Poultry Talk Ontario (pto.ca)

OK, so I have my chickens, about 20 that give me a pretty egg basket. Leghorn, bantam, Americauna and Marans, olive eggers and mixes thereof. And my incubator doesn’t plug in, it is that kind with feathers that won’t get off the nest. I get a new roo every year for new blood. Get outside eggs to set...

And the doctors and pharmacists go to many years of college to learn stuff like this.

I also do rawhide. Can of lye in a barrel 2/3 full of water then put the hide in (after fleshing) and soak for about a week. Stir and move it around once a day or so. Then I use a log about a foot across, smoothed down so no knots or bumps and use a draw knife to peel the hair off. Can do it with th...

For defatting/fleshing the hide, I like to spread it flesh side up in the yard and let the chickens peck the fat, flesh off it. They get almost all of it and save me a lot of work. Will still be some connective tissue and some flesh, but loosened way easier to handle with a knife.

I put muy location, town etc in when I registered. It doesn't seem to come up on my computer. Not sure if it comes up on someone elses when I post? If not, how do I get it to, also, how do I post a picture of me or my birds to come up when I post?

For open wounds like that, a lot of times I use salt. Take a handful like you were going to season the soup, and throw it on the wound, enough to cover all that is open. It does several things. Kills bacteria. Osmosis gets the body sending fluids out instead of allowing them in form outside, dries o...

Coppertox. It is available at most feed stores. It is meant for horse's feet, antifungal. It is a copper sulfate solution in some kind of gluey base. Hens with the scale, I catch on the perch and treat the area with coppertox. There is enough copper sulfate in it to kill the mites, the gluey base he...

I make my own. It is the Scottish ancestry I suppose. I buy rubber tubing of an appropriate size, colour, cut it into bands with a knife. Colour code for year hatched pretty much all of mine. Some times also do particular hatches, who the roo was or some such. Not high teck, but works for me to age ...

Last summer Ameracauna blue slate roo over black hen begat a couple of splash hens. Not that selective when I set eggs, just whatever laid that day, so not sure of what percentage. Only one roo around, so he was for sure the daddy. The splash were a surprise for me, never had one before.

With young chicks around the hen, I go out with the shovel and dig up a piece of sod. Put it in the pen with them, upside down. The mother then helps them pick trough it for bugs and bits of sand that they start eating to get the crop and gut working right. I hear about plugged up chicks on chick st...