing to learn how to do if I can't find anyone to do it for me.
Look at the big ass of this minecraft chicken.Has anyone tried out an ohio brooder? I plan to make one that will fit 450 chicks. Seems to be a really great setup.
>>4749411neatI hope they grow into good birds>>4749894that's a lot of eggs
>>4750375Yes. We were able to fill the whole thing up with around 450 eggs.
>>4750375Thanks, they're supposed to be olive Eggers, I crossed my barnevelder rooster over cream legbar hens. So far 8 of 9 have hatched out, and I'm sorta in disbelief- these are supposed to be sex-link chickens, ie the boys should have a white dot on their head and muddled patterns, but I think I've got all girls. Surely I'm not that lucky.
I'm transporting 25 fully grown chickens in the back of a minivan for reasons tonight. Should be interesting.>>4750666Congrats!
Lemme ask you guys this since one of my chickens is being weird and reddit is dumbI'm new to taking care of chickens and I currently have six chicks, about four weeks old. They're all doing great, but one of them chirps almost constantly unless I take her out of the brooder and hold her/pet her. She seems healthy, is socializing, has plenty of food, water and heat, stuff to climb on, etc. She's been chirping for weeks though while the rest of them are fine. At first I thought the other chicks were picking on her, but she literally just stomps around the brooder and chirps her head off until I hold her. Then she just falls asleep for like an hour until she wants to go back into the brooder again. Any idea what's wrong with her? I like hanging out with her and all but I can't be there to pet her all the time
MY BRESSE HENS HAVE LAID THEIR FIRST EGG AFTER NEARLY FIVE MONTHS OF WAITING!! THE FLOCK WILL GROW! PURITY MUST BE MAINTAINED AT ALL COSTS!>>4750823Check her crop. Is she still eating? It may be a digestive issue. I had one chick that was almost exactly the same as yours. There was a large seed stuck in its crop. I had to kill it after trying multiple methods of helping it pass the seed. :( Theres a good chance it is in pain, and you should cull it.
>>4751047Yeah she's still eating and growing just fine. She's been like this for over a week so I'm assuming something would've changed by now if it was a health related issue
>>4751103Hmm strange. If you can do it try and see how her poop looks. Thst can give you some clues as well.Hope she makes it! You can try adding 2 drops of oregano oil to 1 gallon of water, and maybe some chick electrolytes if you wanted. Both are very good for them. Maybe it will clear up whatevers happening.
>>4748316How smart are chicken?This almost looks like something animated by a human. >snubbing while hiding the negligence>trying to pretend they did not know while being called out>shame and dirty looks>pecking punishments and head kept low
>>4751301They're pretty retarded overall, but have their own special little smarts and a reasonably good memory.
>>4751310Interesting.Are they like pigeons where they have some hidden powers while being traditionally stupid?https://youtu.be/Y3kwJSEdCWQ
>>4751326Yeah, pretty much. They can go quite far away from their roost and find their way back in the evening. Memory. You can train them to do simple stuff like peck at a light. Birds also have deep and mysterious knowledge about how to best tend to their fertilized eggs. They don't just sit on them. There's turning, moving, placement, and they can detect dead eggs. Pretty interesting stuff. Muscovy ducks are notoriously hard to incubate, but you see hatches of 12+ following their mom..There's a fun video where a chicken is "playing" the piano. The trick is that the individual keys light up in sequence to play a song.
>>4751344>chicken playing piano videohttps://youtu.be/XfPBfMGLf9QWoah, this one is really crazy. The thing I find really interesting here is that she seemed to be semi trained. She has a different response to a note coming out vs a tap not doing enough. I think that shows some amount of training and recognition beyond "keys light up, smash head into key"
>>4751110Just checked, it's coming out as a brown liquid. Not sure if it's runny poop or Cecil poop
Bump
The first 5 eggs laid by my bresse hens. Very excited to start hatching these out in about a months time.
>>4747759>>4748269Hens are very comfy to listen to, especially in the autumn when they're digging through leaves looking for bugs. As this anon said though, roosters are very annoying.>>4749898I love the menacing expression in his eyes, very cool.
