#  >  > Living And Legal Affairs In Thailand >  >  > Farming & Gardening In Thailand >  >  My Splendid Cock

## Mendip

I have fond memories of growing up in rural Somerset where we had a few ducks and bantams in the garden. Once my first daughter came along I thought it time to start keeping chickens again. I think its important for kids to grow up with animals; it teaches them respect for the animals and gives an appreciation of where their food comes from. Also, it is just enjoyable. It was great to watch my daughter help a stuck new born chick out of its shell using a cocktail stick. She was so happy when the chick survived and joined the rest of the clutch.

 I started my flock a few years ago with a jungle fowl cock and a handful of the red egg laying hens which I think are called warren hens. The wild jungle fowl of SE Asia is said to be the ancestor of all world-wide domesticated chickens, so it was like going full circle to put together a jungle fowl cock with probably the most linebred/interbred chickens of all. These warren hens have even lost the instinct to go broody, such is the demand on them to keep producing eggs. I guess a human analogy could be to pair up a bushman from the Kalahari desert with an inbred royal from the English monarchy. Mind you, at least the jungle fowl/warren hen progeny are useful (good egg layers producing small eggs which are great in salads or pickled with a beer) which is more than can probably be said for our future English royals. 

The challenges of keeping hens in Korat are many and it has mostly been a process of trial and error. I am constantly amazed at how little the Thais seem to know about caring for animals (and about almost anything to do with nature to be honest). Their attitude seems to be one of live and let live, or live and let die, as unfortunately everything they touch seems to die prematurely. I have had to learn most stuff on my own. 

I started by building a large chicken run which is more to keep the dogs out than to keep the chickens in. This underwent several stages of extension and development until the finished product today which I am happy with. After a few disasters I am now relatively happy with the way things are going with the chickens in general, and amongst the stuff I want to cover in this thread are:


 Dealing with the heat Food; to keep the chickens happy and healthy and to keep their eggs with strong shells Dealing with snakes (did you know it is thought that snakes can smell the odour an egg gives off when it is due to hatch and to back this up we often get a snake take up residence in the chicken run just before a clutch of eggs hatch in the hopes of an easy meal) My experience with breeding chickens Disease; we lost nearly a whole flock a few years ago to fowl cholera before I started vaccinating every three months. Also, my own remedy/prevention against bumblefoot Keeping them clean (not easy with a largish flock in a confined area) and using the waste What to do with 20 or so eggs every day (and keep your cholesterol level manageable) 

 So, to kick this off, a picture of My Splendid Cock, which is the title of this thread. He was named Robin Hood by my daughter. Apparently, the few white feathers at the base his tail are a sign of a genuine jungle fowl.


_I will be absolutely buggered if I can get a picture to attach to this post. Dillinger, you offered before...  please could you post a picture of my cock in this thread and then I can carry on. Its Photo1 in my Chicken album. Or any help from anyone else would be gratefully appreciated._

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## cyrille



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## Maanaam

> These warren hens have even lost the instinct to go broody,





> just before a clutch of eggs hatch


How do the hens brood if they don't go broody, or do you use an incubator?





> What to do with 20 or so eggs every day


Charity. Be nice to the neighbours  :Smile:  You could also pickle them: I'm sure Thai would love them.



> we had a few ducks


Do you have ducks now? A harmless but amusing prank is to swap fertile hens eggs with fertile ducks eggs. Maternal instinct and infant instinct means the "mother" and young bond naturally, but when the chicks and ducklings hatch, it's funny to watch the mother duck trying in vein to get her "ducklings" into the pond, and the mother hen having coniptions as her "chicks" instinctively run into the water.

^Nice set of spurs.
When I was younger, some of the village boys used to hunt jungle fowl. The term "hunt" is deceptive, "catch" or "trap" would be better. The method was to take their rooster into the bush and tie him up with a meter or two of string. He'd settle in, but any jungle roosters in the area would come running if he crowed. The two would fight and end up tangled in the string. Jungle rooster caught!

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## Mendip

Many thanks Cyrille!

Maanaam, I omitted to mention we also have a few female jungle fowl, or at least bantams as we'd call them in the UK. When they go broody I'll sometimes give them a few of the jungle fowl eggs and the larger warren hen eggs to sit on. As we are gradually getting overrun by chickens I don't often try and get eggs hatched any more, but its very difficult to stop them being broody. 

Years ago in the UK we'd often put duck (Khaki Campbell) eggs under broody bantams as they make so much better mothers than the ducks. One time we put a couple of goose eggs under a bantam and within a week of hatching the chicks were bigger than the mum who tried to control them in vane. We don't keep ducks in Korat because they just make too much mess, although I would like to - they have much better characters than the chickens.

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## Mendip

Robin Hood lives in the chicken run with a large harem. He has mainly redheads to choose from… but can also opt for brunettes, blondes or even go ebony if the fancy takes him. He doesn’t seem too choosy and daughters also seem to be fair game, although we discourage that kind of behaviour I guess no harm is done so long as we don't hatch chicks from his daughter's eggs.


Cyrille? If you could please put up Photos 2 and 3 that would be great!

I won't get lazy and will persevere with the picture posting issue tonight, but it would be good if I can get the first five pics in the album posted in the meantime.

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## Dillinger

Interesting thread mate. How many chickens and cocks are there?.

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## Mendip

Many thanks Dillinger! You were spared posting a photo of my cock!

Things have unfortunately gone a little bit out of order.

One thing that I have found very rewarding is watching new additions settle in with the existing flock. We have enough chickens already, but when my young daughter accompanies me to the chicken feed shop in Korat she often persuades me to buy a couple more of the young red egg laying hens ‘to give them a good life’. These girls are around six months old when they come on to the market, just before they are due to start laying. We take them home, my daughter names them, then we release them into the chicken run. At first they are totally bewildered by the space and the attention from other hens and our cock who gives them his own special welcome. They also walk all funny as though they have never been in any space before, or maybe that’s due to Robin Hood’s attention. At first they have no idea how to eat the fruit and veg lying around, a bit like watching the Scots I work with offshore.


 Within a few days Robin Hood will succeed in calling them up to roost at night. I find it amazing that the innate instinct to roost up high has survived in such interbred chickens and it’s great to see them enjoy a pretty normal life. Many would have been destined for the cages in the battery farms. (see third pic down in Dillinger's post)

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## Mendip

As an aside, during a recent trip to the UK we got our eggs from a free range farm near my parent’s village. The hens there seemed to be the same warren hens that they use in Thailand for egg production. If anyone knows differently I would be interested to know. I’ve noticed when at work in Norway that the eggs have white shells rather than brown shells, so presumably the Norwegians use a different type of hen for eggs?

 My daughter seems to have got distracted by an EasyJet taking off from Bristol Airport while taking this picture. I guess maybe it was inevitable that a half Somerset / half Isaan kid would start pointing at planes?     (see top pic in Dillinger's post!)

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## Dillinger

> We take them home, my daughter names them


Is that a good idea for when you come to slaughter and eat them?.... 'is this Henrietta, Dad? :Smile: 

Have you considered getting into cock fighting yet? i see loads in cages around here and it's quite humane I think?

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## Dillinger

As for the eggshell colour....this I didnt know





> White-feathered chickens with white earlobes lay white eggs; red or brown ones with red earlobes lay brown eggs; and the Ameraucana breed, also known as the Eastern egg chicken, lays eggs with blue shells. Shell quality does not differ by breed, though younger chickens lay eggs with harder shells





> Brown-egg chickens tend to be larger and cost more to feed and raise, so white eggs are more cost-efficient.

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## cyrille

> The breed has not yet been recognized by an poultry association in North America.
> 
> The Norwegian Jaerhon Chicken Breed


How will they sleep?

 :Very Happy:

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## cyrille



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## Mendip

> Great thread Mendip.
> Would you sell any of your eggs to the Bangkok consumer market?


Hi Wow Bingo, I can't really see that it would be worth trying to sell eggs properly as we only get around 20 to 30 a day, less in this hot weather. The eggs however are just about organic and the yolks are deep orange due to all the fruit and veg the chickens eat. Fresh eggs are great to poach as the white holds together and one of my pleasures is getting my daughter to collect a few fresh eggs on a weekend morning to boil or poach. Yes, small things...

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## Mendip

Well, this is a fast evolving thread. 

I was just about to address a couple of your questions Dillinger when Max (one of our dogs) started doing his snake bark. I ran downstairs and found the dogs had chased a beautiful radiated rat snake into the chicken run (Pragmatic may be interested). We caught it and its now in the snake house. Korat Zoo will probably take this one.

If someone could please do the honors with photos 6, 7 and 8 I would be very grateful. I don't seem to be getting much done today and have now run out of time - the school run.

This has pissed me off to be honest as I was going to address our snake problem later in the thread and its screwing up my intended order, but as its a 'live' happening I thought it could disrupt things.

On reflection, looking at the last photo there is a distinct bulge so maybe this snake caught one of the mice in the chicken run. The bulge doesn't look big enough to be a chicken!

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## Luigi

You're gonna have a well behaved kid, when there's a snake house you can threaten to throw them in to.  :Smile:

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## Luigi

> If someone could please do the honors with photos 6, 7 and 8






[steveirwinvoice ] He's a feisty wee fella. [/steveirwinvoice ]

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## Mendip

Many thanks Luigi.

Yes I have a well behaved kid but I'd like to think its not because I shut her in the snake house some nights. A bit of discipline never hurt anyone.

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## Mendip

Dillinger, this multi quote function is beyond me but I'll try and answer your questions...

I have one cock and about 35 hens. I think a better ratio is around 1:20  to keep all eggs fertile but my daughter keeps wanting to give more hens a home and also we still occasionally hatch new chicks. Robin Hood's not complaining but he does look permanently knackered!

When we get young males from the new chicks I wait until they mature and then they go to a new 'home'. Our resident cock won't tolerate the competition and starts fighting once the youngsters mature. I used to take the young cocks to the local temple to add to their flock, naively assuming they were going to a good home. When I visited to see how they were getting on tbe Monks always said they were sleeping somewhere... I finally realised that 10 minutes after being dropped off by this strange farang the monks had knocked them on the head and put them in the pot.

I have become way too soft to kill them myself. All our chickens live out their retirement long after they have stopped laying eggs. These are pets so the naming issue isn't a problem. Besides, they all look the same so when Jess names one ' Fluffy' for example, and Fluffy dies young, I just tell my daughter that Fluffy is that other one over there. Kids are great, they believe everything!

Initially I named the chickens following the Thai tradition of using colour. Our first warren hen was Deang, followed by Deang 1, Deang 2 etc. We have had Whitey 1 through to Whitey 10, Whitey brown eye, Whitey black tail, etc etc. Fortunately my daughter prefers her tablet these days so I am spared thinking up more names.

Incidentally, the red warren hens are not robust and do seem to die young. In the free range farms in the west, these hens are still culled and turned into soup after a couple of years, once egg production drops off. They have been bred to lay six eggs a week... they burn themselves out fast and are then slaughtered. That's life, but mine get to be shagged mercilessly by Robin Hood until the end of their days. It only seems fair.

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## Mendip

We're off for a week at the seaside tomorrow, and when we return I'll be straight back to work. This morning I remembered that our hens are overdue their fowl cholera vaccinations, so had to get it sorted pronto.

A few years ago we lost almost an entire flock of about 50 hens to fowl cholera (including my 6 year-old cock). Very upsetting as a lot had names. After we had been hit, many helpful local Thais mentioned that they couldn't understand why we didn't vaccinate. Of course, had they mentioned the need to do this beforehand, I would have done so. Thanks.

So, this morning I had to pop into town to get some fresh vaccine at the animal feed place.



This cost just 45 Baht. A bit galling to discover our previous flock could have been saved for less than the cost of a bottle of Leo.

While we were there my young companion couldn't help but notice that there were hens for sale. These will be about 5 months old, and just about ready to start laying.



What can ya do.... another four hens to join our flock. Cost 200 Baht each and once they start laying will lay around 6 eggs a week, but only for a year or so. After that the egg production drops off rapidly and in commercial farms the hens will be culled at around 18 months (even free range). Ours enjoy a happy retirement.



We get back home, and the hardest part of the operation is catching the buggers. Once confined, we are ready for action. The four newcomers in the background are getting to know their new home. These new hens come ready-vaccinated so weren't included in today's program.



Each chicken gets a 1ml (1cc) dose into the muscle of the chest. It's pretty easy once you get the hang of it. I've also been vaccinating some of our local street dogs (the ones I can catch) for rabies and that's a lot more difficult.





If you keep chickens it may save you a lot of heart-ache if you vaccinate against fowl cholera. It is pretty common and is probably spread by the wild bird population and also by rodents. The vaccinations need to be done every three months to keep your flock protected. Since I started doing this we haven't lost a single hen to this disease.

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## tweedle dee

Hey my hobby is pickling eggs !! i will run a topic when ive done my next batch.

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## Latindancer

> 


It appears there's digital information coded on that snake, and I think it says : "if this bugger bites you, you will have between 5 and 30 minutes to live".


Just got the name (The *radiated ratsnake*, *copperhead rat snake)* after saving the photo, and looked it up. _Non-venomous_, but : "These snakes are generally very defensive. They are very confident in  their ability to defend themselves so you must be very confident in  order to remotely have a chance at controlling this species. They are  also a good trainer snakes for those looking to get into cobras and  other elapids".

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## Mendip

^ We get quite a lot of these but generally I leave the non-venomous snakes alone unless they go in the chicken run.

The one in the pic was supposed to go to Korat zoo but it escaped from the snake house. It came back again a couple of weeks later but the dogs chased it away and we haven't seen it since.

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## Mendip

> Hey my hobby is pickling eggs !! i will run a topic when ive done my next batch.


That would be great, or any other egg recipes for that matter - we get so many. I've been pickling the small bantam eggs but don't really know what I'm doing...

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## headhunter

> That would be great, or any other egg recipes for that matter - we get so many. I've been pickling the small bantam eggs but don't really know what I'm doing...


you must have a fine cock there mate.

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## Mendip

> you must have a fine cock there mate.


Why, Thank you!

