Fowl Visions

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Recently I received an email from one of the visitors to this blog and attached is this beautiful photo.

Paula, aka Motherhen68, sent this over. Her son, Hawkeye, 10 years old took this photo. He did an awesome job! He also gave me an education about some of the hummingbirds that are visiting my feeder. I just assumed if it had a white tail and no red on the neck it was a female. It turns out if the bird has the dots like in the photo, it is an immature male hummingbird and not reached his full maturity. From what I read, it takes about a year for them to develop into a mature male hummingbird with the red neck.

Thanks for sharing, Motherhen68. Your 10 year old is going to be an awesome photographer and birder.

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Happy 4th of July to everyone!

I hope you take a moment to thank God, our military, and our country for the freedom we all share. It is so easy to take it for granted.

Today my husband and I are pulling a flatbed trailer/float in our local parade. After that we spend the afternoon with friends eating a barbecue lunch and then on to another friend’s home for homemade ice cream! It doesn’t get much better than that.

My chickens will have their freedom today. They will roam in my backyard because there is no fear of a prospective buyer for our home on a holiday.

I also have a new member of my flock. It is a full-breed light brahma rooster. I picked him up last night from a neighbor. I haven’t had a chance to take a picture of him yet but I will. He is beautiful! I just hope he is as nice as he is beautiful.

I hope everyone has a wonderful holiday and I look forward to updating you with pictures of my new rooster very soon!

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This is day 3 of the eggs in the skillet. The first day I modified the set up and got rid of everything except for the wash cloth and thermometer. After the wash cloth dried out, I added the shot glass of water back in the pan for humidity.

The first night the eggs got a little to warm. When I woke up at 6am the eggs were at 105. I think it was because I didn’t have the lid ajar enough. I readjusted the lid and have turned them about five times a day.

This morning I tried to candle some of the eggs but I think it is too early yet and also I don’t have a decent flashlight. So I will be off to the store to buy an extremely bright light and someone recommended putting a cloth over the lens with a pin hole so I will try this method.

I tried candling eggs with one of my hens earlier this year but did not have much success. This is something I am going to have to practice to get better at. I do believe a good flashlight will help also.

If all goes well, I should have new biddies on the 17th from the eggs my hen, Lacy, is sitting and on the 20th from the eggs in the skillet.

If there are any words of wisdom from people who have successfully used this method, please share.

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“From the coop to the frying pan”, but not necessarily for cooking. We are hatching some biddies! If this process is of interest to you, then this is what you will need:

Step
1
Set up your pan and line it with a wash cloth, drawer liner, wood shavings, hay, etc. Anything will work. I used a wash cloth and dampened it with water for the moisture. Squeeze out the excess water. If your skillet does not have a 100 degree temperature on the dial, set it on the lowest setting and put the lid on the skillet and test it. I would test it over a 24-hr. period before beginning the process. A skillet with a glass lid is the preferred model.

Step
2
Position eggs in your skillet. Be sure to mark them so you will recognize whether they have been rotated or not. Make sure eggs do not touch each other or the sides of the pan. Cover the pan with lid and open the air flow on top or leave the lid slightly ajar.

Step
3
Turn eggs regularly. Normally about three to four times a day. I turn mine once in the morning, in the afternoon, evening, and before I go to bed. Keep the maintenance to a minimum as the temperature goes down when the lid is off. While turning eggs, if your cloth has dried out add a shot glass or cup of water for humidity.

Step
4
Candle the eggs after about four days into the incubation period. If a large spot of blood is observed with veins radiating from it, your egg is fertilized. Do this process once a week to ensure your chicks are developing. If you find any that are not developing, remove from the pan.

Step
5
Be patient and moderate the process. Depending on the type of egg you are incubating, the period 21 days or longer. I am incubating chicken eggs so it is a 21-day process. On the 18th day, stop the rotation process. If you have made it this far, soon you will hear little chirps from the egg and hatching will soon begin.

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Are you looking for FREE egg incubator plans? Well I have the solution if you have an electric skillet.

