Ah bugger. The poor little black silkies came up with coccidiosis the other day.

I suppose the conditions were ripe for it being quite hot and having had a lot of recent rains and these guys only being a few weeks out of quarantine in a new home but I was hoping it was a one off from a bit of heat stress. The good news is they don't seem much bothered by it and are still drinking, eatting and puttering about as normal back in their quarantine cages despite continued bloody droppings. Their water is dosed with sulphaquin so hopefully that should clear it up quick-smart and they are getting small amounts of soft layer mash with drops of blackstrap molasses in it to help. I'm trying to find some raw goats milk as well. I just hope the current 43 degree weather doesn't contribute to the stress too much. :-/

More pics! I'm on a roll!

Yep, more pics again! I got a fwe of the black silkies giving a better idea of their colouring, though I'm still not thrilled with how the beetle-green tends to look reflective/highlight as a bluey colour on this camera. One day I'll get it right!

Till then here are my bookends busy looking for bugs....

And here's a cute pic of the little chicks taking advantage of the warm day to have a stroll in the grass and a bug hunt.

Lastly, one of the Faverolle.

Holy cow you would not believe how difficult it was to get even a single picture of these guys! I haven't posted many pics of them as they've been very disappointing. I got them, same as my Wyandottes, because of their repute for good natures and placid tempers. Most Faverolle are... mine I suspect came from a line with dreadful tempers as the whole lot are nuts! Very highstrung and nervy, they scatter in a dozen different directions when they hear a footstep. This pic is courtesy of my 12x zoom and even so you can see she's got her mouth wide open alarm calling! Same environment, feed, number of feeders, space per bird and amount/type of handling as my lovely friendly Wyandottes and Silkies but man what a difference! I'd intended to keep a few to breed on but considering their temperments, they've all got about 10 weeks before they're sent to chookie heaven no matter how pretty they are. :-(

Merry Christmas everyone!

What is this?

Why, it's a partridge (wyandotte) in a pear tree of course! ;-) Oh dear, a rather bad joke but I couldn't resist!

I just have a few more pics I wanted to update... the first is an update picture of Cedar, the partridge 'dotte roo I got at Euroa... now free of scaley leg mite and feeling much happier out and about!

And update shots of the wyandotte chicks... gosh they are funny looking things at this stage! Their feathers sure don't resemble their parents beautiful patterns atm do they!

Believe it or not this little patchy looking boy will end up looking like the one above when he gets his grown up feathers! If this fellas comb comes up nice, he'll probably be nice for breeding.

His penciling on the wings is a bit neater but the markings on the chest is less nice than green. He's smaller overall with slightly less beetle green to his black and rich bay colour to his wings.

This fellow has a dark neck, darker chest with decent markings but penciling is quite messy. Below is their sister who when she gets her grown up feathers will have nice concentric pencilling instead of baby bars. She looks to have a nicer ground colour than her mum which is what I was hoping for but will depend on how her penciling comes up and how she turns out if she's better than mum or not. Hopefully she's at least equal.

Happy holidays everyone!

We had a lovely (if slightly soggy) solistice and beautiful Christmas day.

I got two rather unexpected Christmas gifts -

the first is that is looks like one of my little bantams is going broody so I have someone to hatch my Wyandotte eggs! I was so upset about having to turf them as their mum isn't broody and the incubator service I used for the last batch is taking holidays as well but now it looks as if I may not have to!


The second is this lovely chap... he's a teeny tiny necklace, only 1.5 cm tall in real life but I blew it up so you could see some of the detail in the fine metal work. (Sorry for the flash whiteout in areas!) DH got him for me as our jeweler sent us a $250 giftcard in thanks for our purchases over the years which was such a lovely surprise! Isn't he just gorgeous?!?

What the heck are we?

This is the question I posed the other day on BYP for Tiger and Lily. They're obviously Silkie crosses but I wasn't quite sure what the cross or crosses might be or what you might call their colours/patterns other than "pretty". It's easy to guess the cross might be pekin. It's a common enough cross with silkies and they rather look like it. But take a look at this pattern... it looks kind of like spangled doesn't it? Besides it's funner to try and pick the genetics apart!


And then there's this one who someone guessed might have some Japanese bantam in her because she's a bit smaller, narrower and has a jaunty set to her tail and if so the colour might be called brown-red or golden birchen.