>>>/mu/121019362>>>/mu/121019362
It has been done. The bresse have been moved to their new luxury accommodations. Their genetic purity will remain.>>4753355I love taking chicken pics. There will be more.
So proud of my sweet chickens. They have grown so much in the past couple months! It's a real joy to have such beautiful birds in my coop at home. They are being a little retarded and sleeping outside when they have a beautiful indoor coop to roost in. Maybe they will figure it out one day. -_-
Do you guys eat chicken?
>>4748740Because chickens are cool. Are Americans cool to you? Are you just jealous and insecure? Do you secretly wish some big, lumbering, heavy, hairy American man would shove his hog in your shitpincher? Dominate your skinny, malnourished, turd world body?
>>4755443Hell yeah. Homegrown chicken tastes incredible. Old hens and roosters make incredible stew. The meat is more turkey tasting/mildly gamey with a pulled pork sort of texture. Delicious!
>>4755450don't you feel bad killing them?
>>4755450Is it the age of the bird that makes it more gamey? And like >>4755451 said, do you feel bad eating them if they're old and you've had them for a while?
>>4755451A little bit. Life and death are both parts of what we must face when raising livestock, especially when raising animals harvested for meat.Some birds like cornish cross basically need to be euthanized after they reach a certain age because they grow so quickly it causes them suffering. Culling roosters is also an important part of flock management.I'll feel a bit worse when it's time to process my first bresse because I really love those birds. I'm starting a business selling the meat, so it's just going to be a part of it all. I'm also very excited to see how delicious they taste.Lastly I give all the birds I raise a great and very very comfortable life. It's a fair trade in my books.
>>4755458You need to cull old hens because their egg production gets so low you start losing money feeding them. They're a bit tougher, and some especially nice birds have been spared.It's a combination of age, breed, and diet that influences taste. Old birds will almost always be so tough that they need to be stewed/smoked for hours. The meat is inedibly tough without it.
>>4755463You sound like an actual grown man with maturity. A fucking rarity on this website. Based chickenbro
>>4747708Very healthy looking chickin
>>4755509Thanks. If you aren't mature and competent the chances of your animals suffering/dying is extremely high. It becomes even more important when you're dealing with hundreds of them...I'm expecting to have a flock of 2k-3k chickens in about a years time. Things are going to be crazy.
>>4755463Are you in the US? How easy is it to start your own business selling meat of all things? Seems like there'd be loads of red tape.
>>4755619Yeah in the US. Suprisingly not so bad. We haven't decided if we will be going usda packing route, or getting a barebones commercial kitchen on my property for packing. We are planning to do 200 birds per month at first, so it will be much more efficient to process them all at home, but a commercial kitchen can be quite expensive.Going the usda route is really quite easy, but lowers profits a decent bit. You just bring the birds to a facility, pay a fee for each bird, and they come out packaged and totally legal to sell.There's transportation and labelling laws as well, but those are easy.Selling eggs is even easier..
>>4755619That diagram I posted is for livestock, and not poultry, actually... You can get a commercial kitchen licensed/inspected that is not a USDA facility, and still legally sell them.
>>4755630Not completely accurate, pretty sure I'm allowed to sell venison that I shot and processed.Every package needs to be labeled that it was from me though.
>>4755642It depends on a lot of things. Maybe you can sell it to another consumer, but it wouldn't be legal to sell it to a restaurant for example. In my state that is the case with poultry.
it should be illegal to keep chickens as livestock
>>4755729But tendies and nuggies are so good
>>4755729my chickens are with me by choice. i protect them from predators, provide them with food and all i ask is an egg every day
Why do hens BAGOK at random periods of the day
i love chiggens so much. they fren and food
>>4756022I don't get the joke in the picture but I laughed anyway because chicken
>>4756023jews slam chickens on the ground to death because they think it transfers their sins
>>4756027>slamIncorrect.
>>4756039incorrect. would you like video?