This is my first try for this and I am excited at the possibilities. I call myself creative but I would have never thought of this. I read about it yesterday on a forum I frequent and could not wait to give it a try.

In all the stuff I read yesterday, they recommend having a glass lid but at this point I don’t have one so I am utilizing the lid that came with the pan. I will search for my glass lid at local thrift stores and I hope by the time the 18th day comes around I will have found one.

I have a wash cloth lining the bottom that was run under water and squeezed the excess out. I do not have a hydrometer that measures the humidity so I may be in trouble. I am using a cooking thermometer and you can see it is reading 100. You do not have to put them in cartons but I chose to do it this way. Again, this being the first time I may end up with nothing. But there is also the possibility of hatching baby chicks and that keeps me motivated!

Just in case you want to try this yourself, I will be posting a following entry with all the instructions to date. Just know as I learn this could modify somewhat.

I will keep you updated on the egg incubating process. Especially when I start candling the eggs. Hopefully you can learn from my mistakes (and I hope there are not too many).

I was just so excited when I read about this yesterday and realized I had an egg incubator sitting in my kitchen and could have tried this process along time ago. If you have tried this, please post a comment and let the readers’ know.

10am…removed small dish of water as condensation was forming on eggs. Evidently too much since I had added water to the wash cloth before lining the skillet.
2pm…removed egg cartons and metal tray (I believe the metal tray was causing the heat to rise a little). Now eggs are laying on their sides and I have added markings to their sides to keep track of rotations.

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It has been a very quiet week and not much has been happening. So much so that I caught Pepper, my Barred-Rock hen, sleeping on the railing around the deck!

The rooster tried to wake her by crowing loudly beside her!

But to no avail…

The view from my office still gives me frequent visits from my female hummingbird friend.
I enjoy watching her fly to and fro and the male hummingbird chasing her everywhere. He is a frequent visitor to the feeder also but does not stay as long as her so I haven’t gotten any good photos of him yet.

The latest from the chicken coop is Lacy, my silver-laced Wyandotte is brooding. She was sitting on one egg and a golf ball! I went to a friend that has several different breeds than mine and have traded eggs with her. I hope to have full-breed buff orpington chicks out of some of these eggs. Unfortunately my friend does not know which eggs are hers so I took a dozen. Now Lacy is sitting on 13 eggs, minus the golf ball. That was in the nest to trick the crows from eating the eggs.

So hopefully in about 3 weeks I will have some more little biddies.

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The last two weeks I posted some entries on homemade chicken feeders. I have been thinking on what would be something that might help some of my readers and as I was visiting one of my favorite sites, backyardchickens.com, I found where one of the members, Kerry, shared how they made their homemade water-er.

So here is another homemade project for you do-it-yourselfer’s:

Changes for next time:
I’d use a 1 gallon PVC bucket with the non-snap-tight lid (lid just rests on the top) instead of a 5 gallon one.
I’d drill the hole in the side of the bucket about an inch higher so that the nozzle remains vertical when the bucket is on the ground during cleaning and refills (as it is now the bung hole is too close to the bottom and I have to turn the nozzle sideways to place the bucket on the ground).

Cost: about $43.00
Bung with inside and outside rubber washers and nut (w/1/2″ pipe thread) Requires drilling a 1 1/4″ hole near the bottom of the bucket. $12.95
1/2″ nipple and elbow $5.00
3/4″ pipe thread to garden hose thread adapter $3.95
faucet dog nozzle water-er $12.95
5 gallon PVC bucket with lid $5.00 + $3.00
teflon tape .10

* The dog/chick pushes the 1 1/2″ long down-facing nozzle slightly to the side and water drips out running down the nozzle. The chick immediately moves her beak to catch the water and repeats the process about a dozen times until sated.

I hope this is of benefit to some of you crafty people out there! If you have your own homemade water-er, please share!

