I am having a hard time believing a coon or fox could pull out hardware cloth .... possible dog or yote maybe? Any chance of you selling some of the poults down the road as you hatch them? If so, I am interested ....
If we ever get enough to sell we will likely be selling full grown processed turks for Thanksgiving. People will pay $10 a pound for a dressed heritage turkey.
Heritage turks don't get to quite 30 lbs in 5-6 months. But if I can sell 3-4 nice 12-15 lbers Then the turks can start covering their own costs and my meat birds will be much less . It would only take me about 45 minutes to go from live to plucked and processed and some of that time is just waiting. You would be amazed at what I have learned about turkeys in the last 6 months or so. They are very cool birds. We let ours free range during the day now and then, when it is time to get them in their pen, we just herd them along. Very easy as long as we are in no rush LOL.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/26/business/26turkeys.html?pagewanted=all&_moc.semityn.www http://gourmetfood.about.com/od/holidayspecialtyfoods/a/heritageturkey.htm If you are interested I can give you some links to poults, eggs. You will likely need to order for next year soon as the poults seem to go quickly. You typically have to buy 15 at a time and they run anywhere from $9-$12 each.
Actually I bought eggs first and had I not screwed up the hatch would not have bought poults. The poults I bought cost more than buying day old "chicks". They were already 4+/- months old and it was local (2 hrs) so we could go pick them up. Shipping on the poults is $$$. That was why I bought eggs to incubate. Eggs can be almost as much as poults unless you catch them on sale, which is what I did.
I raised broad breasted white turkeys one year. I got slightly attached to one and didn't butcher it with the others. (I know.. pass the granola.) Anyhow, it was a really cool bird but by that fall it's legs were failing, so..... I whacked it over the head with a 2 x 4. (how's that for being a softy?) Plucked and dressed it weighed 55lbs! Had to cut in half to get it in the oven. Bruce, sounds like a raccoon might be the culprit... be sure to get it soon. Raccoons are worse than evil owls. (Evil Owl did come back and kill again) > I like your menagerie. I think we may get a steer or two.
You can share the granola with me. I could have shot a (the?) raccoon about a month ago but I was just after squirrel pests and figured the raccoon was content eating the corn. I know (dumbass). When I see it again I will use the 2x4 . I would love to get a steer but we do not have the land for that. I will have to settle for pigs LOL.
The absolute coolest part about having chickens is getting them when they are chicks. I get such a kick out of watching them grow into chickens.
wow just read through 27 pages of this! haha its cool to see there is more loonies out there too! i started the year with 35 chickens, 2 turkeys and 6 call ducks, down to 27 chickens, 1 turkey and 1 duck..... ive lost the chicks to cayotes and hawks, have no clue what took down my big tom, and 5 of the ducks came up missing in the same night. we had a bad storm roll in and the gate to the duck pen wasnt latched all the way (oh the joys of having a 2 year old!) was quite upset over the ducks, they seen me as the momma and even as adults followed me around the yard as i did chores, and now i dont have any live hunting buddies! didnt know if i was gonna continue the chickens, so i made tempory coops inside of the fence for the apple trees. been working out real well, the chickens now enjoy apple as they fall, help scare off the squirrals and such out of the apples and controll the bug population. not to mention fertilize the trees, as this has been the best year in amount of apples yet! this month im converting one of the small barns into a chicken coop and building a fenced in run for them. love the idea of the 2x4 tractor set up for the broilers too! ill take a few pics tomorow in the daylight to share as well eric
Eric.... where be the pics? Bruce and Christine .... my buttercups and cuckoo Marans have stopped laying .... been about a month for the buttercups and 3 weeks for the Marans .... the BC s are starting.g to look ragged .... but acting fine ... the CMs are looking and acting fine .... pale combs ...normal poop If I didn't know any better, I would say they are molting .... but they are only 7 months old ..... thoughts?
Could be molting (tho' that seems very early.. mine go over a year before their first molt). Do you see lots of feathers laying around, like they're getting into pillow fights when you're not looking? Could be a lack of light. My ISA browns don't need additional light to continue laying but some of the 'heritage' breeds need that extra light. Pale combs and looking ragged could be a parasite infection too. Or even a nutrional deficiency.
yes ...lots of feathers ... they seem healthy other than that ... their combs are still red ...just light red .. I will take some pics and throw them up... my other chickens are doing awesome ...
Sounds like molting then. I have a barred rock that goes through a 'hard molt'. She'll look fine and then -blam- it looks a chicken blew up in the coop and she's all ratty and half naked. It's funny. I laugh at her and then give her extra protein treats. (deer, scrambled eggs)
That one buttercup is definitely molting. Kinda hard to tell with the others. They look healthy enough. You could always put a light in the coop and see if that gets them laying again. Doesn't have to be much. A 10 watt CLF will do it. Some people just let them have the winter off. I put a light out in winter for my layers, mostly so that they get more feed in them (more feed = more and bigger eggs) but also so they get enough light that they don't switch off laying. Since I sell eggs, I can't take that chance. I hang the leg/shoulder bones up for the birds to peck at. The main part of the carcass gets hung off the ground on the chainlink on the side of thier run. After two days being hung up in the run. Rolled it over (took it down out of the run because the rain made it all muddy in there). A few more scraps left them on this side. BTW, that really ratty looking chicken is Scruff. She's molting but pretty much has looked ratty from the very begining. She gets picked on by the other chickens. She doesn't pay any attention to the pecking order and the other hens peck her out of frustration. At first, I thought she was mentally challenged and had zero social skills... because the other chickens will shoot her a dirty look before pecking at her... but she was oblivious. She also will walk into you. So, I thought she was a moron.... but it turns out that there is something wrong with her eyesight. She has poor depth perception and apparently can't see the aggressive/dominance cues given by the other chickens. If you toss her whole corn kernels, she won't notice half of them and the other half she can't see well enough to pick up. It's amusing and pathetic at the same time. She's a very sweet chicken tho' and loves to be underfoot and running into you.
Looks like they are starting to molt and probably a lack of light too. None of mine have started to molt yet and this will be the first fall/winter for the RI reds so we will see what that is like. My barred rocks used to do as Christine describes, BAM, feathers everywhere and ratty looking hens. On a medical note: I have a teenage turkey with a sour crop. Carolyn and I are trying to heal it now. We have it in the small tractor and are using a syringe to squirt an egg yolk, olive oil and yogurt mix down its throat 3 times a day, maybe 4 tomorrow. Today was the first day with the syringe. We went that route when we could not get the turk to eat a similar mix (scrambled egg though) out of a food tray. We'll either heal the turkey or be eating it sooner than expected, if this was one we even wanted to eat.