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## headhunter

> It appears there's digital information coded on that snake, and I think it says : "if this bugger bites you, you will have between 5 and 30 minutes to live".
> 
> 
> Just got the name (The *radiated ratsnake*, *copperhead rat snake)* after saving the photo, and looked it up. _Non-venomous_, but : "These snakes are generally very defensive. They are very confident in  their ability to defend themselves so you must be very confident in  order to remotely have a chance at controlling this species. They are  also a good trainer snakes for those looking to get into cobras and  other elapids".


COPPERHEAD RACER normally grow to 2-3mtrs.long non venomous but will bite if cornered,very fast,we were told they are PROTECTED therefo don't kill them.we had one outside our gate that sat there listening to our dog talking to it.

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## ootai

Mendip
I thought I would post here and resurrect this thread rather than pollute your lockdown commute thread with my waffle.

Anyway yesterday I visited the "cute" dentist again and while in Korat I finally bought 6 hens. So you can tell your daughter that 6 more have been spared from a life in a battery shed.  I am not sure I bought them from the same place you do as there are 2 adjacent shops selling them and I got the ones I thought looked the best, as in a bit younger.

Here's a few pictures to look at.

This is the pen I made for them it is backed onto the rice barn and was previously used by the MIL for her chickens.


Here they are along with the new cock I put in with them, he is only young so we'll see what happens regarding fertilised eggs being the result.  Might have a few failures early on.
I also put one of the MIL's hens in with him to try and teach the stupid warren hens what it means to be a chicken, only did that this morning.
Last night the Warrens were on their own and had no idea so I had to wait until dark then go and pick them up and lift them up onto the perch. This morning when I went to check they were still there. They obviously didn't know how to get down.


This shows the perches (top left) and the nesting "boxes" (middle right).


here's a closer view of the "nests", one can only hope they get used.


Here's the stairway to the perches, hopefully its not too steep. The plank I used is not as wide as the one you used.


This is a picture of my young cock's father the boss of the yard. If he sees another rooster he is after him in a flash.


He ain't small either, I reckon I should get him into the fight business.


These are the raising pens where I will hopefully be rearing all the crossbred chickens.


This is a batch that is currently being raised. Normally we don't have this many in one pen but all the pens were full when they arrived. I tried separating a batch of chickens once and all they did was try and get back together so I have left these alone.  Too many and they peck the feathers out of each other.


Cheers

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## Mendip

Great stuff ootai... you'll be amazed at how quickly the warren hens get used to having a life and all their natural instincts will come back fast, once allowed.

The 'chicken ramp' is essential to prevent bumblefoot for these warren hens, as I mentioned. It won't be long until they're going up and down of their own accord. I posted about it somewhere else on this forum but I can't find it... I'll look again and bring it in here.

You may find that once they start laying, they will all try and sit on top of each other in the mornings... they always seem to want to lay in the same nest. I would maybe try a few of the big clay plant pots, but on their sides? They like a roof and a bit of privacy to do their stuff.

I forgot to mention, but for these hens you really need some of the proper egg-layers feed. Life is hard for a warren hen once they start laying and they need protein and grit. The protein is to replace all the nutrients they lose to the eggs... and they should be laying 5 or 6 a week once they get going. Any unlucky geko or frog that gets into our chicken run gets eaten immediately... I've even watched a mouse get caught and eaten, and one of those horrible big centipedes. 

Any food waste that doesn't go to dogs goes to our chickens... steamed fish carcasses are particularly speedily eaten... as are shrimp shells, etc etc, and of course any fruit peelings. I used to pay my daughter to collect snails from around the garden... 1 Baht a snail... and they all went to the chickens, so two 'birds' with one stone! She demands too much money these days so now I do it meself. When we get those huge fly hatches in the wet season I empty out the pool skimmer box in the morning, wash all the flies in fresh water and tip them into the chicken run. They love all that kind of stuff.

Also, they need calcium carbonate to replace all that lost to the egg shells. The chicken food has grit added, but what I also do is keep all of our egg shells and grind them up and add the powder to the food. Without that we used to get a lot of soft shelled eggs.

Good luck!

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## Mendip

I found it! It was in an old thread started by Tomcat about great inventions!




> Rats are fascinating creatures with a highly organised social structure. They are probably the most successful mammal there is (after humans) which is why they are so persecuted. They have this 'diseased' reputation, and in many cases rightly so, but all they're doing is taking advantage of the habitats we have created for them. They have such efficient digestive systems that they can get nutrients out of our faeces. They are brave little buggers as well. When I used to go ferreting as a youngster, occasionally we'd come across a rat in a rabbit warren. A female rat with young will take on any ferret, and often come off best with the ferret badly bitten and heading to the vet's for some antibiotics.
> 
> Anyway, I resisted posting on this thread for fear of someone stealing my idea, but in the interests of animal welfare have decided to share.
> 
> For some time our chickens were suffering from bumblefoot. This is an affliction caused by the chickens constantly landing hard on the ground with a heavy impact when flying/falling down from their night time roost in the morning. The red egg laying hens are particularly prone to this as they're not very aerodynamic and tend to hit the floor with a crash. Bumblefoot is this strange white growth inside the chicken's feet that is very painful and stops the chickens walking about. Eventually the foot will swell right up making the chicken's life a misery.
> 
> The books say to add sand to the ground to soften it to reduce the chicken's impact, and to keep the perches no higher than 18 inches from the ground. Neither of which are practical as any sand will soon get scratched away and a chicken will roost in the highest place possible and will just ignore some stupid perch at knee height.
> 
> So, in my light bulb moment I invented the 'chicken ramp'. In the six years since my invention we haven't had a single case of bumblefoot.

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## tomcat

> I found it! It was in an old thread started by Tomcat about great inventions!


...would you post a link to this thread, please?...

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## Mendip

No problem!

One Singular Sensation = $

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## tomcat

> No problem!


...thanks!...

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## ootai

I thought I would provide an update on my hens.
I have now had them 3 weeks and it has been interesting as I am learning that chickens are dumb. They couldn't or wouldn't go up my "ladder" to perch on the higher perches I put in. Instead they decided it was better to just stay on the ground and huddle together. I suppose it doesn't really matter to them as they don't need to get away from predators these days but I didn't want them sleeping on the ground in amongst their crap. If they sleep on the high perches I could easily clean up their crap underneath.

Anyway I set about making some changes to their "house".


As you can see ( if you look back at the previous pictures) I have lowered their perches by nearly a metre. This meant the ramp/ladder was no longer as steep.
The stupid twats still wouldn't climb up there.
So I started going out each night and picking them up and placing them on the perches.  The Thai rooster and hen were straight up there but the warren's didn't understand what the rooster was saying when he was calling them up.
After I placed them up there I would go back an hour or so later to check that they were still there and they were as they obviously don't want to move in the dark.
So each morning each morning I would check to see if they made it down. A couple of times they hadn't so I "encouraged" them to "walk the plank" to get down.
One morning I got up earlier than normal and went to watch how they got down and they were learning they walked down the ramp, yahoo!

On Wednesday evening when I went to check all but 1 had made it up so I placed her at the bottom of the ramp and made her climb up.
Next night I went out at dusk and lo and behold they had all climbed up, finally some success. Again on Friday they were all up so I think they have finally learned so only took about 9 days to teach them, they are after all bred originally from English chickens so I shouldn't expect too much, sorry Mendip.


Same but from a different angle.


This shows that I have taken away the shade cloth I had covering this end as I thought it was a bit dark,  Also shows the new next boxes I made although they aren't laying eggs yet.
I suppose they will start laying on the ground and I will need to teach them what the boxes are for, stupid pricks.


Here you can see how they now get up there to look out at the "view" from higher up and I thought the 1 on the ground was "nesting" and gonna lay an egg but that didn't happen unfortunately.



So today they were let out of their enclosure to run free. It has been 3 weeks so hopefully they will "return" to their home.


They liked laying in the sun.

The only problem so far has been the Thai rooster. He must have gotten too close to his Dad (see previous pictures in earlier post) and the old boy beat him up.
First time I have witnessed a "cock" fight and I can understand why the Thai guys like it. The roosters really go at it.  Anyway the young rooster eventually ran away and tried to hide his head in a patch of grass but the old boy just kept pecking at his back until I stepped in to make him leave the young fella alone.

I am hoping when I go out to check then later I still have a young rooster and that they all return safely to their bed.

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## Mendip

That's really strange as any new warren hen additions I get are up roosting with the others within days. You must have got a stupid batch. 

Robin Hood (our cockerel) calls them up every night and they soon get the hang of it.

Yours must also be young if they're not laying eggs yet... but that will happen very soon.

By the way, did you know that chickens do 70% of their business while asleep, much like the Scots. 

Every evening I lay down a few catering trays underneath the perches to catch all the droppings. This makes keeping the chicken run clean much easier, and every morning I just scrape droppings from the trays into the compost bin.

Well, not me at the moment... this is another of the gardener's duties while I'm away!

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## ootai

> That's really strange as any new warren hen additions I get are up roosting with the others within days. You must have got a stupid batch.


I don't think they are any more stupid than any other chickens. In my case they had no one to learn from. The rooster and his Thai lady just flew up onto the perches which I don't think the Warren's were able to do. Having said that I seen one actually fly up onto the landing (near the nest boxes) yesterday.

I just went out to check on them and they had all returned home to their enclosure so I am a happy chappy at the moment all I need to make it a great day is for them to lay some eggs.

Speaking of eggs I bought myself an incubator in anticipation of hatching some crossbred chickens and to try it out I got MIL to save me 24 eggs.
So she come to me and said I have 24 for you so I stuck them into the incubator and thought OK 21 days and I will have some chickens.

MIL must have stole some of the eggs from under a brooding hen as 7 days in I had 10 hatch. Two of them had splayed legs, I am not sure what it was caused by but am thinking it might be that there was not much room in the incubator and they had to straddle the other eggs or the roller bar and it caused the problem. Anyway they have been despatched to Buddha as the last ones I had never ever recovered and eventually died anyway.

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## Mendip

I find that the warren hen chicks hatch in 19 to 20 days, and the wild hen chicks (from smaller eggs) hatch in 18 days. This is from when I put the fertile eggs under broody wild hens and I've never used an incubator.

I don't know why they hatch before the standard 21 days but these times are very regular. Maybe it's the heat and humidity of Isaan? Now I write the date on the eggs when I put them under the broody hens and can predict the hatch to the day.

Watch out a few days before the chicks are due to hatch... we often get a snake take residence in the chicken run ready to eat the clutch of chicks. It seems that snakes can smell when eggs are due to hatch and get ready for the bounty... we've lost a few clutches to rat snakes.

Sometimes chicks seem to have trouble hatching out of their eggs and I'll help them out by breaking the membrane inside the shell with a cocktail stick. I've read on the internet though that when you have to help chicks hatch they often end up with splayed legs... maybe this is associated somehow?

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## HuangLao

Might want to add a few ducks and geese to your already oversized circle of fowl, Mendy...

Keeps things lively. 
Just saying like.

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## ootai

> I find that the warren hen chicks hatch in 19 to 20 days, and the wild hen chicks (from smaller eggs) hatch in 18 days. This is from when I put the fertile eggs under broody wild hens and I've never used an incubator.
> 
> I don't know why they hatch before the standard 21 days but these times are very regular. Maybe it's the heat and humidity of Isaan? Now I write the date on the eggs when I put them under the broody hens and can predict the hatch to the day.
> 
> Watch out a few days before the chicks are due to hatch... we often get a snake take residence in the chicken run ready to eat the clutch of chicks. It seems that snakes can smell when eggs are due to hatch and get ready for the bounty... we've lost a few clutches to rat snakes.
> 
> Sometimes chicks seem to have trouble hatching out of their eggs and I'll help them out by breaking the membrane inside the shell with a cocktail stick. I've read on the internet though that when you have to help chicks hatch they often end up with splayed legs... maybe this is associated somehow?



Mendip
19 to 21 days before hatching I would have been unconcerned but 7 days was way to quick for there not to be some other reason.
I don't think it was the heat and humidity of Isaan either as it has been relatively cold here recently.
As for snakes, shouldn't be a problem as I will not be hatching chicks in the chook pen but instead in the Incubator.
You may be right about helping them hatch causing the splayed legs as the 2 that had the problem were ones that arrived first and they were given some help by our Thai friend who I was showing the incubator to.
I also read about not helping them hatch and leaving them be for the first 24hrs.

My plan is that with 6 warren hens laying regularly i should be able to collect enough (24) eggs in 5-6 days to fill the incubator so they all should hatch about the same time 19-21 days after I put them in.






> Might want to add a few ducks and geese to your already oversized circle of fowl, Mendy...
> 
> Keeps things lively.
> Just saying like.


Huang Lao 
I would like to have ducks and Geese but my Missus won't have a pond anywhere near us as she's worried about kids drowning in it.

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## Mendip

Ootai, when we get a broody hen I wait until I've enough eggs and then put them under the hen at the same time. If I was you I'd keep the eggs out of the incubator and put a batch in at a time. So long as they're not warm enough they won't start developing outside of the incubator.

I have had eggs start developing when they were left out in the kitchen during the hot season... fine if you're a filipino but not good for most people. We keep our eggs in the fridge now... and incidentally, I've taken eggs out of the fridge, stuck them under a broody hen, and they've still hatched!

Sounds like your Thai friend may have caused the splay legs. I leave the chicks alone unless it's been a day or so and they can't seem to get out. The mum's will help a bit as well.

I would also love some ducks... we have the pond and they'd love it, but they wouldn't last two minutes with our dogs. It's not the dogs' fault, they've just never been trained. We keep our hens in a secure run, but ducks love water and it would just make too much mess to keep them in a confined space.

----------


## ootai

> Ootai, when we get a broody hen I wait until I've enough eggs and then put them under the hen at the same time. If I was you I'd keep the eggs out of the incubator and put a batch in at a time. So long as they're not warm enough they won't start developing outside of the incubator.
> 
> I have had eggs start developing when they were left out in the kitchen during the hot season... fine if you're a filipino but not good for most people. We keep our eggs in the fridge now... and incidentally, I've taken eggs out of the fridge, stuck them under a broody hen, and they've still hatched!



