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I have been so MIA lately! It's the curse of my illnesses I suppose. But don't worry. We've been making loads of spring chicken plans!!
On a sad note, we lost our 1st Biggie Smalls...our beautiful blue Silkie roo. He passed away 2 days ago. We do have plans to get a 'real' Biggie Smalls, a black Silkie cockerel chick this spring...along with a multitude of other chicks... Anyway, I wanted to take a moment & write about our biosecurity breech and why my ignorance killed the roo and has made our chickens all have a cold (AKA infectious bronchitis). I bought him from a local girl who thought she had a black Silkie roo, about a year old. He was a blue Silkie roo, might have been around a year old (I don't know for sure), but she had him in a dog cage next to a Buff Polish roo, who was also in a dog cage. I just didn't have the heart to leave him. My bad. The poor little guy was sick. He died. Because of my ignorance. I noticed he had a wheez, but honestly totally dismissed it after a month and a half...making a fatal assumption (for him) that it was just the way he was. Wrong. Chickens do not wheez or rattle or cough or sneeze on a regular basis unless something is wrong. Please learn from my mistake!!
My layer coop currently houses 16 females & our Buff Orpington roo, Jake. The females consist of 6 Red Star's (or Red Sex Link's - Ginger, Penny, Rhody, Rhonda, Reba & Roxanne), 2 Black Star's (or Black Sex Link's - Aussie & Ducky), 1 Silver-Laced Wyandotte (Angel),1 Gold-Laced Wyandotte (Goldie), 4 Brown Leghorn's (all 4 affectionately known as Leggy because they are VERY difficult to tell apart!!) & 2 Buff Brahma Bantam's (Gracie & George). We are adding 2 Ameracuana's, 2 Black Jersey Giant's, 2 Salmon Faverolle's, 4 Dark Rhode Island Red's, 2 Black Australorp's, 2 Buff Orpington's, 2 Speckled Sussex, 2 Blue-Laced Red Wyandotte's, 1 Columbian Wyandotte and 2 Exchequer Leghorn's. We were going for egg laying capabilities as well as beauty and friendly personalities.
Our 'front yard' birds will consist of 1 Welsummer roo and 2 hens.
We also have an exotic coop which includes 1 Polish (and 1 Sumatra pullet), 4 Silkie's and 1 Cochin pullet. We have 1 Cochin cockerel and 1 Polish cockerel. In the Polish crib, we have Marley, our 'original rooster', who isn't quite a year old yet. He currently has a Gold Laced Polish pullet named Elvis (compliments of my baby sister) and Sammy, our little black Sumatra pullet. We are adding 1 Buff Laced pullet, 1 White Crested Black pullet and 1 Silver Laced pullet to his group. Next we have the Silkie's. We, of course, just lost our blue Silkie, so we will be purchasing a new roo...a Black one. We currently have Eleanor (white Silkie), Buffy & Suzy (buff Silkie's) and Baloo (blue Silkie). We are adding both the Black Silkie roo and 1 Partridge Silkie pullet. Last, we have our Cochins. They consist of Ikey, a spit fire of a li'l cockerel and his partridge, very tiny GF, Freddie. We are adding 4 'assorted' Giant Cochin pullets, 1 black Frizzle Cochin pullet and 1 white Cochin pullet.
This arrangement should make all 4 of the Roo's happy and of course the hen's could really care less as long as there is food available at all times. Gotta love those easy hens!! LOL!
We are also getting ready to enlarge our chicken coops. I'm so excited with what this coming spring is bringing!
I started selling my beautiful eggs for $1 per dozen a couple of weeks ago. We have already made enough money to pay for 1/2 of the chickens' monthly feed! Yay! My goal is to have the eggs pay for the chickens' feed along with the dogs' feed...maybe even pay for the extra supplies we occasionally or regularly need like antibiotics, pine chips, straw, etc. And wouldn't it be grand if the chicken egg sales also paid for the dogs yearly vaccines and heart guard/flea med's?! Wow. That would definitely be great.
My husband built me a chicken water heater yesterday. It works amazingly well!! I'm so happy and proud to have a husband who knows how to build and fix stuff!!
I have also been working on making some new recipe's...I will post a few when I have more time.
If you want info on our homemade chicken water heater, just ask!