>>4756116Yeah, post proof faggot.
>>4756129https://weanimalsmedia.org/2023/09/22/documenting-kaporos-chicken-slaughter-in-new-york/are you jewish? answer the fucking question and post nose
>>4756136>some of the animals were not yet deadTheir throats were slit, yes they were. What these people are seeing is death flapping. The journalists do not understand the very basics of chicken slaughter and yet are writing an entire article attempting to condemn this practise.>But the chickens were so despondent, they had given up hope. Projecting human concepts and emotions onto animals. Article immediately discarded.I'm not defending this. Leaving animals out in the cold is awful and unnecessary, pre-slaughter or not, but this petaesque journalistic practise really makes me take the rest of the article with a massive grain of salt. If the journalists are so ready to say that cold chickens had ''''given up hope''' and didn't even know about death flaps, then how the hell am I supposed to believe the rest of the article isn't also ARA cherry-picking bullshit.
>>4756142areyoujewish?
>>4756146I'm not >>4756129 and also no faggot.To keep things still on the topic of Chickens rather than this faggots obsession with Jews, does anyone have recommendations for auto-sexing breeds/hybrids that aren't barred? I don't have anything against barred breeds I just prefer the look of non-barred breeds.
>>4748611Also they spout retarded shit constantly
>>4756736this is worse than bbc spam by jews on pol
>>4756736Cute blonde pussy rubs on big cock!!!
>>4756736This has brightened my otherwise terrible day
someone in Poznan let me hold a chimker pleeeaaaaaase
>>4757831show boobs and feet
>>4758037>hershe (male (female (male)))
>>4758037
>>4751344>You can train them to do simple stuff like peck at a light.
>>4758772Enders game ass pigeon.
>>4758767that's a dude
>>4753975That's some beautiful construction man I'm jealous
Chilling with lil bruh under a tree in the rain was a vibe.>>4759284Ty! I got it with the property. Feels great to finally have some birds in there.
>>4760607Bock.
Chicken bros...I have a question. Traditionally in France bresse are "finished" before slaughter. What this means is that they are taken from pasture, placed in these cages, and fed a mixture of whole milk, cracked corn, and layer feed porridge for around 2-3 weeks before slaughter.Is this a cruel treatment, or does the copious ampunt of food, and calm environment balance things out?
>>4762755I am vegeterian lol (luv me eggs and milk though)
>>4763048Do you have an opinion on caging birds for the last 2 weeks of their life, or is it immoral from the start because I'll be eating them?I'll be learning how to caponize cockerals soon as well.
>>4747708nice cock, bro.
It has been 17.5 days since I placed roughly 450 fertile chicken eggs in my incubator. Tommorow or the next day I will move all the eggs into my hatcher. Anyone know if 2 or 3 days is better to stop turning and increase humidity?I will be building a 4'x8' ohio brooder that will easily fit the expected 300-350 chicks that will hatch.Very very excited, and I will post some pics if it isn't a complete and utter disaster.
Don't purchase chickens. The breeder you'd be purchasing the chickens from almost certainly culls male chicks by burying them alive, gassing them to death or throwing them all into a blender. If you don't believe me then watch this free documentary online https://www.dominionmovement.com/watch
>>4764768what the fuck
>>4749898Did someone develop that film in a chicken coop?
>>4764781Yes. My chickens keep me company when I develop film.
>>4764768>burying them aliveThat makes no sense, at-least the shredded ones go into animal feed or something.https://boards.4chan.org/search#/dominionmovement%20-spam
>>4764793what the fuck
>>4762755I’ve only raised the usual cornish cross for meat, but they were pretty content to just laze around waiting for me to bring more fancy finishing porridge to gorge on a few times a day (to keep it from spoiling). I don’t really see any benefit to that strict of confinement for finishing if they were caponized early enough in life, just downsides like risking bruises or actual sores to their breasts from the weight of laying down motionless for too long. A light bruise on a pale enough carcass looks pretty darn gross to a potential customer. A pen with plenty of space and deep litter I’d fluff up constantly is what I used, but I didn’t have access to good pasture at the time. Still usually ended up with slight bruising or a small scratch on 1 or 2 chickens out of a batch of 100 birds.If they aren’t fighting or injuring themselves in the pasture, and if they aren’t likely to injure themselves struggling to run away from capture, I’d honestly just leave them in whatever area they’re already used to..