Mendip
I didn't make myself absolutely clear but, what I meant is that I would be able to collect enough eggs over 5-6 days AND THEN I would put them all in the incubator at the same time just as you have said.
As for keeping eggs in the fridge, the internet says that you shouldn't do that but then maybe those people don't live in an oven that Thailand is sometimes.
I also read that you shouldn't clean the eggs after you collect them and before you put them into the incubator.
As with most things I will have to learn as I go with the assistance of Google.

----------


## Mendip

Here ya go Ootai... you've motivated me to show some interest in this thread again.

And I've got a lot of spare time in the evenings just now...

This is what I put under the chicken's perches every evening. A mixture of catering trays and plastic panels. When I say 'I', I mean the gardener. If he goes away I have to get some advice from him because he knows whereabouts the chickens are roosting.



And in the morning... there's the 70% of their droppings... all done through the night while they sleep.



Even with these measures, a couple of times a year I dig out the top couple of inches of soil and replace it with fresh top soil. I get a truck load every now and again to freshen it up... the ground soon gets dead and smelly due to the chicken droppings. 

And when I say 'I'...

And all the dropping go into the compost bin every morning.



The chicken wire around the compost bin is to stop the dogs eating chicken shit. They love the stuff and it doesn't matter how well they get fed, they love to eat rotten chicken shit. It puts me off giving Dan a little kiss on the nose some mornings.

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## fishlocker

Cool, we used to raise Rhodesian Reds, Barred Rock and a few other breeds of chickens years ago. As well as Peking ducks. They all free ranged and we locked them in their pens at night to keep the fox, coyotes and raccoons away from them. I do recall several instances where a hawk would fly over and lickety split they were back in their pens.

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## fishlocker

The pens are there but the birds have flew the coop. Miss fish has no qualms about whacking their heads off and plucking them. It was like an assembly line come picken time. Yea, wait till dark when their on their roost, tie the feet and set them in the wagon for transport up to the garage where we had a camp stove with a tub of hot water   and miss fish's knives. 

I do recall dunking a bird that wasn't quite ready,  talk about a flapper. From then on I expect the unexpected.

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## ootai

Mendip
I am happy today I actually seen my young rooster scruffing one of the hens so there is some hope that when they start laying I have might get fertile eggs and would mean chicks.
I wasn't sure if he was up to the task.

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## Mendip

^ Well congrats Ootai, it's always nice to know your cock's performing ok.

Just to go back on what we were discussing above, I reckon that with using incubators you'll be helping some chicks out of their shells. You'll have to replace the mums.

I posted these elsewhere before, but it's good to get everything in the same thread.

It starts like this...



But after a day if it's still like this I step in to help out.



Usually, once they start to hatch it happens very quickly.

What I have found is that the membrane inside the shell often seems to be the problem. I break it with a cocktail stick and peel a bit away, maybe pick away at the shell a bit also, then let nature take it's course.



And here's a proud mum with a bedraggled new born chick.



And another!







Incidentally, the '14' written on the eggs was for the 14th June, and I took the egg hatching photos on 3td July. So that was only 17 days to the start of hatching.

And this was the one we helped out!

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## fishlocker

Aww, how cute. Nice pic thread btw. If given the time I may find some old pics of Peking ducks. On a brighter tone I have a young gal in Laos raising chicken and ducks. Heck I may get a decent dinner out of it on the next go round. 
PEACE out, the fishes.

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## Mendip

Yeah, add some pics. I'm gonna run out of material until I get back home...

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## Chittychangchang

Fantastic pics Mendip.

A question, how do you sex the hens from the cocks?

Only asking because i bought 4 supposedly egg laying chickens a few years back.

I converted my Thai beach bungalow into a smart 5 star chicken coup,

They were fed very well and given names.

The eldest even had a chicken birthday party.

It was great until 6 months later when they were part of the family that the problems started.

Infernal noises 24 hours a day, vicious fights in the coup.

Unfortunately they all turned out to be Cocks and the neighbours started complaining and the RSPCA were called to investigate.

Long story short, they were dispatched to the pot.

Sad story.

RIP Goldie

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## Mendip

Yeah, that is sad.

I've stopped naming mine as we've got about 40 and all the red hens look the same. It got too confusing and I gave up when we were on our fifth '_Deang_'...

It's hard to tell the sex until about 5 months, and then the boys start to develop cones and become more colourful. I'm too soft to kill them for the pot so all the young cocks go to the local temple to run free with the flock. At least that's what the monks tell me, but I reckon as soon as I drive away they end up in the monk's pot to go with all the rice they cadge every morning.

At the breeding farms the chicks are sexed at a day old... the girls go to be reared for battery egg laying, the boys get sucked into a grinder for pet food. Now that is sad.

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## Dillinger

> i bought 4 supposedly egg laying chickens a few years back.
> 
> I converted my Thai beach bungalow into a smart 5 star chicken coup,
> 
> They were fed very well and given names.
> 
> The eldest even had a chicken birthday party.
> 
> It was great until 6 months later when they were part of the family that the problems started.
> ...



 :smiley laughing:   A splendid cock tale

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## Chittychangchang

They were fvcking massive with all the scraps I gave them.
They would eat absolutely anything, even chicken.

Must have weighed a couple of kilos each. But Goldie the last to die and our personal favourite was more like 3 kilos.

He had personality and would listen to you talking.

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## ootai

Well today was a good day!

My first bum nut i.e. egg for those of you who didn't know.

AND

She laid it in one of the nests I built not on the ground.
Who said chickens are dumb (probably me!!!)

I might even have my first grandkid on toast for breakfast tomorrow.



And for Mendip
I have some more chicks hatching as of yesterday, now have 6 more, 5 yesterday and 1 today) so I would make that day 18 & 19 in the incubator.

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## ootai

Well today was not a good day, one of my hens died, don't know why or what from but she was alive when I fed them in the morning and 3 hours later dead, literally fell off the perch.
The SIL was happy took it home and ate it for dinner.
I couldn't believe that they weren't worried about eating a bird that was sick enough to die.  Amazing Thailand!

Hopefully no more catch whatever it was.

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## Mendip

I'm sorry for your loss ootai.

I've found that these red egg layers die quite regularly. They don't seem very hardy at all and I don't think I've had any live longer than around three years. I think they just burn themselves out laying an egg every day. The ones in battery farms are culled at around 18 months old I believe, as soon as their egg production drops off.

 The wild jungle fowl are completely different and seem to go on forever, and apart from when we got hit by fowl cholera I don't think I've had many die at all. My last cock 'Ziggy' was at least seven when the fowl cholera got him. I think they can live to around twelve years of age which gives 'Robin Hood' at least another eight years with his harem.

The red egg layers seem to die in a variety of ways. The first batch of six we got years ago all crammed into the same hutch on their first night, and one got smothered to death - I don't they're the brightest of hens. She was eaten by a brother-in-law (shame that fowl cholera doesn't pass to humans as I would have sent a load his way).

Getting egg bound is a constant problem with these hens and they can get a kind of prolapse at their rear end. I've tried bathing their rears in warm water, using olive oil to help the egg out, etc etc, but they always seem to die in the end. I now tend to just let nature take it's course. We had one old chicken last year who had gone partially blind and just sat on the floor looking sorry for herself. I spent weeks feeding her twice a day with mashed up egg and fruit in a syringe to keep her going. I kept her in an isolation cage within the chicken run and it was interesting as all the other hens sat around the cage to keep her company. Apparently hens are one of the few animals to show empathy towards others. It didn't end well for this one however... a few days after I had to go away to work I was told she had suddenly died. I don't think the gardener was willing to nurse an elderly chicken for an hour a day and I think her 'sudden' death may have involved a broken neck, followed by a long bath in a pan of boiling vegetables.

Sometimes we just get an unexplained death and find a dead chicken, who was seemingly healthy beforehand, lying dead in the chicken run. I guess there's always a chance of illness or maybe snakes being responsible, but I think some may die of heart attacks when the jet fighters from the Korat airbase go screaming over. They fly very low and make an awfully loud noise.

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## katie23

My, what a splendid cock you have!  :Very Happy: 

My mom has been raising chickens on & off for the past 20 or so years. I have scars on my hand from when I was pecked by a rooster. At the moment, they're more of a hobby for her and they keep her busy. She stopped for a while, but bought chickens again soon after my dad's death some years ago. Whenever I visit her, I buy feeds and get the occasional egg in return. Not a good ROI for me, but hey, it's for my mom's mental health.  :Smile:  

Have you guys experienced a hen developing male characteristics? Last time I visited mom, she had 2 hens (Blackie & Whitie). She said that she observed Whitie developing rooster-like traits, such as calling the other hen during eating time and trying to crow! (They're free range.) I told her that maybe Whitie is becoming a tomboy. They were both egg layers, but now only Blackie is laying. They're of the same age, I think. 

I know that sex reversal happens in fish, but haven't heard of it in birds.

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## Mendip

> My, what a splendid cock you have!


Yeah yeah... I've heard it all before.

The worst chicken related injury I've had was when I was training one to sit on my shoulder and she pecked me in the eye. That really did hurt.

We also have several called Blackie and Whitie, or dam and cow if I want to mix it up a bit.

I've seen a few young girl hens that develop as a boy... big, tall and with a long tail and a comb, and they have even tried crowing. I put it down to inbreeding since I have just one cock to service all the hens, and then their offspring, and so on. I'm more careful which eggs I put under the broody hens now.

Maybe you can get tomboy chickens... nothing would really surprise me in Thailand any more.

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## ootai

Well it is a good day today I now have 2 hens laying. I got 2 eggs yesterday but wasn't sure if I had forgotten to collect the previous days, so I waited and today 2 eggs again so all is good in the hen house. I also have seen the rooster doing his job so hopefully they will be fertile.  I need to wait until all 5 hens are laying so that I can collect 24 eggs (needed to fill my incubator) within 5 days.  That way i hope to have them all hatch within a couple of days of each other.

The latest batch of eggs I put in has been weird as I had 7 hatch after 5 days and now I have another 9 hatched after 16 days so it is a bit hard to manage because I want to try and keep the chickens in batches that are the same age and believe me a week is a long time in the development of a chicken.

 Mendip I took note of your comments about "bumblefoot" and spend some time on Google as one of the hens had a bad limp so I immediately thought of what you had said.
Anyway it seems that it is not all about trauma due to landing but rather an infection (see picture below).
Anyway I wen and ordered some Epsom salts to see if would work but while waiting to get that I thought why not try the anti-bacterial spray I have for Co-vid.
So i have used a combination of both and it seems to have worked.
When I first noticed it she could barely put any weight on one of her legs and today I seen her break into a run with barely any noticeable limp.

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## Mendip

^ Ootai, I also tried Epsom salts but with no success, so that's interesting.

I think that the impacts can maybe make them more susceptible to infection?

Next time you're in Korat you could take it to Bung Talua Animal Hospital. The main man there once operated on one of my chickens with bumblefoot and it was fine afterwards and had a long, happy retirement. 

You could always question the wisdom of paying for a 500 Baht operation on a 200 Baht chicken, but as I've mentioned before I think that I'm probably too soft these days.

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## ootai

Mendip
I think it is actually the hand sanitiser spray more than the Epsom salts but it seems to have worked.
I never did see anything that might have been an abscess or any swelling / redness in her foot.
There's no way i would ever take a chicken to see a Vet but then I don't have a young daughter watching me.

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## Grumpy John

To many roosters in our village that no-one wants.  Apparently rooster isn't as tasty as hen!

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## Mendip

Sad times in the Mendip household... I was told yesterday that Robin Hood has passed on.

RIP Robin. He was only young, maybe 3 or years, so this was a surprise. 

Here he was in all his glory.



I'm trying to get to the bottom of how he died. I think this is one of the reasons I find it stressful living in Thailand... my Western mind likes answers to things... why did he die, how did he die, how can I stop it happening again? The Thais don't seem to be so enquiring. So far I've discovered that he was hard and lying upside down under the perch. I think that's as much as I'll find out and have left it there.

Maybe he over-shagged himself?



We have two young cockerels who were soon off to join the local temple flock, so these have now been given a reprieve and can stay a while. Robin was the father of both but their mother's are a bit more difficult to work out.

My daughter sent pics today...

I think this one was the chick I helped out of it's egg back in July. If so, he came out of a big brown egg from a warren hen, so maybe his progeny will be good egg layers?



I don't know a lot about genetics, but I think the second one's mum is a little easier to work out.

I've never had a black cock before.



And here's a picture I took back on June 14th... Blackie had two of her own eggs and two warren hen eggs.

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## ootai

> I don't know a lot about genetics, but I think the second one's mum is a little easier to work out.
> 
> I've never had a black cock before.


Mendip
I think your boy (above) must have snuck up to my place as I recently hatched 12 chickens and every one of them is black.
Bit suspicious to me.

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## ootai

Its been a while since I posted here so here's a bit of an update.
I now have 5 hens all laying as 4 out of the last 5 days I have collected 5 eggs. One must of had a day off one day.
They are now all bonded together into a flock i.e. my 5 hens along with the Thai rooster but do they make him work hard. He runs all over the place trying to keep track of them so they don't get stolen by any of the other roosters in the yard.

Also last week I hatched the first full batch of their eggs in my incubator.
Unfortunately there were only 16 chickens hatched from 24 eggs so I don't know if the others were infertile or just went bad somewhere along the process.
I am leaning toward the cause being that the hens are only young.

Here's a picture of the grandkids.

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## Mendip

^ Ootai, what's your hen to cock ratio? I think that anything over 20:1 and the cockerel will struggle to keep the eggs fertilised.

Our new cockerel is only young and has around 40 hens to service. He seems happy with the task but will struggle with his duties. I would like to keep two cocks but they keep fighting.

Today I picked up four new hens to make up for the losses over the past few months while I've been away. These are around 5 months old and will have come straight from a crammed rearing station. Their less fortunate siblings will have gone to a battery farm.