Now... for what you've all been waiting for - the chicks! I picked up my new little ones yesterday and they're so cute! Unfortunately the 5th baby didn't absorb it's yolk correctly and passed away. After letting them settle in I banded them and weighed them up. They're already starting to get some of their bloodfeathers in. So here's the kids at about 4 days old...

No band - the smallest of the lot at 1 oz. and obviously the aforementioned "light chick". ;-)

Red band - 1 1/2 oz

White band - the lunker of the lot at 2 oz., has a tiny speck of down in the middle of his legs.

Yellow - also 1 1/2 oz. and also having one speck of down in the rear of his leg.

An example of size difference between the last lots male and female! Green is male, non-band is female! LOL At about 29 days old I think? Will post some more of the growing up photos later tonight when I've got some time to resize them!

Results

I got a nice e-mail this morning - from the fresher dozen, of 5 fertile at 8 days there are 5 chicks. Of the old dozen, several were candled as being fertile but apparently but in hindsight the best guess is that the age of the eggs probably made them look as dark as a fertile egg. Ah well, we gave them a shot. Apparently they exploded when cracked to be checked. I really hope it didn't make a big mess... ew!

I should pick them up on Friday so be watching for pictures!

Now I've just got to coax my darling hen back into laying at least a few more eggs and keep their bums defluffed. I think nutrition is all right - they get a mix of layer pellets, a free-range scratch mix (seeds, grains, lucerne bits etc) both of which are stored in airtight containers in a cool, dark, relatively low humidity area. Plus whatever bugs and such they gobble from the garden, fresh greens/veggies/healthy scraps in small amounts in the evenings, diced garlic and occasional dobs of yogurt (real stuff), honey or blackstrapmolasses in a mash, applecider vinegar in the water in small amounts. Going to start some codliver oil as soon as I can find some. Plenty of space and free-ranging as they follow me around the garden and we've got heaps of bugs in the mulch. Been wormed so parasites aren't the problem. I think it's just bum fluff and maybe some to do with the recent bout of heat we got for a few days even though they had a shallow tray of water to bathe in spoilt chooks!

Waiting is *so* hard!

My new batch of chicks was due to hatch around the 10/11th but all was quiet. I've been so nervous about them because one box of the eggs was quite old (14 days!) and I didn't expected them to do much but chucked them in because I was paying for 2 dozen to be incubated either way. Natch' it turns out 7 of them were fertile at 8 days.

I got a quick text last night, 3 from the second (fresher) box hatched!

So of course now I'm sitting at my e-mail pathetically hitting the refresh button every time I pass the room hoping for news of the rest and *trying* to be patient! ;-p

I figured I ought to put up a bit of an update. My "baby chicks" are now looking distinctly more like young chickens and it looks like it's going to be 3 boys, 1 girl. Figures!

Sir Green Band Chick... who looks very much like his brothers, though they've all got varying amounts of black/redish colouring.

And the little miss! They're still all pretty sweet and tame and will accompany me on weeding sessions in the garden on the hunt for bugs which they quite enjoy.

The eggs I sent off are due sometime Monday/Tuesdayish hopefully and I'm really hoping all of them have made it. Cross your fingers everyone!

Silly Penny had started laying quite steadily, got to about 6 eggs, started acting clucky, I told her she better keep laying and not just sit on 6 eggs. Well... teach me to say something like that! She not only didn't keep laying but stopped sitting as well. X-) If she doesn't start laying again that will bring my season to (hopefully, cross fingers, knock on wood, rub a lucky horseshoe) 16 chicks which isn't the most spectacular number ever!

I'm also thinking of where to source more hens. I'm most inclined to go back to Jarrah and Penny's bloodlines and just get more that are at least somewhat related to them and owned by someone who knows the lines. The downside to that is that the old chap had sold out of his birds and is now in the process of building up his own numbers from some birds he reckons will take him a few years to work back up to par. My other option is to write to some of the breeders in my Wyandotte book, most likely in NSW and plan a trip up there if someone has some to sell or will put me on a waiting list or less ideally if I can at least get a couple dozen eggs of a good line which then of course means having to hatch them out and raise them up before choosing the best... a bit luck of the draw but may save me driving 16+ hours! So hard to know what to do!

And while not chooks, I thought the bird lovers among us might enjoy these guys, two of the local parrot population on our property.