Recent content by chrismahon

Too difficult at this age, especially with an individual rather than several for comparison. Some breeds sex so late the first time you know with the males is when they start trying to crow and the females you know because they don't. You would normally be sure of the sex at 12 weeks.

Has the flood of completely irrelevant posts finished? I noticed the last post was Wednesday and nothing since. They were arriving at the rate of 5 a minute up to then!

Something else that occurred to me (whilst waiting for the storms to arrive yesterday evening) is the day count you have. Eggs are incubated starting day zero and day one starts 24 hours later, so the egg may have been day 21 (hatching day) or day 25 (very late hatch).

Day 22-26 is too vague. At day 22 it may be OK, at 26 it is probably dead. I did open an egg at day 25 and killed the chick in it, so leave it longer. I must add that moving the egg is likely to kill the chick in it anyway. The chick will be trying to manouvre to pip and it only has limited...

Hello and welcome. I know the Midlands area quite well and there is no problem with the environment. Summers are the biggest problem because chickens need shade and good ventilation to keep cool, but you won't reach their limit of 37C, as we do here. Two important points. Always start with...

After 3 days separation she is seen as an outsider and will remain so, which isn't unusual as I've seen hens raised together from hatching attack each other after 24 hours. She will have to be introduced as if she was a completely new chicken to the flock, which is going to be difficult. Note...

Lovely feathery feet and she's quite young- still say Brahma.

Might be Brahma? Would need more photos showing the individuals clearly.

Some good points there, but unfortunately some that should be disregarded. Points 3 and 4- hens want to lay somewhere fit to hatch chicks basically. To add security to the nest boxes we fit curtains made from rubber car pats cut to create strips which are thin enough to be parted easily. These...

I forgot to mention another problem we had there. A power 'spike' blew one of the components on the control board, so the heater stopped working, fortunately during the day. This could happen in the UK as well. A dash to town to buy the only incubator they had in stock and the hatch was saved...

It doesn't sound to me like you need a new incubator, because you have resolved the problem without one. However it is always a good idea to have a backup unit ready at hand to switch on. I remember when we had the misfortune to live in the Dordogne for a year and try hatching eggs there. The...

I have only had experience of an electronic mole deterrent. The previous owner of the house had one. It emitted a high pitched sound every minute or so which was very annoying. There were no wild birds in the garden at all, but they returned about a month after we moved in, because thankfully...

As Josh said, it's a good idea to have a means of checking the electronic readings on the incubator, because very often they are wrong. Both our incubators have mercury thermometers and the humidity is controlled by filling a water trough (or both for piping and hatching), so nothing fancy at...

That's a difficult thing to do Josh. How difficult will depend on their available space because they may well be attacked as intruders and won't be able to escape. Normally you would put them within sight of the oldies, but in a separate coop and run. After several weeks you might attempt to mix...

The short answer Baby Ruth is they can't swim so will drown quickly. The reason is their feathering, which doesn't contain enough oil for submersion because they can't produce enough. So it's like you trying to swim in Winter clothes. I did hear a very sad story once of a chicken used as a...