>>4764837I'm having the first ones for my bday, so I'm going to cage them, and then gradually try all the variations to see how different the meat is.Bresse are pretty active, and you slaughter them at 4-5ish months old, so apparently, they are noticeably chewier than cornish cross. Not like old tough, but chewier. I think the confinement may help reduce some of that aside from just fattening them up.Some of the roosters from those 400 chicks that I'm hatching out will be used to learn how to caponize. I'm sure I will accidentally kill some, but I will still eat them! Promise. 3 week old rooster should be pretty nice...
>>4764947I’m excited to know how it goes. I’ve lost touch with the only person I know who raised capons, and you’ve got me curious about it.
THE CHICKS ARE HATCHING! A bunch of them are a day ahead of schedule. Got the brooder room all set up for sunday when I move them in there.>>4765503Same! You raise the calons to 9 months old, and sell them around the holidays. Apparently the meat is incredible.>>4765503I
>>4765768Happy pip day!
>>4764947Based farmer.
We candled all the eggs before placing them in the hatcher, and were left with around 395ish live eggs. Roughly 30 were infertile, and 15 were quitters. Not bad!Closest guess to final number hatched gets to name one!>>4765780>>4765777:D I'm going all out and doing the traditional french dish where you cook the bird in a pig's bladder. It's called Poularde de bresse en vessie if you want to look it up.
>>4765819Sous vide without plastic sounds pretty good honestly. Where do you even find bladders?
>>4766264Yes, and the subtle pee flavor is intriguing! I got mine from herehttps://www.butcher-packer.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=970They're used as a sausage casing. They look nice, but I have not rehydrated/used one, so I cannot speak to their quality.
>>4765819>>4766367Any chance you gonna make a thread on /ck/ when or after you do it?Completely ignore the shitposters there, a few are only in /ck/ to shill fast food and frozen pizza.
>>4766457I'm doing a test run with a cornish cross I raised in a few days. I may make a thread about that one. I won't be using black truffles or foie gras for that one, but I think it will still be pretty good.If that one goes well I may take pictures of the real deal later this month. It's going to be quite an extravagant meal.
>>4758609I would NOT fuck around in the chicken forest.
We checked on the chicks today, and will be moving all the dry ones into the brooder. The hatcher is really good at increasing humidity, so shrink wrap shouldn't be a problem with the remaining eggs.
260 hatched and healthy so far.
Check out this bin of 156 chicks.
>>4751301it's just motherly instincts. that hen would have tucked the egg into it's own fluff if it was broody. the peck was funny but they'll peck at pretty much anything that attracts their curiosity, or for dominance reasons.
First night in the brooder and everyone survived. Yay.
>>4767914I didnt
>>4767930:( why not?
>>4767930I spent all this time building and testing a lovely brooder and you just die on me??? I added boards to create a 1.5ish foot perimeter around the brooder so the chicks cannot wander off too far.
>>4758772i can't believe they put pigeons in bombs
>>4767914fluffy chigs
>>4767934Cool
>>4768199Yes. This guy is one of my favorites. He is exceedingly fluffy, and has one eyebrow.We also have 4 chicks with no feathers on their necks. I'll try to get a pic of one of them later. They're very strange looking.
>>4768208Zuko
>>4749900>>4749898>>4749896What did you take these with?
>>4750377You’re so lucky.
Here is a crappy turken picture. It looks like they are wearing little foreskin scarves. Lmao. We have 4 of them. I have been busy, but I will try to get a nicer shot of one soon. >>4768367Great idea.>>4768403A very sharp lens, and kodak vision3 35mm film. It's a wonderful film that is used to make movies with. Most likely you would have to develop it at home because of the remjet layer.Cinestill 400D would be pretty comparable and any lab will be able to develop it for you.>>4768423There was a lot of work involved in setting everything up, and there's going to be a significant amount of work when these dudes get older. Right now It is a joy to have nearly 300 chicks in a room. Their content little chirps and skittering feet are quite relaxing to be around.
