BeccaOH: Update of just STUFF

[BeccaOH]

savingdogs, my BOs are typically great layers and good broodies. I have a quad plus some chicks I'm debating about keeping. I know I can sell those locally.

Wifezilla, I have a young drake that ended up with weak, wideset legs. He wobbles and spends most of his time laying down. He is a black runner. I've never butchered a duck, and I'm not really thinking he'd be worth it, especially with black feathers and skin. Should I just give him away?

 

[Quail_Antwerp]

savingdogs, my BOs are typically great layers and good broodies. I have a quad plus some chicks I'm debating about keeping. I know I can sell those locally.

Wifezilla, I have a young drake that ended up with weak, wideset legs. He wobbles and spends most of his time laying down. He is a black runner. I've never butchered a duck, and I'm not really thinking he'd be worth it, especially with black feathers and skin. Should I just give him away?

Don't give him away! take him to Roger's and get atleast $2 - $5 for him!

 

[BeccaOH]

savingdogs, my BOs are typically great layers and good broodies. I have a quad plus some chicks I'm debating about keeping. I know I can sell those locally.

Wifezilla, I have a young drake that ended up with weak, wideset legs. He wobbles and spends most of his time laying down. He is a black runner. I've never butchered a duck, and I'm not really thinking he'd be worth it, especially with black feathers and skin. Should I just give him away?

Don't give him away! take him to Roger's and get atleast $2 - $5 for him!

That coming from the woman who threw a fit about the broken legged bunny in the cage you bought.

 

[Quail_Antwerp]

THAT was different! they were supposed to be a PAIR and were both Bucks!

sheesh.

 

[savingdogs]

savingdogs, my BOs are typically great layers and good broodies. I have a quad plus some chicks I'm debating about keeping. I know I can sell those locally.

Wifezilla, I have a young drake that ended up with weak, wideset legs. He wobbles and spends most of his time laying down. He is a black runner. I've never butchered a duck, and I'm not really thinking he'd be worth it, especially with black feathers and skin. Should I just give him away?

I KNOW, that is why I found it so upsetting. Mine were good layers for one year, excellent, and went broody although never had a successful hatch, but that was pretty much it. They stopped laying for the winter and never really started back up. I have a daughter of them who is following the same pattern as well. She is broody now that I don't have a roo!

I wish I had those orloff hatching eggs, I'd give you all my BO for five or six of THEM! Isn't it funny. I wonder if my conditions here are just more conducive for the orloffs or if it is the strains of these breeds we have. I did seem to have a problem with lice that may have been effecting the Buff Orpingtons more than the others. But mine pretty much stopped laying at age two except for maybe one egg a week, whereas I still get an egg almost every day or every other day from my russian orloffs the same age,and they lay in the middle of the snowy winter, rain or shine. Many days in winter I have just the two white egss out there (my orloffs lay white eggs, I know some lay brown).

 

[BeccaOH]

savingdogs, my BOs are typically great layers and good broodies. I have a quad plus some chicks I'm debating about keeping. I know I can sell those locally.

Wifezilla, I have a young drake that ended up with weak, wideset legs. He wobbles and spends most of his time laying down. He is a black runner. I've never butchered a duck, and I'm not really thinking he'd be worth it, especially with black feathers and skin. Should I just give him away?

I KNOW, that is why I found it so upsetting. Mine were good layers for one year, excellent, and went broody although never had a successful hatch, but that was pretty much it. They stopped laying for the winter and never really started back up. I have a daughter of them who is following the same pattern as well. She is broody now that I don't have a roo!

I wish I had those orloff hatching eggs, I'd give you all my BO for five or six of THEM! Isn't it funny. I wonder if my conditions here are just more conducive for the orloffs or if it is the strains of these breeds we have. I did seem to have a problem with lice that may have been effecting the Buff Orpingtons more than the others. But mine pretty much stopped laying at age two except for maybe one egg a week, whereas I still get an egg almost every day or every other day from my russian orloffs the same age,and they lay in the middle of the snowy winter, rain or shine. Many days in winter I have just the two white egss out there (my orloffs lay white eggs, I know some lay brown).

Well, you may be talking me into keeping the ROs at least until spring or so. I have the adult pair, then I hatched 3 from a BYCer in MI. I have one chick hatched from this pair with 6 more eggs in the incubator due on the 20th. I wonder when I'll know roo from pullet?

 

[savingdogs]

The orloffs have also been smart about avoiding predators. And they hatched chicks for me and then DEFENDED them against the flock that had earlier been picking on them. This year Pretty has taken to defending the just-feathered-out chicks, they must remind her of last years chicks (they are actually related to her "babies"). I did not even LIKE them and they grew on me. They never let me pick them up so they irritated me for a long while, but they eventually proved their worth. They also had a terrible, horrible long molt the first year and they looked just awful, but since then, they have never molted again and grew really pretty. They were so ugly, I named one "Pretty" as a sarcastic joke, and the one that wasn't HER is Unpretty. But now the joke is on me, Unpretty is gorgeous.

 

[Farmfresh]

Minks are awful chicken predators. They grab the chicken and chew off their heads and then lick up the blood. Plus they can fit threw even a small hole in the wire.

My Hillbilly Grandpa used to trap mink and sell their pelts. He had a shed near his house that he called his "Raleigh room" because that is where he also stored the Raleigh products that he sold. He would skin the minks, salt them and hang them on stretchers all along one wall to dry until he had enough to take to market. The whole shed (and a huge area around it) stank horribly. Minks are a close relation to a skunk. I had been to visit the "Raleigh room" during trapping season many times before I found out the some ladies spent large amounts of money to wear a mink coat!! I couldn't imagine it!! PEEEUUU. Who would want a coat that smelled like that?

I know that you are not really into eating your chickens, but I did want to add that I read somewhere that a Dorking/ Buff Orpington cross was voted the best tasting chicken of them all.

 

[BeccaOH]

Minks are awful chicken predators. They grab the chicken and chew off their heads and then lick up the blood. Plus they can fit threw even a small hole in the wire.

I know that you are not really into eating your chickens, but I did want to add that I read somewhere that a Dorking/ Buff Orpington cross was voted the best tasting chicken of them all.

I do not want to see or smell a mink.

I had not heard of that meat cross. I'm not opposed to using my birds for meat, but so far I've just been in breeding and eating egg mode.

 

[Wifezilla]

How old is the drake? He may just be niacin deficient. Often people who feed ducks the same thing they feed their chickens see this. Or if you use flock raiser. Ducks burn through a bunch of niacin and if you are using a non-waterfowl specific feed, you need to get those ducks some brewers yeast. Fixes them right up.

As for butchering a runner, while it is true there is not a lot of meat, you can get a VERY flavorful, nutritious bone broth even from a scrawny runner. If you don't mind plucking, you will get some good fat too.