Their first night and they're already trying to roost off the ground. It's amazing how these highly line bred egg layers retain their natural instincts. In a week they'll be roosting up in the roof with the others. I find it very rewarding to give these hens a decent life, and fresh eggs are good as well of course.

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## ootai

> ^ Ootai, what's your hen to cock ratio? I think that anything over 20:1 and the cockerel will struggle to keep the eggs fertilised.
> 
> Our new cockerel is only young and has around 40 hens to service. He seems happy with the task but will struggle with his duties. I would like to keep two cocks but they keep fighting.
> 
> Today I picked up four new hens to make up for the losses over the past few months while I've been away. These are around 5 months old and will have come straight from a crammed rearing station. Their less fortunate siblings will have gone to a battery farm.
> 
> Their first night and they're already trying to roost off the ground. It's amazing how these highly line bred egg layers retain their natural instincts. In a week they'll be roosting up in the roof with the others. I find it very rewarding to give these hens a decent life, and fresh eggs are good as well of course.



Mendip
We must have almost met up as I also bought 3 more hens today while in Korat.
That will bring the total to 8 hens and 1 rooster. There is another rooster here but if he is let out at the same time as mine they find each other and start fighting. My MIL had another older rooster here (the Dad of mine I think) but she sent him out to the farm with her son.
Anyway I read on the net that the best ratio is 10:1 so I think you will kill your young rooster.

The reason I bought 3 more hens is because the MIL asked me to so she could sell the eggs in the Village. I have a German mate here who buys eggs from me as well and every month I will need 24 to stock up the incubator. Waiting to see how it goes before buying a second incubator. It being how the cross bred chickens grow and what they end up like maybe the chicken buyer won't like the look of them.

Did your hens fight with the 4 new ones?  I read on the net (the place of all wisdom) that they can get nasty but mine didn't do much but I will wait and see what happens over the next 2 weeks. I am planning on keeping them locked up in their hen house for 2 weeks to learn that is their new home so my older hens are gonna get pissed off being in quarantine with them, you know how that feels but you didn't have 8 girls with you.

I wen out after dark and had to put 2 of the new ones up on the perches as they were on the ground.

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## Mendip

> Mendip
> Anyway I read on the net that the best ratio is 10:1 so I think you will kill your young rooster.
> 
> The reason I bought 3 more hens is because the MIL asked me to so she could sell the eggs in the Village. I have a German mate here who buys eggs from me as well and every month I will need 24 to stock up the incubator. Waiting to see how it goes before buying a second incubator. It being how the cross bred chickens grow and what they end up like maybe the chicken buyer won't like the look of them.
> 
> Did your hens fight with the 4 new ones?  I read on the net (the place of all wisdom) that they can get nasty but mine didn't do much but I will wait and see what happens over the next 2 weeks.


ootai, I got that 20:1 ratio from a UK website... I guess everywhere is different.  :Smile: 

What worries me about your strategy is that you're using warren hens for meat production. These warren hens have been bred for centuries to put all their energy into egg production at the expense of putting on weight. In the commercial world, when these guys' egg production drops off they get tuned into soup, stock and pet food, they're not the chickens you roast on a Sunday. In Thailand the meat chickens are white, you see them in cages on the lorries, but I have no idea what breed they are.

Out of around 40 chickens we get between 10 and 16 eggs a day. We have a lot of retirees who are having an easy old age. They do bully the newcomers a bit but the cockerel soon sorts out any real nastiness. There is a pecking order of course but that's only natural and you have to let them sort it out.

I think you should use these hens for egg production. I think an egg sells for around 5 Baht... you'll get no extra for organic eggs, I've tried that. We just barter our eggs for, for example, a local noodle seller's leftover soup for our street dogs, or some mushrooms from a nearby small holding. The mixed offspring from your warren hen/wild cock progeny will also be good egg layers... nice small eggs ideal for pickling. They go great in moo palo. I just think using chickens bred for egg laying efficiency for meat production is counter productive.

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## ootai

> ootai, I got that 20:1 ratio from a UK website... I guess everywhere is different. 
> 
> What worries me about your strategy is that you're using warren hens for meat production. These warren hens have been bred for centuries to put all their energy into egg production at the expense of putting on weight. In the commercial world, when these guys' egg production drops off they get tuned into soup, stock and pet food, they're not the chickens you roast on a Sunday. In Thailand the meat chickens are white, you see them in cages on the lorries, but I have no idea what breed they are.
> 
> Out of around 40 chickens we get between 10 and 16 eggs a day. We have a lot of retirees who are having an easy old age. They do bully the newcomers a bit but the cockerel soon sorts out any real nastiness. There is a pecking order of course but that's only natural and you have to let them sort it out.
> 
> I think you should use these hens for egg production. I think an egg sells for around 5 Baht...  I just think using chickens bred for egg laying efficiency for meat production is counter productive.



I agree with what you are saying and that's why I have said I want to see what the crossbred chickens turn out like. Whether they are too small, too bony etc. for the locals. The place where my missus sells our chickens buys the native bred chickens so they must like them rather than the meat production type birds.
He has refused to buy some that he reckoned were too small, we just feed them a bit longer until they grow big enough, and he pays a bit less per kg for birds he thinks are "too" big which is over 1.5kg.

I don't ever think it will be a commercial operation more a hobby that doesn't cost me money like playing golf does

As I said my MIL wants more eggs so she can sell them that's why I bought 3 more hens.  Eggs here sell at 90baht or a bit less for 30 so when i sell them to my friend I charge him 10 baht  for 4 eggs. He likes them because he says he knows they are fresh.

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## Mendip

It's a shame you don't seem to get a premium in Thailand for almost organic, fresh eggs. In addition to the egg-layers feed (which contains grit for the egg shells) our chickens eat a lot of fruit and veg and the occasional fish carcass... in fact anything that the street dogs don't fancy. Also any snails, frogs or gekos that get into the chicken run soon get nailed. This results in deep orange-coloured yokes and delicious eggs, but no-one will pay more than the going rate for the shop-bought battery eggs. 

We have about 45 chickens now but only get around 10 to 15 eggs a day because a lot of our older hens are now enjoying a happy retirement. 

Incidentally, if you're not using proper egg-laying hen feed then make sure you crush up your eggs shells and add them back to the feed as the chickens need the calcium carbonate. We used to get occasional wafer-thin, rubbery egg shells before I started doing this.

A few ideas Ootai if you get a surplus of eggs... this is what I've been up the last few days.

Poached egg on toast (use the fresh ones you collect the same morning for this!)



Scrambled egg...



Pickled eggs... the small wild hen eggs are great for these. I really wish I could find decent crisps in Korat... one of my favourite bar snacks used to be dropping a pickled egg into a bag of prawn cocktail.



And quiche... I used up 22 eggs making up this little lot.

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## Headworx

> It's a shame you don't seem to get a premium in Thailand for almost organic, fresh eggs.


The farmers may not get any extra Mendip but the middle men must be. I only buy organic eggs (we get thru about 20 per week) and they cost around 80 Baht per 10-pack versus about 45 or 50 Baht for non organic. Totally worth the extra few shekels too, the taste is so much better.

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## ootai

Mendip
I think that stuff you cooked up looks good but I don't cook I have a missus that does that for me.
And for breakfast I just have some cereal, usually weet-bix and then some toast with something on it usually vegemite so a true Aussie meal.

So far I have not had a surplus of eggs to worry about. That's because I have a large extended family here that would eat any i want to give them.

As for the egg shells, I did get a bag of feed for laying hens but they didn't like it much and were always eating the other chickens feed if they could.
I also ground up some egg shell when I managed to save some as the Missus usually throws them into the bin.
But given all of that I have not had any issues with soft or thin shells as yet.
My hens spend 8-10 hours a day free range feeding around the yard and houses so I believe they should be getting enough "grit" for the shells. I get into trouble if they shit in the wrong places which is often.

@ days in and there has not been too much fighting so hopefully they will work it out soon.

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## lom

> I think that stuff you cooked up looks good but I don't cook I have a missus that does that for me.


You must be newly married!

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## ootai

> You must be newly married!


Yeah right! Been married for nearly 20 years.

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## Mendip

^ Yeah... what a show off. I've heard about wives like that. 

Mine lost interest in the kitchen within months... everything else soon followed.

Good job the gardener's a trained chef!  :Smile:

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## ootai

> ^ Yeah... what a show off. I've heard about wives like that. 
> 
> Mine lost interest in the kitchen within months... everything else soon followed.
> 
> Good job the gardener's a trained chef!



It is not really as it sounds because she doesn't necessarily cook stuff for me more, like she cooks and I eat whatever it is she cooked. 
She never cooks me breakfast and I don't eat a cooked breakfast because I'm too lazy to cook it for myself.  Mind you she has cooked me bacon and eggs a few times if I specifically asked and bought the bacon cause she wouldn't buy it.
For lunch I perhaps half the time make my own sandwiches if not then she gets me something from one of the food stalls i.e. noodle soup or fried noodles/rice.
At night she cooks whatever for herself and makes some of it not so spicy so I can eat it.

So in the end I suppose the reason she cooks for me is that I eat rice a lot and am not fussy, don't need peas or western food and am happy eating rice everyday.

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## Mendip

> ... don't need peas...


It sound idyllic, but you lost me at that point.

You're a lucky man Ootai!

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## Mendip

As noted in another thread, the Isaan weather has suddenly changed as the cool winter season has passed into the hot as hell season.

This usually seems to happen some time in February and we've had a longer cool season than normal this year so should be thankful I guess.

I always used to lose a few chickens at this time of year with the sudden temperature increase... until I invented the chicken fan.



This is the Mk II version installed within a cage. The MK I was more basic but took out a few sparrows until I added the safety cage feature.

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## ootai

Mendip
I was wondering what the original use was meant to be for that imposing structure you now use as a chicken house?
It is too massively built to have been just for chickens.

At my place things are same as usual nothing out of the ordinary to report.
Have 1 hen with an infection in her foot (bumblefoot) that I am treating but it is proving a little difficult to get rid of.

I like the fan idea but bloody hell your chickens are spoiled.

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## Mendip

^ A happy chicken lays lots of eggs!

The wall down the middle was a previous perimeter wall and an original chicken run just got bigger and bigger after we acquired additional land.

We need the 'imposing' structure, not so much to keep the chickens in but to keep the dogs out. Build once properly and then no maintenance for ever after!

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## Grumpy John

Have you trained them to poop outside?  From the pix it looks like a mud floor with no splatter...so I had to ask!

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## Mendip

Well spotted Grumpy... in fact I'm very proud of my chicken toilet system.

It's a little known fact that chickens do 70% of their business while roosting at night... that hasn't even made it to Tomcat's thread. 

In view of this I lay down food catering trays, plastic panels and any other receptacle I can find underneath the perches every evening around 5pm, before the chickens go to bed.



In the morning they look like this.



Every morning I clean them out and remove the 'toilets'. All the droppings get scraped into the green compost bin.



When I finish up I leave the 'toilets' stacked in the sun all day to dry up and hopefully sterilise to some degree all the left over shite. The plastic bin has the bottom cut off, so when it's full I can raise it a bit to shovel out the rotted compost. You have to leave chicken compost some time as it's just too strong for plants without being left to break down. I have to put the cage around the bin to stop the dogs eating chicken shit... despite the wonderful food they get fed every day.



And periodically I dig trenches in the raised vegetable beds and add the rotted compost.



Occasionally it goes wrong. This week I had a couple of hens that started to roost above one of the food stations. No problem, I blocked off the roost above with a big piece of wood and all is good again.

----------


## Looper

> underneath the perches


I did not know they could balance on those little poles while they were sleeping. Clever.

KGBGF used to keep these weird looking silkies but they used to sleep sitting on the floor of the hen coup bedroom which was an enclosed box raised up and accessed via a ramp so I knew they liked to be off the ground.

----------


## Mendip

> I like the fan idea but bloody hell your chickens are spoiled.


Yeah, but 17 eggs today Ootai!



But a disaster... today the chicken fan stopped working. After a lot of investigation it turns out the problem is the cable... about 20 metres long and passing under a paved pathway. 

Bugger... that's tomorrow taken care of.

----------


## ootai

> Yeah, but 17 eggs today Ootai!


Bloody hell if you have nearly 40 hens then there are a lot of freeloaders or unhappy hens!

I have 5 hens and 3 pullets and got 5 eggs today. Should get 8 per day when the pullets start laying.

I actually thought of you today, I was "dithering" in the garden/yard and lost at least 2 kilos so dithering seems to work, for me at least.
How's your weight going now days since you are back on the grog and eating your home style cooking?

----------


## Mendip

Ootai, we have around 45 hens total at last census.

One is a cockerel so I guess he's off the hook.

Four are still young and not yet laying.

Two or three of the wild hens are broody and not laying.

I guess that leaves 37, from which we got 17 eggs today. So yeah, we do have lot of retirees who probably only lay once or so a week... but it's nice to give them a retirement. That's what it's all about for me... helps me to sleep easy. Five hours a night no problem.

My weight's not going exactly as planned but coming down slowly I reckon. I'm drinking much less and not eating a lot, but exercise is the problem. I think I've torn an old hernia jumping on those damn inflatables in the pool with my daughter so have been taking things carefully for a week or so, but will have to go and see a doc at some point. If I need another op I'll be out of action for a month at least and that pisses me off.

----------


## Mendip

Despite my advanced chicken toilet system I still like to change out the soil in the chicken run once a year. There's a lot of chickens in an enclosed space and the soil will go sour after a while.

There's no building going on around our way just now so I've had to wait ages for a load of soil. Usually I can waylay a truck that's dumping soil to raise land and get the driver to drop a load off by our house. I'm sure that the money goes straight into his pocket.

Anyway, our load of soil suddenly arrived last night. Not the best soil and certainly not the black rice paddy soil I was promised, but at least it's not too clayey so will break down with a bit of water and a hoe.

First job is to scrape off the top few inches of dirty soil in the chicken run to remove by wheel barrow. I would strongly advise anyone building a chicken run to make the door wide enough for a wheel barrow to fit through, or of course get a thin wheel barrow. This blue one just fits through the door at an angle so not only did I keep dropping dirt at the doorway, I also took the skin off my knuckles.