What’s a good starter chicken? How do I into building a coop, choosing feed, etc?
>>4768834Meat, eggs, or just pets? How's your climate?You can find good designs online if you can build stuff. Just remember to use hardware cloth and not chicken wire, and you should account for the weather in your area when picking a design.
>>4768846I want egg chickens and live in NH (cold season is longer ~8 months)
>>4748967foghorn leghorn looking ASS
>>4768852>starter chicken, choosing feedGo to your local feed store and check out what they’ve got since they should be getting chicks in this time of year. Generally, they’ll stock a docile hardy egg breed that does well in your region.Feed choice is one of those things that can get complicated and personal, but most chick starter feeds that say medicated should be fine to begin with.>building a coopYour imagination is the limit. I personally like a mobile coop like a chicken tractor, but your needs may be different. Generally you want something easy to access, easy to clean, well-ventilated but not drafty, and secure against predators.
>>4768935General question about coops, are rubber stall mats alright to use as a floor for a chicken coop/tractor? Or would the chickens eventually scratch it up and eat the rubber?
>>4769074Ideally you want to move the whole coop to a new patch of grass.
>>4769089Sorry, I was unclear. I'm planning on using a pallet as the base of my chicken tractor, and I plan to have the thing elevated so they can go underneath for shade/hawk protection. Obviously, though, I can't just leave the huge gaps in the pallet that would make up the floor.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WUo-DFSjYUII'm roughly copying this design, and this guy used an old sheet of linoleum for the bottom, and I was casting around for what I could use for the bottom. I just wasn't sure if stall mats would be a good or bad choice. I like the thought of painless cleaning, but I don't know if chickens would end up tearing up the rubber in their normal scratching behavior and eventually ingesting pieces of the rubber.
>>4769096Hard rubber will be fine.
>>4769096If you already have em, they’ll work until they don’t. It’s a pretty neutral choice in the sense that yeah, they’ll get torn up some day eventually, but chickens aren’t going to do much more than idly scratch if there’s no food, bugs, fun, etc. to reward it; and, those mats do take a whole lot of abuse before they start breaking down into inviting-looking entertaining chunks to tear off. You could even just leave the huge pallet gaps instead of a floor if the rest of the run is secure. A floor exists for your own peace of mind when it comes to keeping out predators and just being gentler on the toes than walking on wire.
>>4767431pretty sure this was a pecking order thing. The lower classed bird got pecked at to teach it that the higher classed bird can just move those eggs as it wishes and also that the egg should remain under the bird. Both a teaching moment and a moment to show who's top hen in the pecking order.
Turken.
picking up 6 rhode islands and 6 quack chicks tomorrow at tractor supply. first time ever owning or raising either species.i have a warm pen in my house while the weather is cold with a heat lamp, bedding, food and water.my coop is built but i don't imagine they will be using it for a month or twoany advice?rural new york. coons and skunkers come a knocking but my coop is built like a brick wall
>>4769779Pickeon.
>>4769779>>4769997Has science gone too far?
>>4770032Possibly. Those turkens make for efficient slaughter, and they're big chickens. I am going to caponize any turken roosters I have and let them grow out to like 8-10lbs hanging weight.Speaking of capons I purchased a 7lb!!! Capon from a fancy grocery store the other day. I may post a review of it after I cook it. The fucker was $10/lb so it better be good.
>>4770120Caponize?
>>4770132He's going to stick needles into the birds back, then stir until the testicles are mush.
>>4770132You make an incision under the roosters rib, spread the opening out, and carefully extract both the rice grain sized testicles using a sharp spoon shaped device, and then stitch the incision, or not. It makes the roosters extra big/fat and delicious. In Europe lots of people eat capon instead of turkey for the holidays.
