Backyard Chickens?

LifeofRubie said:
I couldn't help myself... A custom egg stamp from Etsy
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Nice!

I'm waiting for our trainers chickens to start laying again so we can get eggs from her. There's also a trucking place across from the airport that has a sign out there for chicken and duck eggs so I'll have to check with them soon too.
With the bird flu thing in the mix again I have a feeling it's going to be hard to get chicken or eggs pretty soon. I got some eggs last week and they had already gone up $1./dozen since when I bought them a couple weeks earlier.
 
How are you all doing with your chickens??? Avian flu is getting really bad in Michigan so no free ranging for my flock. It actually was found in foxes, so it made the hop to mammals over here. Caged chickens are good for Gilly distraction training though lol!
 

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I haven't heard of the Avian flu reaching to my area yet, so mine are still out & about. They use to be free range as far as they wanted, but after a bobcat discovered them a year or two ago, they're confined to a smaller area - old horse paddock - with 4 lines of hot wire. Mine are all gettin older, eggs aren't what they use to be, but I can't bring myself to cull & start over. :( I should take some photos, I haven't posted any chicken photos in a while.
 
Dasz88 said:
It actually was found in foxes, so it made the hop to mammals over here.
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Oh wow I hadn't heard about that but we aren't that far away in Minnesota and we have a lot of fox around here.
 
Yah, 3 dead fox kits from 3 separate dens in 3 different counties(which means it's very widespread now): Highly pathogenic avian influenza confirmed in three red fox kits

Avian flu doesn't jump to humans easily but it does worry me a little about a jump to dogs, if it is jumping to foxes! (The foxes probably ate infected wild birds which isn't likely for domestic dogs).

Also, off topic, but ravenbird, do you have horses? That's awesome!!! A lot of dobie owners seem to have horses. I don't (too poor lol!), but I was a very nerdy horse girl in school (riding lessons and wayyyyyy too many books about an outcast girl and her amazing horse! 😅). Are there pics of your horses on the site here? There should be a horse thread to go along with the chicken thread!
 
Dasz88 said:
There should be a horse thread to go along with the chicken thread!
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Oh there is since so many of us own horses or have owned them.

Whoa~! Rein 'em in here and show your horses! 2017

For older threads on this subject, please click: Whoa~! Rein 'em in here and show your horses! Its a new year and a good time to start a new thread on our horses! So post up pictures and videos of your horses! Past and present, its all good! Load 'em up here! You know I'll be having a...
doberman-chat.com
 
Dasz88 said:
Avian flu doesn't jump to humans easily but it does worry me a little about a jump to dogs, if it is jumping to foxes! (The foxes probably ate infected wild birds which isn't likely for domestic dogs).
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It is worrisome - thanks for the update link. Jumping species is always a concern.

Dasz88 said:
Also, off topic, but ravenbird, do you have horses? That's awesome!!! A lot of dobie owners seem to have horses. I don't (too poor lol!), but I was a very nerdy horse girl in school (riding lessons and wayyyyyy too many books about an outcast girl and her amazing horse! 😅). Are there pics of your horses on the site here? There should be a horse thread to go along with the chicken thread!
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Jan posted the link, I have a few posts there. I've had horses since I was 16, but when I lost my last one a couple of years ago I opted not to get another. I spent a great deal of my life training & conditioning race horses and endurance horses. I'm old and now all my wrecks are coming back to haunt me so it really is time to leave it at good memories instead of pushing it. Besides, after I got Asha I realize there's no time in the day left for horse play and no money left with the training & trialing & travels put into this dog. :rofl:
 
Raven stealing eggs. This happened a few years back - one of the young fledglings from the raven couple that nests around here every year was stealing eggs. I ended up catching it in the coop and slamming the door shut. I kept it in a separate chicken pen, then caught it, carried it around telling it to never ever steal eggs from me again and to tell all his friends that the chicken pen is hell on earth. So now we have a new recent bunch of ravens hanging out, so I figure its the babies being daring. I put the critter cam in the coop and sure enough it's one of them. I put golf balls in the nests for the hens to keep them from laying in other places and I kept finding them on the floor or out in the pen or just gone. Here the critter cam got this guy leaving with a neon green golf ball (it was in the nest on the far right). There weren't any real eggs yet. I hung up old CDs to flap around the entrance and so far it hasn't been back. I hope it works, but I'm afraid they'll just get use to it. Locking one up and scolding it worked really well, but I just got lucky that day. It'd be a lot of work to catch another. fullsizeoutput_559.webpfullsizeoutput_55a.webp
 
I hear crows and ravens like gifts and they will befriend you if you leave them something, sometimes bringing you back a gift of their own. He probably thought you just left him a pretty cool present that he is now going to show all his friends 😂
 
A few years ago, I put out some Mardi Gras beads for them for keeping the hawks away, but they never took them. They do like trinkets, but they really really like eggs. :(

I had photos with the raven youngster I caught (literally) in the hen house a few years back, but they got lost with a computer crash. I don't remember if I posted it here or not, I'll see if I can lift them from another site I may have posted them on. Ravens are quite special to me (hence my name here) for a number of reasons. Like our Dobermans, they are so intelligent it's almost scary.
 
Producers pride is made by purina, so that doesn't surprise me at all!! Terrible stuff!! I use kalmbach feeds organic layer pellets: ohio made, family owned feed business without a body count of recalls lol.

Funny egg shortage story: As egg prices rise, so do seizures at US border

Please do not support cartel eggs! 😆 (That is a hilarious sentence lol!). I need to convince gilly to be a better guard dog for the chickens.
 

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I just told hubby yesterday that I bet everyone and their brother is going to be buying out all of the chicks this spring, like they did during the pandemic. We would have loved to have chickens for a long time now but there are just too many fox and weasels here.
 
Kswoodssue said:
We feed from TSC and my chickens are alive and laying.
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Same, except for the laying. Mine quit laying in Nov & haven't started back yet. I realized a month or two ago that my 6 hens were all hatched in June. June of 2016, 2017 and 2018. Meaning my youngest will be 5 this year! It was slow last year on eggs, one of the oldest quit laying completely, zero broodies which means the dreaded day old chicks and heat lamps to get another generation going. I know exactly what they mean now when they say "she ain't no spring chicken"!
 
I feed my chickens Nutrena, all flock since we have a rooster. Just saw him mounting a hen the other day so I knew eggs were coming soon! Sure enough her comb is nice and bright red and we got one egg! Haven't had any all winter... I like to give them a break over the winter vs adding in artificial lighting to force them to lay year round.
 
Rits said:
Haven't had any all winter... I like to give them a break over the winter vs adding in artificial lighting to force them to lay year round.
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Agree! I've never done lights to keep them laying. Everything pretty natural around here. What I have noticed is that the young hens would just quit laying when they went into molt & start back up pretty shortly after that. Now the winter vacation is getting longer and longer between the last egg in the fall and the first egg in the spring.
 
Ravenbird said:
Same, except for the laying. Mine quit laying in Nov & haven't started back yet. I realized a month or two ago that my 6 hens were all hatched in June. June of 2016, 2017 and 2018. Meaning my youngest will be 5 this year! It was slow last year on eggs, one of the oldest quit laying completely, zero broodies which means the dreaded day old chicks and heat lamps to get another generation going. I know exactly what they mean now when they say "she ain't no spring chicken"!
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Mine are getting old too. I get a few eggs if I keep a red heat light on.
 
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