This sour, dirty soil is dumped a way from the house... it really smells bad after rain (... sorry neighbours...).



Then on the return journey a load of fresh soil was picked up...



... and dumped in the chicken run. The chickens love scraping away at this.

I had to give up around 2pm... it was 38 degrees and I was close to passing out. I used to be able to dig all day but now I find the heat just too much. I started at 9am and was completely fukked by 9:15. The rest of the time was just pure purgatory.

I reckon another 30 or so barrow loads of new soil will be needed tomorrow, but at least all the bad soil is removed.



In another thread I mentioned that you just seem to find dead things all the time in Isaan. Well, there was a dead cat in my load of soil.

I dug a grave for it and gave it a good Christian burial.

----------


## ootai

Fork me you like doing shit the hard way don't you!
There must be an easier way, besides getting rid of the chickens. Maybe get the "gardener" involved?
If I had to do that once a year I would give up having the buggers.

Anyway my egg production has increased since I wrote 2 days ago. Yesterday and today I got 6 eggs so at least 1 of the pullets is laying now, Yippee!

----------


## Mendip

^ If the chickens run loose the dogs will nail them... and it's only once a year. Besides, I haven't got my gym yet and it's good exercise... stops me dithering!  :Smile:

----------


## Looper

Respect Mendip but it looks like a lot of work for some eggs.

This was KGBGF's coup in the background. I had the job of dragging it a few metres once a week so that the shitty area was relocated regularly and no cleanup was required as 1 week of shit is just grass fertiliser.



She used to get several eggs a day from 6 chickens. The silkies eggs were small but the other 4 hens used to lay good sized eggs.

3 month old kitten learning to hunt.



The silkies were scared of her but the top pecking order hen took no shit and used to chase the cat away from the other hens.

----------


## Saint Willy

Nice looking chcikens

----------


## Dillinger

Looper does indeed appear to have the bigger, smoother, plumper and all around more splendid cock here.

----------


## Joe 90

I bought four supposedly egg laying hens from a car boot sale years ago for a fiver each.

6 months later the noise was horrendous, the fighting also.

Turns out I'd bought four cocks!

Trouble was they all had names and the kids even had a funky chicken party.

They were very well fed eating all the leftovers from chez Chitty, no surprise there.

The biggest "Goldie" was 2kilos in weight when he met his maker. 

Sad story.

Ffs even the RSPCA got involved with the saga,  although the officer did comment that the chicken coup aka our Thai beach bungalow was the finest that she had ever seen.

RIP Goldie and crew.

Will dig out a pic to prove my cock is the most splendid of all :Smile:

----------


## Mendip

> Looper does indeed appear to have the bigger, smoother, plumper and all around more splendid cock here.


It looks to me that it is in fact Looper's 'girlfriend' who has the splendid cock. Looper made no reference of having one himself.

----------


## Saint Willy

> Ffs even the RSPCA got involved with the saga,


Explain...

----------


## Headworx

> Turns out I'd bought four cocks!


I think that's George at the back.

----------


## Dillinger

> It looks to me that it is in fact Looper's 'girlfriend' who has the splendid cock. Looper made no reference of having one himself.


It was just a bit of bantam
 :Smile:

----------


## Mendip

Ha ha...

Why when I start a thread about keeping chickens does it attract crude comments?

Anyway, I think I mentioned before that my cock passed on while I was away at work these past few months. That was 'Robin Hood', named by my daughter, and we'd only had him around three years. I think he may have died of exhaustion after over-shagging himself... not a way I'm likely to go to be honest.

My first cock, 'Ziggy Stardust', lasted around six years before fowl cholera got him along with the rest of our flock around three years ago. That was before I started vaccinating the chickens and we haven't lost one to fowl cholera since. Ziggy was named by myself, a great name I thought with his long golden cape... just like David Bowie's creation.

When I left for work last July we'd just had a few chicks hatch out, and I returned last month to find three adolescent cocks running with the chickens. You can only have one cock, so I kept the pure jungle fowl one. The other two were from a jungle fowl father but a red egg-laying hen mother... Robin Hood was the father of all. Their progeny may well be good egg layers but I like to keep a pure jungle fowl cock. I've been assured that they've gone to a good home at the local Temple but I won't go and check to avoid disappointment.

So meet 'Austin'. That's what you get when you put your daughter in charge of naming. Austin is only about eight months old and will grow a bit more and fill out. Let's see if he's up to the task.

The Cock is Dead... Long Live the Cock!

Looks like Blackie will be lucky tonight.

----------


## Looper

^a resplendent cock Mendip, champion




> It looks to me that it is in fact Looper's 'girlfriend' who has the splendid cock


Those photaes are from 2017 and I remain now, as I was then, a cockless wonder in 2 senses:-

1. the chickens were all female
2. they all belonged to KGBGF

I was merely the coup-dragging lawn-shitstain fixer-upper and probably about as much use as your gardener in KGBGF's esteem, although that is mere retrospective speculation




> My first cock, 'Ziggy Stardust', lasted around six years


What a life eh? the run of the roost for 6 glorious years. Live fast, die young, like a true Ziggy rock star

----------


## Headworx

> like a true Ziggy rock star


Or some cat from Japan..

----------


## Mendip

What a perfect excuse...

----------


## Mendip

> Those photaes are from 2017 and I remain now, as I was then, a cockless wonder in 2 senses:-
> 
> 1. the chickens were all female
> 2. they all belonged to KGBGF


Well... get yerself a cock, man. What are you waiting for? You have a nice garden and it doesn't look like you've got any neighbours too close.

It's best to have a cock you can call your own and not let your girlfriend own it.

----------


## Shutree

> What a perfect excuse...


Excellent. I have the vinyl in a long-forgotten box somehwere, I bought that very nearly 50 years ago. Where did the time go?

----------


## ootai

Mendip
Here's a picture of my hens showing how fearful they are of my dog/s.
So if you were to exchange your low life Korat riff raff dogs for some real gentleman Aussie trained dogs you to could let your chickens run free.

The dogs and the chickens like that spot as it is in the drain and usually damp and always in the shade.

----------


## Mendip

I'm very envious Ootai.

Coco and Maya, our two latest are fine with the chooks since I've been at home during their puppyhoods and have managed to train them. All it takes is a bit of effort to be honest, but sadly too much or the Thai contingent.

The other four would kill a chicken in an instant. I could try training them now but fear we would lose a lot of chickens during the process, so I keep the chickens safe in their run.

 I would love to have the chickens roaming free around the garden every day. We have a high perimeter wall so if I clipped their wings there would be no escapees.

That dog looks a bit Bangkaewish?

----------


## ootai

> That dog looks a bit Bangkaewish?


Mendip

I have heard the name "Bangkaew" before but never looked up to see what their story is/was.
So I thought i should and yes I agree that there is probably some of that breed in them but they are just a bit of everything really.
We have 3 male dogs who are litter brothers and 2 look like they are Bangkaew and the other not so much in that he is bigger and has short hair and a straight tail.
Unfortunately for the bigger dog he is number 3 in the hierarchy as he lost one of his eyes in a fight with the other 2 (long story). He actually looks a bit more like a German Shepard.
Of the other 2 they are always growling at each other, one (the one in the picture) wants to be top dog and the other says piss off and leave me alone, he is the most laid back of the 3 but won't be bossed. 

Same as you I am fascinated by the dynamics as I have never had a "pack" of dogs before.
I never knew until a few years ago that dogs actually groom each other, I always wondered how they got to the ticks/fleas etc. on their head or neck where they can't reach for themselves.

----------


## ootai

I went to collect the eggs yesterday and this (the bottom egg)was among them.
I think one of my hens is taking the piss out of me. She should realise she is not a fukkin pigeon!



And just  for Mendip as he mentioned there was a "bit" of rain here a week and a half ago and it turned the back of my house into a pond.
Unfortunately unlike Mendip's pond there were no fish at all in it. 
Maybe I should be raising ducks at least the eggs should be bigger.

----------


## Mendip

Thing is Ootai, as an Engineer you should know to always add a scale to your pictures. If that top egg is from an ostrich then your hen ain't doing bad.

I've seen really small eggs from new hens when they just start laying, maybe the size of a a sparrow's egg. Some have two shells, the inside one really small.

There's a lot of rain about. Soon after I arrived home this afternoon we had a huge storm pass through... amongst the strongest wind I've ever seen in Thailand.



We lost around 80 mangoes just from the front alone.

----------


## Mendip

We've had several broody hens for some time now... I thought that eventually they would give up but after weeks and weeks of waiting, I relented yesterday and decided to give them the chance of motherhood.

It was also a good excuse to get the daughter off her damn tablet... she helped me prepare the nests.

A little '6' was written on each egg (for the 6th June) and the eggs should start hatching on the 24th, in 18 days time.

Four mums-to-be will squeeze into this hutch.



And a couple more here.



This will also be a good test to see whether our new cockerel _Austin_ is doing his job.

I usually lock the broody hens into the hutches for the first couple of days to get them to take to the nests, then after that I let them out for a couple of hours a day. The problem with leaving the hutches permanently open is that the red egg-layers will push the broody hens off their nests in order to lay eggs. Of course, once all the nests were prepared the broody hens all decided to stay out in the run and not sit on the eggs. It may take a couple of days for them to settle.


Lat night's rain flooded the chicken poo compost bin...



Which meant all the maggots came to the top to escape the water. I scooped a load out for an unexpected treat for the chickens. I offered the wife a cupful but she just gave me one of those looks. I will never understand Thais as long as I live.



This brought back some long ago memories when, as a teenager, I used to experiment with breeding maggots for coarse fishing in the UK. Different rotting meats (usually from roadkill) kept in different conditions in plastic buckets in the garage would result in different flies laying eggs, which therefore resulted in different sized maggots for bait. My parents put up with a lot.

----------


## Stumpy

> Lat night's rain flooded the chicken poo compost bin...
> 
> 
> 
> Which meant all the maggots came to the top to escape the water. I scooped a load out for an unexpected treat for the chickens. I offered the wife a cupful but she just gave me one of those looks. I will never understand Thais as long as I live.


OK this thread is now off my "Following" list. No wonder why you have a fly infestation. While I know why Maggots are an essential part of the eco system seeing that many in a bucket in shit that is near a house is well....(Verp)  :Smile:

----------


## Mendip

^ You can't have a compost heap without maggots... this is well away from the house, no problem.

----------


## lom

^ He's a cityboy Mendip

----------


## Stumpy

Yeah. I know Mendy having grown up on a farm as well.  My dad used to make my brother and I dig a hole way away from the house and then wheelbarrow the shit over and when full cover it with dirt then dig another hole.  We never kept chicken, pheasant and turkey shit, only a small qty of cowshit for the garden.

----------


## Stumpy

> ^ He's a cityboy Mendip


Actually Lom you are 100% wrong.  But that's OK.  We just never kept a shit pile exposed for the very reasons of flies and maggots.

----------


## Mendip

^ The bin is covered by a lid... which only comes off at cleaning out time. I've found this the best way to deal with the chicken shit, which is of course unavoidable of you keep chickens.

There is very little smell in the normal way and it all breaks down nicely... it was just a bit unfortunate it flooded last night.

----------


## Saint Willy

> Different rotting meats (usually from roadkill) kept in different conditions in plastic buckets in the garage would result in different flies laying eggs, which therefore resulted in different sized maggots for bait. My parents put up with a lot.



 :Shock:

----------


## Stumpy

> ^ The bin is covered by a lid... which only comes off at cleaning out time. I've found this the best way to deal with the chicken shit, which is of course unavoidable of you keep chickens.
> 
> There is very little smell in the normal way and it all breaks down nicely... it was just a bit unfortunate it flooded last night.


I had 30 or so Turkey's in a huge coop and they eat and shit a lot. I had to drag and shovel it every 3 or 4 days. These were the wild North American Turkey. I was raising them to sell chicks to the department of fish and game to release into the wild and to some other breeders. You know young ambitions of trying to make extra money being we had a lot of land and I wanted a nice car. Like all farm animals they eat and they crap. I remember my younger brother wanted 2 or 3 horses. I took him to a big ranch so he could see what it was like to buck a hay bale around then pick up their shit all the time. Horses never happened and Thank God and we only had 2 cows for about 3 years.

I also raised exotic Pheasants(Lady Amherst, Golden and Ringneck) and numerous species of ducks (Mostly Wood ducks and Mallards). The Pheasants were pets but the ducks were eaten and their feathers were sold to make flies for fly fishing. I think I still have a bunch here that I tied but will never use as there are no Trout or Steelhead in these rivers... :Smile:

----------


## Mendip

^ It's a small world...

I used to be a season ticket holder on Blagdon Lake... offering amongst the best fly fishing in the world.

I was a member of a local village fly-tier's club and once won the annual fly tying competition with a Silver Invicta... and the competition was judged by no less than _Taff Price_. I still have my prize... a signed copy of his fly tying book.

This is probably one of my biggest claims to fame.

----------


## Mendip

It took a couple of days for them to settle and four broody hens are now sitting on four nests in shared accommodation.



Blackie 12 has got the penthouse suite all to herself since Whitie 9 refused to settle.

----------


## hallelujah

> ^ It's a small world...
> 
> I used to be a season ticket holder on Blagdon Lake... offering amongst the best fly fishing in the world.
> 
> I was a member of a local village fly-tier's club and once won the annual fly tying competition with a Silver Invicta... and the competition was judged by no less than _Taff Price_. I still have my prize... a signed copy of his fly tying book.
> 
> This is probably one of my biggest claims to fame.


I've never fly-fished, but I did a lot of coarse fishing as a kid - in matches too - and I got back into it last summer when I was staying at home. Maybe I can stick some pictures up, but the maggots that my mum (still) made me keep outside landed me roach, perch, rudd, skimmer and bream in abundance and even a couple of little jack pike.

No claims to fame, but I empathise with your maggot struggles as a kid!

----------


## Stumpy

> It's a small world...