2 rainbow dozens. :D
Forgot to share this also. Look at how dirty 280 hatching chicks are. The room I had the hatcher in was coated in super fine chick hairs. The smell was not pleasant either...
>>4770891Snort it
>>4770919I have already inhaled enough chick fur for a lifetime. My vacuum snorted it all up.
>>4768852There's a breed of chicken called the New Hampshire. If you can find some, they should be well suited to the conditions of their homeland and are pretty good layers too.
>>4770850Damn that’s neat. I assume there’s no difference in taste?
>>4771092Maybe if you are an egg connoisseur. Freshness also comes into play at that point. People love the colorful eggs. Someone paid extra money to buy rainbow dozens even if the blue eggs are always a little smaller.
Turken chick.
Butchered my first chicken today. He was a shitty rooster and attacked me a few times enough that I was gonna end him, but I gave him the benefit of the doubt. He's getting more violent with the hens though and really tearing up their backs. I tried those little back saddles and one of them even after having it a few days, he just kept going apeshit and nearly killing one of the hens.So he's gonna be dinner tomorrow
>>4772441
>>4772264Why did some of the chicks come out like this? IIRC you had 200~ chicks but only 4 lacked neck feathers. >>4772441>>4772442I remember you posting about this fucker. Hope he at least tastes good.>epitaph on vacuum sealed meatkek
>>4772675Cause of this dude. Our final count hatched was at 280, and like 3 have died since. >>4769779He made babies.
They are eating and drinking A LOT after only 8 days. They have almost finished a 50lb bag of feed, and over 12 gallons of water. Bigger feeders and waterers on monday, and I will be opening up the entire room for them.
>>4772442>>4772675Turns out he just tastes like chicken. Who knew
>>4773311If you ever choose to slaughter a chicken again I would suggest dry aging the bird for 6-8 days in a 34 degree refrigerator after chilling it in an ice bath. It really enhances the flavor.Or did you part the bird out without eviscerating?
>>4773315I just went for a quick field butcher. I didnt have a way to scald/pluck easy, so I did what I'd do for game birds and just cut up the breast, spread, cut out the breasts, tenders, cut off the feet. Didn't get all the meat from him from thighs/wings but decent enough. Honestly it was way more chewy than most chicken I've had but I suspect that's because he's been free range, like running around the woods all day-tier free range. Hopefully it'll be years before I do another one, my hens are all good for now
I posted my chicken cooked in pigs bladder thread on ck for anyone interested. I don't know how to do cross board linking. If you search bladder you'll find it...>>4773326Rooster will be tougher with less meat, and the older the bird is the tougher it will be. That comes along with more flavor usually. You may have gotten lucky because some 2-3 year old birds are inedibly chewy unless cooked for many hours. They taste like a very mildly gamey/turkey mixed with normal chicken. Very tasty.
>>4773333>>>/ck/20402401
>>4773571Ty. :D
>>4773571Nice!
I'm building a big ass coop and run for a lot of chickens but since it's so big it's taking a while to finish. Was considering just getting something small with 4 hens and a rooster until it's finished. What's a quick and dirty type of coop I could throw up that would be predator proof? Are there any good prefab ones?
>>47740765 would be pretty comfy in a 9x9-12x12 joe salatin style chicken tractor for the short term. They are cheap and very easy to build if you already have most of the materials.And if you do build the chicken tractor you can always repurpose it for batches of cornish cross to fill your freezer!
>>4774105I was definitely planning to do a chicken tractor at some point, however I would worry about how secure that may be as my property has foxes and coyotes. Maybe a small raised coop just for sleeping and a tractor for a run? I'm trying to do something that won't take too much time and willing to just throw a little money at it to be lazy and focus more on constructing the larger coop. I got a LSG pup recently so I'd like to get her used to chickens soon.On another note, I was reading about capons recently, which are neutered roosters. Apparently this makes them grow very large and fat and makes them act somewhat like a hens. It's controversial since it's an invasive surgery and they aren't under any anesthesia. Thoughts on the ethics of it? Anyone ever eaten a capon?