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I haven’t shared about my baby chicks lately so let me catch you up on the latest…

On Tuesday after our short weekend trip, I was tending to my chickens and I let the Henny Penny, the mean hen, out of the cage. She is raising an Easter Egg chick I think. Anyway, I let her out and now the babies are about five weeks old so of course the little chick wants out too. I open the cage to get the waterer and out it goes.

I was concerned that a hawk or a crow just might get the little bird so I am chasing it trying to catch it. I am chasing it around a tree and stuck out my foot to stop it—and I stepped on it!!! I was heart broken. It laid there and still moved a little but not much. I was sure I killed it.

After I did that the black hen would have no more to do with the chick and she took off after the other chickens. I picked it up and put it back in the cage trying to get it to drink and it did a little. I decided to keep in the cage overnight even though I figured it would be dead the next morning.

While all this was going on Rhoda, my Rhode Island Red hen with the other three little chicks, is out and running around with the other chickens. With the chicken tractor my husband made I feel safe in letting out the hens and knowing the chicks will be safe. Well, she didn’t want to come back to the chicks. Of course they are chirping but she is making her way to the henhouse. So both sets of chicks was weaned that day from their mothers.

The next morning I go out to the cage where my hurt little biddie is and she is sitting up. Not moving real well but sitting up no less. I reach in my hand to pick her up and she scurries all around the cage. Slower than normal but still moving. There was hope!!! That afternoon one of the other little chicks got out and I put it in the pen with her. The next day being Thursday, I moved both little chicks to the chicken tractor and now all four are running around eating, pecking, digging, and acting normal.

You can imagine my relief that this little chick seems to be fine. For a 24-hour period I was sure it was a goner.

I am so glad as I hope that will be one of my future green egg hens. I think I have one little rooster out of the four but I still can’t be positive yet. I definitely have one Aracauna with no tail (but I think it is the rooster).

Anyway, happy ending to a sad little mishap. You know I am going to be careful around them in the future!

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How was your Father’s Day? My father-in-law happened to be on the other side of the state so my husband had the wild urge to pack our bags for an overnight trip.

My father-in-law is a special guy. He’s not rich in money but he is rich in life. He came from humble beginnings and worked to build a farm for his family. He owned a business at one point and due to various reasons it closed down. He continued farming and being retired. But being retired to him means raking and baling hay, feeding horses and raising cows. Still today he spends his days working in a shop that his wife runs in town (that is if he is not busy feeding the horses, cows, or chickens). Last year for Father’s Day we gave him 8 of our biddies. Two turned out to be roosters and the other six hens. This year he is raising his own little biddies!

So for this Father’s Day we drove to the beach. It turns out that my brother-in-law and his family chose the week to spend in Destin and he went with them on their trip.

We crashed the party and rented the room right next to theirs. Not only that, my oldest son who is presently in MS at military school drove in to spend Sunday with everyone also! This is my father-in-law in the picture with my husband. Both Dad’s and special to me!

Destin at the beach. Isn’t it beautiful! (Not that I would want to live that way because I just couldn’t leave my chickens or the beautiful country life!)

The birding at the beach is wonderful also. Especially early in the morning.

I hope you had an enjoyable Father’s Day and honored those special men in your life.

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I just heard through the grapevine that tonight is the last small animal sale in Jacksonville until October. The main reason for this is due to the heat and how it affects the animals that are waiting to be auctioned. Last year they took off two months but this year they have decided to extend it to three months. Anyone who lives here knows how hot it can get and it doesn’t cool off until late in the evening.

At the small animal auction, the animals start arriving around 4pm and they sit around in cages for the next three hours waiting for the auction to start. The auction starts at 7pm and last until they sell them all.

Not only do they sell animals but they offer a variety of other items. Last time I purchased a double-pen cage for $20. You can’t build one for that price! Who knows what tonight might bring.

Just so you know, I do not own or have any connections with the people at the auction. I just enjoy finding good stuff at a decent price and want to share with the local readers where they might find their next bargain.

So if you are local to the area and are looking to purchase some chickens, ducks, guineas, rabbits; you name it they’ve got it. Come check it out.

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