Funny Mendy, it is. I was really interested in learning fly tying. Went to a couple of work shops. I brought all my fly fishing gear here but left my fly tying holder, eyepiece and spools with my friend in the states. I made a lot of contacts in the workshops for selling my feathers. Was quite a nice little business. Most wanted the Wood duck and Golden Pheasant feathers. I miss fly fishing. So many beautiful rivers in the Pacific Northwest to fish. 



Wood duck



Golden Pheasant

----------


## Mendip

^^ I used to be an avid coarse fisher on the Somerset levels and caught the same fish you listed. I also did some match fishing way back when.

When I started fly fishing the coarse fishing fell by the wayside... I just found it more exciting and liked that you are more mobile.

My parents were fairly strict, but my mum allowed me to keep the maggot bait boxes in the bottom of the fridge... the cold slows down their development into casters and then flies, so they last longer.

The maggots go inert and lifeless in the cold, but pop a few in your mouth to warm them up and they soon start wriggling before you stick them on the hook.

----------


## Mendip

> Funny Mendy, it is. I was really interested in learning fly tying. Went to a couple of work shops. I brought all my fly fishing gear here but left my fly tying holder, eyepiece and spools with my friend in the states. I made a lot of contacts in the workshops for selling my feathers. Was quite a nice little business. Most wanted the Wood duck and Golden Pheasant feathers. I miss fly fishing. So many beautiful rivers in the Pacific Northwest to fish.


Sounds very familiar... my fly tying stuff will still be in my mum's loft. There's a golden pheasant cape there, along with a myriad of other bits and pieces from birds and mammals.

Any dead rabbits or hares I found on the road would be taken home and skinned for the fur to make flies. I remember once my long suffering mum took me to an abattoir to collect a few calf's tails. These were dyed bright colours to make lures for trout.

The kids don't seem to do this kind of stuff any more.

----------


## Shutree

> The maggots go inert and lifeless in the cold, but pop a few in your mouth to warm them up


Too much information.

----------


## ootai

> The maggots go inert and lifeless in the cold, but pop a few in your mouth to warm them up and they soon start wriggling before you stick them on the hook.



This plus the fact that you actually eat "black pudding" confuses me as to why you won't eat the delicacies that are eaten here in Isaan i.e. bbq rat, ants eggs, frogs etc.

----------


## Saint Willy

> The maggots go inert and lifeless in the cold, but pop a few in your mouth to warm them up and they soon start wriggling before you stick them on the hook.


Really?


 :Puke:

----------


## Steady

Yet he baulks at raisins.

The guy is more full of shit than that bucket up there :Smile:

----------


## Mendip

> The guy is more full of shit than that bucket up there


I may be full of shit but I called this!





> A little '6' was written on each egg (for the 6th June) and the eggs should start hatching on the 24th, in 18 days time.


On return from the school run this morning I checked our broody chickens.

This looked promising...



Oh... it's the 24th June today!



Back in Biblical times I would probably have been regarded as some kind of prophet.

I'm also predicting a 2-1 win for England on the 29th!

----------


## Steady

Its written in the shells.
The most splendid cock Austin Powers England to rule the roost.

----------


## cyrille

^ On the piss _again_?   :Very Happy:

----------


## Steady

Hell no :Smile:

----------


## Saint Willy

> ^ On the piss _again_?


Again implies he stopped.

----------


## Mendip

^^ A glass of Andrews is better than that ridiculous, girly lemon cider you were drinking. You'd get laughed out the pub drinking that stuff down my way!


After the hatch finished the two hens on the left side of the hutch have five chicks between them. Yesterday they came up off the remaining eggs so I put them underneath other the hens that were still sitting... just in case. When the hens come off the remaining eggs it usually means they know they are bad, but the big eggs from the red hens usually take a couple of days longer to hatch, so you have to be careful.

I opened up the left side of the hutch today to allow them to take their chicks out into the big, wide world.



The two hens on the right side of the hutch have two chicks each. This is perfect as so long as they all get a chick or two they will get a chance of motherhood and be happy. If one hen gets no chicks she will stay broody, which means another three weeks sitting on a new clutch of eggs. Can you imagine a female Thai being able to do nothing but lie down for that long?



And the mighty Fray Bentos saves the day again.



I checked on Blackie alone in her penthouse suite and she still had no chicks this morning, and no signs of any eggs hatching. I went back to the other hens and found that two big eggs were starting to hatch. You shouldn't really play God but I stuck these under Blackie... besides, the other hens already had chicks.



An hour later after the dog walks and breakfast I went back to check up on things...

These two had brought their five chicks outside.



And Blackie has her first... success!

----------


## Saint Willy

Wonderful, I presume you have your daughter helping (and learning) with all this?

----------


## havnfun

> Respect Mendip but it looks like a lot of work for some eggs.
> 
> This was KGBGF's coup in the background. I had the job of dragging it a few metres once a week so that the shitty area was relocated regularly and no cleanup was required as 1 week of shit is just grass fertiliser.
> 
> Attachment 65654
> 
> She used to get several eggs a day from 6 chickens. The silkies eggs were small but the other 4 hens used to lay good sized eggs.
> 
> 3 month old kitten learning to hunt.
> ...


Cocks, Snakes and P???y.  Was all that was missing to make it the most viewed thread on TD. but you beat me to it with them pics.

----------


## Mendip

> Wonderful, I presume you have your daughter helping (and learning) with all this?


Yeah of course... she's supposed to be learning for her last science exams on Monday but the real thing beats the books hands down.


I put two hatching eggs under Blackie early this morning, and whereas one chick hatched within an hour there was little progress for the second. There are two schools of thought... help them out or leave them be. I've found too many chicks that have died at the last hurdle in the past so decided to give this one a helping hand.

The egg shell was cracked but the chick seemed to be having trouble breaking the membrane inside the shell and it looked exactly the same status as a few hours previously. I think the tough membranes can be caused by humidity problems so I gently ripped open the membrane with a tooth pick. The chick started cheaping and seemed to get some new energy.



And then I just chipped away a bit of shell to help out. You can see the chick's egg tooth on the end of it's beak. These are purely for breaking the shell and disappear a few days after hatching.



I checked again an hour later and Blackie now has her two chicks! The second one was still bedraggled and only a few minutes old.

----------


## Steady



----------


## cyrille

> Blackie


King Willy needs to take a look at this.

----------


## Saint Willy

> King Willy needs to take a look at this.


Thanks for highlighting this egregious breach of PC standards. I shall be writing a PM to Mendip outlining my rage and cc the mod team.

----------


## Mendip

^ No need. Blackie is cool with everything.

Thank God it wasn't her sister 'Darkie' who had the chicks.

----------


## Saint Willy

::spin::

----------


## Mendip

I checked on Blackie this morning and had a big surprise... she now has five chicks!

I needn't have given her the two hatching eggs from another hen after all, for some reason her eggs hatched a day later than the others.

She's still sitting on two eggs which I think are probably bad but I'll leave for another day just in case.



And there's something that hadn't really registered with me earlier... one of the broody hens and now a young mother is a red, egg laying Warren hen. In all the years I've kept chickens I've never before known one of these Warren hens to go broody... that instinct has been bred out of them as broody hens stop laying eggs. And you can't have that.

She's being a great mum... I think that this is quite wonderful. 



One chick died in the night, probably smothered by it's mother but that still leaves us with 13 new additions to the flock. 

Over 60% of the eggs hatched which means that while Austin could do better, he's not doing a bad job with around 40 girls to service.

----------


## Saint Willy

> Over 60% of the eggs hatched which means that while Austin could do better, he's not doing a bad job with around 40 girls to service.


 :goldcup:

----------


## Mendip

After five week all 13 chicks have survived. We only lost the one chick on the first night after hatching.

All of the chicks roost up in the rafters with their mothers and all the other hens. They have been doing this since the first couple of weeks. I guess this is the safest place to sleep with so many snakes around.

----------


## Saint Willy

> I guess this is the safest place to sleep with so many snakes around.


Snakes can climb.

----------


## spliff

> Snakes can climb.


They sure can. I've seen them climb over 10 ft cement walls.

Oh, incidentally, not exactly work safe that title.

----------


## Saint Willy

> Oh, incidentally, not exactly work safe that title.




This thread was posted 2019 and you've just noticed?

----------


## Saint Willy

> Blackie





> King Willy needs to take a look at this.


Not just me. We are all responsible for shaping a safe and inclusive environment free of prejudice or microaggressions.

----------


## Mendip

Before I left home I had time to say good bye to my chickens... I haven't had much spare time to spend with them lately.

These chicks are now around 2 months old... by the time I get back home the cockerels will have to go to new 'homes'. We'll keep the hens.



I'm not sure what to call her now... but here's Non-whitie with her brood. All five of her chicks have survived.

----------


## Mendip

When I left for work in August we had thirteen juvenile chicks so on my return four months later there was some work to do.

The flock was ill at ease due to the adolescent cockerels competing with one another so they needed removing. We take them to join the flock at the local temple.

Here is our resident cock, Austin, on the right with two adolescents on the left. Austin's a genuine jungle fowl but this makes him smaller than a lot of his offspring, many of which are 50% red egg layers.



We had five definite cockerels from the new batch of chicks. Here are two of them at the back of the pic.



And there's this guy/girl who seems to be a bit _haa sip / haa sip_, but I guess with this being Thailand that is hardly surprising. He/she has stayed with the flock for now to see how things develop.



These four went off to their new home.



I also decided to keep this splendid looking boy to see how things go. I hope that Austin doesn't feel any insecurity having a big black cock around but if they do start fighting he will also go and join his brothers at the temple.

----------


## DrWilly

> These four went off to their new home.


Do they make good eating?

Just asking.

----------


## Mendip

^ I'm sure they would make great eating... organically reared on natural food with plenty of space. 

Unfortunately I seem to have lost the ability to kill anything more sentient than a fish... so these guys all go to the temple. The monks keep all the cockerels in a large enclosure and they seem to do OK... I'd assumed that they would just eat them as soon as my back was turned. They don't seem to fight so long as there are no girls around. The cockerels, that is.

----------


## armstrong

Sounds like my mates

----------


## malmomike77

> Do they make good eating?


I was going to ask the same thing. I've choked a few chickens in me time.

----------


## Mendip

^ Well, that's married life for you.


Austin passed away during the night and this was entirely my fault and I feel very guilty.

There's been a lot going on here over the past couple of weeks and I took my eye off the ball, and a week or so ago discovered that Austin was being attacked by a couple of young cockerels from last year's batch of chicks. I'd removed four cocks but completely forgot about these. Their mother's would have been the red egg-layers so they were much bigger and stronger than Austin who was a genuine jungle fowl.

Once I found out, these two immediately went to join the local temple flock... as did the black cock I had been planning to keep.



But the damage had been done... never again will I attempt to keep more than one cock. Poor old Austin had a damaged left wing and leg. There was nothing broken and I was hoping that he'd pull through but he just seemed to lose interest in life. I think he just lost his mojo.



So now I have no cock. I need to get another as they keep the girls under control and stop them fighting, and it's nice to have fertile eggs in case we decide to raise some more clutches of chicks in the future. I'm looking for another genuine jungle fowl as I like the fact that they're the ancestor of all domestic chickens but also magnificent looking birds to boot.

RIP Austin. 

I buried Austin down by the pond but unfortunately Yogi witnessed the ceremony and has already tried to dig him up. He has no respect for this kind of thing.

----------


## ootai

mendip

I was going to say it must be your lucky day but that is not really right in respect to Austin, however i have just the boy you are looking for'
MIL has had to lock up one of the young roosters here as him and another (her favourite) would not stop fighting and they just went round and round stop and have a scuffle then round and round.
If she didn't lock him up there was going to be a dead cock for sure.

I can't bring down tomorrow but maybe Thursday or Friday next week if you want him.
I will try and get a picture later and you can decide if he's the boy for your girls.

----------


## Mendip

I want a pure red jungle fowl cock Ootai.

Apparently that tuft of white feathers at the base of the tail is one of the characteristics.

There are many cocks around... we have just given six to the temple flock, but I like these jungle fowl.

----------


## Mendip

Oh, and I'm after a couple of pure red jungle fowl girls as well so we can breed more. All of our hens are either the red egg layers or some kind of bantam mixes, or red egg layer/jungle fowl (Austin) mix.

The red egg-layer/jungle fowl mix offspring are good regular layers of small eggs, perfect for pickling.

----------


## ootai

Well having nothing better to do while I wait for my lunch to settle I went a took a couple of pictures of my/our cocks.


This is the one you could most likely have.


This is the one that runs with my red hens he's the oldest and doesn't bother the young bucks.


This is the one who thinks he is boss.


And this is the smart one as he runs around the yard just keeping out of the way of the others and goes about his business.

Mendip what did you say to do to get the pictures the right way up I believe they are rotated because I took them in landscape mode.

----------


## ootai

Mendip
The MiL has a couple of those females as well but you would have to come and see see her about getting one of them.
I will check how many there are here and see if she might part with one or two.

----------


## Mendip

That's a splendid looking cock Ootai but I must admit I'm not convinced it's a pure breed jungle fowl. He just doesn't look quite right and I suspect there's some mix in there. 

Do you have any idea of his progeny?

----------


## ootai

> That's a splendid looking cock Ootai but I must admit I'm not convinced it's a pure breed jungle fowl. He just doesn't look quite right and I suspect there's some mix in there. 
> 
> Do you have any idea of his progeny?


Truthful answer to your question is no I don't know.
However there are lots of chickens around our place that come and go as they come here to get the feed we give to our chickens.
The neighbours let theirs run wild and they have roosters that look like him so he may have come from there. Come to think about it MIL did say he belonged next door so not one she raised which makes sense why he gets attacked.
Lek is always telling me there are 'wild" chickens down in the forest east of our place and asks me if I can hear them calling.
She tells me they have a different call to our chickens so he could be from a raider from there.
I do know that I couple of the hens we have here make funny noises compared to our regular chickens so they might be the jungle hens and he could have come from them.


Anyway another thing is my picture is not high quality like the one above that you probably got off the net.
It was taken in a dark chicken house that is in a shaded area and I couldn't get close so I just zoomed in quite a bit.
In real life view he is really much better looking. Also he is only young so might blossom a bit as he gets older.
He does have the white tuff above his tail which I notice the others don't have.