I love the sounds chickens make. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JTFFV1S-a8w
got baby chicks recently and tried to get a brooding hen to take care of them, but the chicken is just pecking them and making the chicks feel unsafeShould I just give up and put the chicken back outside or can I get her to take care of them? any advice?
>>4775966You can try slipping a few under her while it is dark and she’s sleepy to see if that helps and add the rest the next night if it does. If that’s what you already tried, I’d probably just give up.
>>4775966Holy chiggen
>>4775966Damn that thing looks like a pillow
>>4776030>>4776155I have 3 of themused to be 4, but one was killed by something that snuck into the fence :(
Advise me, I live in what is effectively a bullshit suburb. I have space for a coop and maybe a 20'x20' space (rough estimate, may be bigger, may be smaller) to fence in for chickens, my yard is bigger but I don't have a fenced in property and wouldn't want the little critters to wander off and get hurt by a wild animal or some dog.My question is whether or not I should bother keeping any if I can't let them roam like I see so many people doing.
>>4776750I’ve got a buddy with contained birds in a situation much like the one you describe. They seem fine, not as interested/interesting as my free range birds, probably because they have smaller horizons, but still pretty fun.The biggest drawback, IMO, is that his birds have turned their run into a plantless desert and it would be a mud pit if he didn’t mulch the fuck out of it. Whereas my yard is fine because none of it gets used hard enough to denude it.
>>4748269just wake up lol
>>4748611kekd
>>4748602They give us meat and eggs, sound funny, and are cute. Who cares if they only want to eat and poop.
They continue to grow and eat. Less than 10 have died, which is an excellent number. They should be out of that high mortality age range very soon.
a chick of mine has scissor beak, is there anything I can do or is it best to euthanize her?
>>4751301https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QhMo4WlBmGM
>>4778135What’s your situation and how bad is it? Are you raising a large batch? Are you raising them for meat/eggs or for pets/fun? How many do you have? If it’s a minor case and you only have a few you keep as essentially pets then you can keep it alive and comfortable with some effort. If not, it’s probably best for the animal to put it down. Regardless of the situation do not let it breed.
>>4778999One of 17Looking more at it I dont think its an extreme case so it can definitely live but idkcould I give it away?
>>4779447for eggs, live outside in the backyard
>>4779447One of my meat birds has curly toes, but I never saw her struggling to roost or move. Her and the one rooster everyone picks on is getting eaten first.
Check out the cool coloration of this chick. I wonder what it will look like when it's feathers fully grow out.
>>4779447>>4779448You could keep it and if it does develop issues you could hand feed it/grind down its beak. If you do keep it you’ll have to make sure to weigh it every few days to make sure it’s not starving.If you don’t want to do that then I would just put it down. Not many people want a deformed animal and it probably won’t live a good life.
how to hatch quail egg?
>>4779786Very quailfully.
whats a fast growing weed kinda plant i can grow in my backyard for my chickens?live in the south usa
>>4781670Clover, maybe? I saw this thing where you make a frame with wood and staple a mesh over it. You lay it in a patch of grass and the grass grows through the mesh for the chickens to eat, but they can't eat too much and it stays very healthy and productive.
>>4781670cabbage, lots of calcium toooat sprouts for magnesium and calories
>>4781670Nettles, very high in protein. Amaranth, gets huge flowers full of seeds. Just cut a plant and throw it to the chickens, they'll pick out the seeds. Sorghum and linseed. Kale is nice for some winter feed. Any other greens will work too.
BUMP
Well... I cooked up 2 of the bresse in pig bladder. Went the whole way and used winter truffles, made a proper sauce with morels and expensive wine.In terms of cost to value I believe bresse does deliver. The breast meat tasted more flavorful than the dark meat of cheap supermarket chicken. We(I) need to create a meme campaign that brings the humble french chicken's perceived value up to that of a good $35/lb steak!I have no pictures from the dinner, but it was fantastic.
>>4785156Nice to hear, anon. You’re an inspiration and I honestly mean that.