Anyway as the Thai wives' say "up to you".

----------


## Mendip

Ootai...

I don't want to criticise your cock but I'm going to turn you down.

I'm not convinced he's a pure jungle fowl and I don't want to take the chance because, as you know, I'm too soft for all this and once I took him on he would have a home for life, regardless of how he developed. I noticed he has the white tuft of feathers at the base of his tail but he just doesn't look right to me... possible a bit too well-built. The young jungle fowl I've had have been quite slender and more athletically built, if that makes sense. But many thanks for the offer.

The jungle fowl have a distinctive high-pitched crow which thankfully I can only just hear at night because our chicken run is much closer to the neighbour's house than ours. They get the full benefit from around 3am onward!

The gardener reckons he can sort this out no problem with some friends who live out in the sticks. I know the outlaws could help but there would always be strings attached so I'll leave the gardener with this. Another string to his bow... he really is a Godsend.

----------


## malmomike77

> I buried Austin


I'd have plucked and buried him in the oven




> Mendip what did you say to do to get the pictures the right way up I believe they are rotated because I took them in landscape mode.


Lie on your side works for me

----------


## Mendip

^ He had a name.

You can't eat a pet with a name.

----------


## malmomike77

Nonsense, i would. You just need to picture him with stuffing and gravy dribbling down his crispy brown leg, lying next to roast potatoes.

----------


## ootai

> Nonsense, i would. You just need to picture him with stuffing and gravy dribbling down his crispy brown leg, lying next to roast potatoes.


I wouldn't eat him either because he would be as tough as shit.
He has been running around trying to service 30+ hens for how long?

But a while back 1 of my red hens dropped off the perch literally, I found her dead under where she roosted. Anyway the SiL didn't give a shit about the risk of a disease killing the hen that maybe detrimental to humans if they ate the hen she just cooked it up and enjoyed it cause it was free.

Mendip no problems re the rooster you can have a look at him if you ever come for a visit, if he is still around that is.

----------


## malmomike77

> I wouldn't eat him either because he would be as tough as shit.


Nonsense, you haven't tried him

----------


## Looper

Feeding time for the chooks


They were scared of me but they overcame their fears when I brought out a plate of chopped mango from her tree.


These mangoes are bewts off a tiny tree and the kick the arse of my scraggly tiddlers from my behemoth tree.

----------


## DrWilly

> Well having nothing better to do while I wait for my lunch to settle I went a took a couple of pictures of my/our cocks.
> 
> This is the one you could most likely have.
> 
> This is the one that runs with my red hens he's the oldest and doesn't bother the young bucks.
> 
> This is the one who thinks he is boss.
> 
> 
> ...



I have found that my pictures are sideways no matter what. However, i take a screenshot of the picture and that posts perfectly on TD.

----------


## katie23

@looper - very nice chickens & mangoes.

That doesn't look like the lovely Thai lady, Ms Luzon or Ms Mindanao. Seems loopah is quite the playah...  :Smile:

----------


## BLD

Teakdoors top swordsman. Onya loopy.mightily impressed

----------


## Looper

> @looper - very nice chickens & mangoes.
> 
> That doesn't look like the lovely Thai lady, Ms Luzon or Ms Mindanao. Seems loopah is quite the playah...


That is a scandalous and scurrilous suggestion Katie

If a lady invites you round to squeeze her mangoes it would be churlish to demur

Anyway, on the plus column of my character ledger (since we are doing accounting) I did rescue this fine creature from the beaks of the chooks.


It is a monster, 8cm long and as fat as my finger. It was getting pecked on the lawn but survived the onslaught and I brought it home in a jar and gave it some capsicum to eat. 


And it had babies (those are eggs on the right). Which means that is a lady. Good on me.

I also kept the seed from the pygmy mango tree fruit we ate and will try to grow one. Beats trying to keep the bats off a 7 metre tall monster tree that only grows scabby scragglers.

----------


## Mendip

^ So what is that thing? A locust? I hope it's not a cricket because I'm sick of Australians talking about cricket.

By the way Looper, if it doesn't work out with your pet I'm sure that your 'friend's' chooks would love to eat it.


We cleared a chicken job today that had been delayed due to nesting pigeons. 

I had these reed panels at the east end of the chicken run to keep out the morning sun while it's still low but after a few years they'd disintegrated and needed replacing. The project had been on hold for a couple of weeks now due to a nest containing two pigeon chicks but the weather has suddenly really hotted up and I could delay no longer. And besides, I'm trying to get rid of the pigeons... but non-lethally.



These are the project-delaying pigeons... two chicks in a nest right in the critical position.



But in my hierarchy chickens trump pigeons, especially egg-laying chickens, although I wanted the work done as sympathetically as possible.

Once the old panels were removed the pigeon chicks were exposed to the morning sun.



I wasn't so much worried about them getting sunburn as deciding to fly the nest and immediately getting killed by the seven marauding dogs below, so we put up a temporary new panel to give them some privacy.



And a couple of hours later... another compassionately carried out project complete!



And for anyone worried about the disturbance to the pigeon family... please don't worry. The parents were back within minutes and looked pretty pleased with their new roof!




All this chicken work put chickens in my mind today and on the way back from the school pick-up I decided to see if there were any of the red egg-layers available at our chicken place in the old part of Korat city.

There were...

I was only really after two but there was a cage containing three and I didn't want to split them up... and they looked pretty well knackered after being in the heat all day. It's always nice to give them a home.



So three it was. The ones in the cage below looked a bit healthier to be honest but I felt sorry for these three. I guess the higher up the cage is, the longer they've been there.

I'd love a few ducks on our pond as well, but our dogs aren't as well behaved as Ootai's and a free-running duck would last about 3 seconds in our garden.



In the old days the daughter would have joined me for the releasing and naming ceremony but when we got home she claimed not enough time due to too much homework. I bet the bugger was watching TikTok. Why do they have to grow up so fast?

So I did it alone.



I didn't bother naming these new arrivals... seemed a bit weird doing it on my own.



And let's face it, they all look the bladdy same anyway.

----------


## Headworx

Any idea what breed this is Mendip?

----------


## Mendip

^ Welcome to the thread HW, I didn't realise you were a chicken fan.

To be honest those plump-breasted, darker breeds are notoriously difficult to identify... and I'd need more pictures to be sure!

----------


## Reg Dingle

I'd finally got the Middlesboro game and delusions of FA cup grandeur  out of my head, then this...

----------


## DrWilly

> Any idea what breed this is Mendip?
> 
> Attachment 82528


knot surewhat breed it is. But my speeling suddenly got bad

----------


## Looper

> We cleared a chicken job today that had been delayed due to nesting pigeons.


Champion heno reno Mendip




> ^ So what is that thing? A locust? I hope it's not a cricket because I'm sick of Australians talking about cricket.
> 
> By the way Looper, if it doesn't work out with your pet I'm sure that your 'friend's' chooks would love to eat it.


The giant cricket has escaped and is threatening to browse vigorously on Greta's thatch


I am incubating her babies for her in the glass tupperware container, bless my heart

When they are born I will feed them to this tiny 1 inch baby gecko I caught in the bedroom. His mouth is too small to eat any live prey I could catch in the garden for him






> Any idea what breed this is Mendip?




Motorboat....

----------


## Mendip

^ Speaking of motorboats, it's nice to see Reg Dingle has got himself a new hat!

----------


## Mendip

To be honest you've pissed me off a bit Headworx... this is supposed to be an educational thread and now I think people are just checking out that picture you posted... I've certainly looked at it several times today.


At first light I went down to check on our new arrivals because I was a bit worried about the dark one especially... she didn't look too well last night.

I saw one waking around on the ground straight away... and after a short search found the other two. I had to help them down... they could get up there but it's always harder to get down again.



Let's reflect here for a moment... these are hens that have come straight from a rearing station, have never had an inch of space to move about in, have never had the benefit of a parent to teach them basic skills, yet their first ever night of 'freedom' and they seek height to roost at night. That innate instinct must be so strong and I find it fascinating. The vast majority of their contemporaries will have gone straight from the rearing station to be crammed into battery cages which I think is pretty tragic in this day and age. Please buy friendly eggs.



During the morning I made sure they know where the water is... of course they do but I like to micromanage for my own peace of mind. And they had their first ever taste of a vegetable.



I have no cock at the moment so they are getting bullied a bit by the old hands... a cockerel tends to sort out this stuff... but also the resident girls helped show the new arrivals what's what. Or more likely just stole the carefully laid down piles of food I was giving them.



Her first ever mud bath... after being here for less than a day! Look at the pleasure on her face... (mud bathing is a way to get rid of bugs and parasites in the feathers... another innate instinct that most chickens are denied).



I often think that I'd be happier in myself if I turned vegetarian... but then there would be no more Spaghetti Bolognese to impress people with.



And tonight... the roosting instinct strong, they perched up on the A-frame holding the dry food. This is a strict no-no as all their poo will fall straight into the food container (I mentioned before that chickens do 70% of their business while asleep, roosting at night).

But I let it pass... it's only their second night.

----------


## bsnub

> To be honest you've pissed me off a bit Headworx


 :smiley laughing:

----------


## Headworx

Far better to be pissed off than pissed on Mendip, well certainly for most of us that's the case. Good to know I've ruffled your feathers, could get you to bite in the Ashes thread but am having more luck here it seems  :Smile:

----------


## Mendip

^ I haven't visited The Ashes thread for a while, to be fair. I seem to have lost interest in cricket.

But anyway, do you have any more pics of that chick holding a cock?

----------


## Headworx

^Possibly, but out of respect for your gardner I'm not sharing any more.

----------


## Mendip

^ The gardener's cool with this kind of thing... I'm disappointed.

Anyway, their third night in a new home and the new trio seem to have decided on their roosting spot.

Lovely to see.



For any purists out there, the Spirit House was painstakingly (and probably expensively) decommissioned before being retired to the chicken run.

----------


## Looper

^^^^^ Healthy and happy looking chooks Mendip




> When they are born I will feed them to this tiny 1 inch baby gecko I caught in the bedroom. His mouth is too small to eat any live prey I could catch in the garden for him


I swatted an ichneumon wasp away while have my afternoon tea and it dropped the paralysed spider it was carrying to feed its baby.

I thought I would try and feed the paralysed spider to the gecko. They eat live prey only. A paralysed spider is alive, but not moving, so I was curious if the gecko would take the bait.

Then it occurred to me that an actual ichneumon larvae would be the ideal bite size snack for my pint sized reptile

So I went and found an ichneumon cocoon and cracked it open to get the nasty little maggot and rescue the poor paralysed spiders



Then I chucked the maggot into the mix



So what will happen in the rock/paper/scissors predator triangle....?

Will the gecko eat the paralysed spider?

Or will the gecko eat the ichneumon maggot?

Or in a cruel twist will the maggot wriggle its way to the paralysed spider, eat it, pupate into a monster wasp and sting the gecko to death just for fun?

----------


## Reg Dingle

> So what will happen in the rock/paper/scissors predator triangle....?
> 
> Will the gecko eat the paralysed spider?
> 
> Or will the gecko eat the ichneumon maggot?


I reckon Miss Mindanao will eat them all :Smile:

----------


## DrWilly

> and now I think people are just checking out that picture you posted... I've certainly looked at it several times today.


How many times did the gardener catch you?

----------


## Looper

> I reckon Miss Mindanao will eat them all


Nothing would surprise me Dill...

I do not know what she slips into her embotido to give it its pungent bouquet.

Katie probably has the good oil!

----------


## Reg Dingle

> embotido


My brother used to get that and leave skin cornflakes everywhere

Trust the Flippos to eat it

----------


## Mendip

^ You have this unerring knack of lowering the tone of a thread!


Tonight I checked on our new arrivals and after only 5 days in their new home they are now roosting up in the roof rafters with the rest of the flock. And that's without a cock to call them up. I love this stuff.

That's gotta be better than being crammed in a cage.

The new ones are the two on the left and the one on the right, divided by an old matron.



I'm still looking for a jungle fowl cockerel though to settle the flock down. Despite many promises no cock is forthcoming and I think it could take a while.

----------


## Mendip

^^^^ So what happened Looper?

I must admit that I really don't like spiders but you can't help but feel sorry for those poor paralysed ones. That's no life.


We've only had these new hens a week and yesterday these eggs were included amongst the day's takings. The egg cup is for scale and the egg on the left is normal size and the egg on the right is no bigger than a garden song bird's... a Greenish Warbler for example.



I've often noticed that a hen's first few eggs come out very small... and strangely often followed by a few very large, double-yolkers.

It looks like two of our new arrivals are starting to lay... happy chickens! I guess the small initial eggs are down to the hen getting her cycle organised and in order before she settles down to provide us with 5 or 6 proper-sized eggs a week.

----------


## Looper

^Interesting early easter selection there Mendip. Maybe could be blown and painted as a 9 year old art project if they are too small to eat.

I am looking forward to celebrating Our Lord getting hammered to a cross by chowing down on a milk chocolate monster next month!




> ^^^^ So what happened Looper?


The baby gecko gulped down the waspy maggot.

He has had a spring in his rubbery little tail since that feast.

He is a reptile so they don't need feeding that often. But on the other hand he is a growing lad so I might get him another maggoty morsel tomorrow.

The spider is still in there, paralysed but unmolested. But at least he has got a view of the TV now. Gotta beat being stuck inside a sealed dark mud cocoon being slowly eaten alive!

----------


## Looper

I opened another wasp mud cocoon but this maggot had already eaten all the spiders and turned into a segmented pupa

It looks more delicious than the maggot to me.


But the problem is that the pupa barely moves compared to the wriggly maggot. Just the occasional twitch or wiggle and not enough to stimulate the geckos predator response

So next I found an even tinier skink in another bedroom

It is gladiator time...


Let cold-blooded reptile battle commence


You can see the (still alive) pupa unmolested

----------


## Mendip

> The spider is still in there, paralysed but unmolested. But at least he has got a view of the TV now. Gotta beat being stuck inside a sealed dark mud cocoon being slowly eaten alive!


Not if the TV's showing Thai 'comedy' shows 24/7, it isn't.

----------


## Looper

^Lol!

The lizards decided to take a leaf out of John Lennon's book and live in brutherly peace with each other.

So I segregated them in separate jars

Then I found 2 more pupa stage wasps today and put one in each jar

The tiny skink went straight for it and spent 10 minutes trying to get the giant pupa in its tiny gob before giving up...



the feckless gecko didn't twitch an eyelid

...until I came back half an hour later and the geckao's pupa was gone, gulped down

the gecko's body is slightly bigger than the skink's but its mouth is much bigger

Good to know the gecko can eat these pupae

----------


## Mendip

I've been cockless for the last few months, since Austin's sad demise at the hands of one of his male offspring.

While the daughter and I were away pilgrimaging the wife found a new cock and brought it home.

This fine bird is a pure red jungle fowl, the precursor of all domesticated chickens. 

His name? 'Nelson' of course and here he is getting used to his new shipmates... he has an all female crew of around 35 to get acquainted with. It's noticeable that the girls have stopped squabbling on, now that they have a man to keep control.



Along with Nelson came two pure jungle fowl hens and I'm quite excited about trying to breed pure jungle fowls from them. The challenge will be to recognise which eggs have been laid by these newcomers to put under broody hens.

The larger one is called 'Fanny' (Nelson's wife) and the smaller, petite bird is called 'Lady Emma' of course, although I very much doubt that anyone but myself will use their names.

----------


## ootai

[QUOTE=Mendip;4423760]

Along with Nelson came two pure jungle fowl hens and I'm quite excited about trying to breed pure jungle fowls from them. The challenge will be to recognise which eggs have been laid by these newcomers to put under broody hens.
[QUOTE]


Mendip
If all your other hens are Red Warren's and there are only the 2 new jungle hens I believe it will be quite easy to tell which eggs are which.
Here a my place the warrens lay brown eggs and the native hens white ones which have a quite pointy end.
All my cross breed hens lay eggs that are not white but not as brown as the Warren's eggs.

It will be interesting to see whether he takes the jungle hens as his favourite ladies. The rooster I have in with my Warrens made sure he won over his one favourite native hen which has stayed with him over the past couple of years and she bosses the lowly Warrens.

He is a fine looking cock and is definitely smaller and more colourful than the ones I had here that I offered you. If you do manage to breed a pure bred jungle rooster from him and the 2 hens put me down for one to bring home.

----------


## Mendip

^ Ootai, the problem is that I have a few small wild hens which aren't pure jungle fowl and these also lay small white eggs. Hopefully once I get to know their habits I'll be able to see which hutches they lay their eggs in and keep them separate and out of the fridge.

And yes, I've put you down for a jungle fowl cock.

----------


## DrWilly

A splendid looking cock!

----------


## Mendip

^ Thank you.

That would be quite some statement on any other thread.

----------


## Topper

> That would be quite some statement on any other thread.


Your threads ain't "any other threads"!

----------


## DrWilly

> A splendid looking cock!





> ^ Thank you.
> 
> That would be quite some statement on any other thread.



Even on this thread I felt somewhat trepidatious writing that sentence. But Topper does have a good point.

----------


## Mendip

I wouldn't describe myself as a fervent Royalist but I do find the Queen's passing quite moving and I am certainly very happy to pay the 5p the estimate her funeral will cost each UK tax payer. In fact I'd happily stick in a skin diver to cover 100 naysayers. And I wish Charles III the best. He's grown on me to be honest and I think he'll do OK.


Anyway, I wanted to commemorate the Queen's sad death in some way so I thought I'd do the very Buddhist thing of giving a good life to a few new chickens. I popped into town with the daughter.



I've always enjoyed letting the daughter pick out our new family members (and she's like me... she picks out the sickly underdogs in the hope of rescuing them but she's growing up fast and doesn't share my enthusiasm for these family traditions. I always love to pick out the lucky hens who will get a life and not be destined to live out its life in a small cage.

But the daughter was much more interested in the ducklings.



I've always loved ducks. They have much more character and personality than chickens and who doesn't like a boiled duck egg on a Sunday morning? We used to keep Khaki Campbells when I was a kid... wonderful layers and our drake 'Francis' used to keep the flock of ducks AND ducks in order. 

But ducks need lots of water and would just make too much mess to keep in our chicken run. I would love to make a 'duck island' in the pond for a few ducks to live on but they would last about three seconds with our dogs... not the dogs fault of course, they just haven't been trained.

So anyway, no ducklings for my daughter this time...  :02: 



We brought the new flock members home - no battery cages for these guys - and had the 'release' ceremony.



Meet Elizabeth, Charles and Camilla. It was a shame that Charles had to be a hen but we can't have two cocks in one family.



And who says Royalty doesn't have it's supporters... Yogi stands for no-one, normally.



Before their release, Charles became strangely nervous and tightly gripped my finger with her left foot. I guess it's nerve racking to start a new life but I'm sure she will settle in. It won't be too far in the future until Charles feels Nelson's hot breath on the back of her feathery neck.



I love releasing these new hens into their new home. This is the first time they've ever had space and Camilla loved it and started running and flapping her wings. Elizabeth made no fuss, of course.



Nelson now has a big crew from from a wide range of backgrounds but I'm sure he can handle it.

----------


## malmomike77

> skin diver


oiii its a Lady mate......

----------


## malmomike77

> It was a shame that Charles had to be a hen but we can't have two cocks in one family.


erm i think you can get away with this nowadays, gender fluidity and all that too many genders bollix

----------


## Topper

So dog vs drake, one on one, you'd give the edge to a dog, Mendip?

----------


## Mendip

Topper, a drake would last about 3 seconds against one of our dogs. 

They are all show and bluster... a beak is no match for a mouthful of teeth.

----------


## happynz

Thunderdome.  Goose and dog. Who comes out alive?

----------


## Mendip

I'd still give the edge to the dog... a proper dog like Yogi that is, not one of these toy dogs the likes of Reg Dingle seem to prefer.

----------


## Reg Dingle

I



> a proper dog like Yogi that is, not one of these toy dogs the likes of Reg Dingle seem to prefer


Toy?
You don't see my dog wearing the wife's negliget. That ugly lazy thing that lies on your outdoor dinner table licking his sweaty balls all day  is more the toy out of them both :Smile: 

And I'll have you know mine has started to lift his leg to pee...and also hates ducks geese and swans :Smile: 



Toy? You don't see the kids playing with mine after a days hunting :Smile: 


His favourite food is duck dujon :Smile: 



Killing machine

----------


## malmomike77

> You don't see my dog wearing the wife's negliget.


RIP Dan




> Killing machine


how many of your dolls has he destroyed Dill?

----------


## Mendip

> RIP Dan


Thank you NPT... she was a wonderful dog.

It's strange... we just came in an hour ago after a couple of beers with my Welsh mate and the dogs of course went mental to greet us... but no Dan. These times bring it home. Even after a month we miss her and the daughter teared up tonight. She of course had known Dan all her life. 

But anyway, back on topic and with the headline news changing so frequently lately it's hard to keep up, but for those interested, Elizabeth, Charles and Camilla are doing well. They seem to stay a bit aloof and separate, and haven't really mixed with the rest of the flock yet which is strange as usually after three weeks any newcomers would be completely integrated. Maybe Nelson needs to sort them out.

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## Topper

> Elizabeth, Charles and Camilla are doing well. They seem to stay a bit aloof and separate


They know the rest of the chickens are beneath their station.

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## Shy Guava

Speaking of chickens, can any Phuket members confirm if poster Attilla The Hen fell off the perch last week? I have only heard rumours.

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## DrWilly

> Attilla The Hen fell off the perch last week?


Oh no...

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## Mendip

Nelson is in the middle of that lot. He's settling in nicely.



My cock spends all day, every day wallowing in a dust bath while surrounded by adoring females.

What a life.

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## Mendip

A little while ago 'Fanny', Nelson's wife number one went broody and started sitting on a couple off eggs in a nest. I've been a bit busy lately and forgot all about her.



Today, Nelson our resident genuine red jungle fowl cock, was strutting around beneath Fanny's nest looking particularly pleased with himself.



Fanny was also getting visits from some of the red 'egg' chickens, which was unusual.



And then everything fell into place!



Congratulations Nelson and Fanny! 



Fanny is also a genuine red jungle fowl (hen) and this chick is the first pure jungle fowl we have bred. Fingers crossed for the second egg. These red jungle fowl are reputed to be the ancestors of all domesticated fowl and are called '_gai baa_' in Thai. '_Gai_' is chicken and I think '_baa_' is old, although I'd need a cunning linguist such as Edmond to confirm.

I'll leave her alone to enjoy motherhood and not for the first time a Fray Bentos Steak and Kidney pie tin has come to the rescue.

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## helge

*Congrats

Named them yet ?

I know that you prefer naming your chickens after gay admirals, but here is a few real sailors.

Magellan, Ferdinand

**Hudson, Henry
**da Gama, Vasco
**Drake, Francis

**Bering, Vitus*


*Popeye - Wikipedia*


​

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## Mendip

It's a bit early for names yet, Helge. I'll wait until I know the sex first.

I once had a male Khaki Campbell called Francis but it wouldn't seem right for a hen.

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## helge

You were more ....casual when you named your dogs then ?

Or do you blame your daughter for that ?


Bligh was a bit gay/needy, so he'll pass for both genders, sorry "all" genders.

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## Mendip

^ I don't want to sound like a dinosaur Helge but we only recognise two genders in the chicken run.

And yeah, the daughter and wife are responsible for a few of the dog's names.

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## helge

> we only recognise two genders in the chicken run.


You never experienced having hens without a ..cock ?

Top hen will take on the role and the way she/he/it crows, is unforgettable.



> It is estimated that about 1in 10000 chickens are born with a condition termed *gynandromorphism*, where, under the right conditions the sex will change (*spontaneous sex re**versal*).

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## Shutree

> I once had a male Khaki Campbell called Francis but it wouldn't seem right for a hen.


Francis Drake. Ideal for a duck?

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## Mendip

^ Perfect. Francis Drake and his girls had real personalities and I'd love to keep ducks again but they make so much mess. If our dogs were better trained I'd like to build a duck island in the pond and keep a small flock.

Fanny sat on two eggs... one hatched and after she left the nest with her chick I checked the remaining egg and there was a dead chick inside. This is fairly common and it always seems sad to me that the chicks have developed for three weeks but can't cross the final hurdle and break out of the egg.

Ootai called the other night to tell me he could do with a new cock, so if this is a boy he'll be heading to deepest Isaan in a few months time. If a girl, she'll stay with our flock.

Our first genuine jungle fowl chick with it's mum. I suspect it's a boy as _he's_ a bold little thing. It's extremely difficult taking good pictures of hens because their movements are so fast and jerky... maybe Shutree has some advice?

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## malmomike77

> This is fairly common and it always seems sad to me that the chicks have developed for three weeks but can't cross the final hurdle and break out of the egg.


Is it because she's a new Mum, does the mortality rate improve after a few clutches

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## Buckaroo Banzai

> I am certainly very happy to pay the 5p the estimate her funeral


I am sure there are many that would had paid double that if she could have done it a few years earlier.  :Smile:

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## Buckaroo Banzai

Have I mentioned that I hate roosters? 
In case I have . I hape roosters 
IMO they are the scourge of humanity .
EEE OU ,EEE OU ,EEE OU ,EEE OU, EEE OU ,EEE OU ,EEE OU ,EEE OU,

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## Ghost61

Re Helge Post on Gay Admirals.
Pre-Covid, Brisbane Harbour Pilots & myself were POSL re: a yacht called Vasco Pyjamas.

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## Mendip

^ To be honest with only two eggs it's hard to draw any conclusions but I'm not sure the mum's experience has any bearing on this. Temperature and humidity are the main factors... and she stayed on the nest a couple of days after the first chick hatched. 

In saying that, it's very important that the mum turns the eggs during incubation but also important that she stops doing this for the last couple of days before hatching. I'm not sure how an experienced mum would know to change anything if she got it wrong the first time? But nature is a wonderful thing, of course.

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## Mendip

> EEE OU ,EEE OU ,EEE OU ,EEE OU, EEE OU ,EEE OU ,EEE OU ,EEE OU,


Are you on that Greek keyboard again, BB?

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## Topper

> Have I mentioned that I hate roosters?
> In case I have . I hate roosters
> IMO they are the scourge of humanity


After years of living in Bangkok, surprisingly rooster free, the first place we stayed here in the PI had a rooster across the street.  The fooker would start going off at 3am non-stop till dawn, oddly enough.  I'm in the BB category as I've yet to be able to sleep through their incessant noise.

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## helge

> The fooker would start going off at 3am non-stop till dawn, oddly enough. I'm in the BB category as I've yet to be able to sleep through their incessant noise.


Apart from being a call to start looking for food, it is also a sign of dominance.

You could avoid the nuisance if you started kykelikying at, let's say 2am.

Would take the fucker by surprise and shut him up.

Give your wife a heads up before experimenting

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## Buckaroo Banzai

> Are you on that Greek keyboard again, BB?


That's what they sound to me three EEEs and an OU
EEE OU  little fuckers. Listen to them and tell me the don't sound like EEE OU
I once used google translate and it turns out that one says 
EEE OU : "_I am a rooster_"
Then the one on the other side of your house after three seconds says:
"_I am a rooster too_"
Then the first replies:
"_I dont give a shit_"  ( that's where the Thai word Ki comes from) 
Then the  second second comes back:
"_Oh yea? you would give a ki  if I came over and kicked the ki out of you_ "
The the first says:
"_Come over sucker, Ill fuck you up_" 
And it goes like that for hours 
 The only good rooster is a dead rooster  :Smile: 

PS: I checked with other sources and the translation seems to be pretty accurate

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## katie23

> After years of living in Bangkok, surprisingly rooster free, the first place we stayed here in the PI had a rooster across the street.  The fooker would start going off at 3am non-stop till dawn, oddly enough.  I'm in the BB category as I've yet to be able to sleep through their incessant noise.


The places I live in (my apartment + parents' house, in different towns) both have roosters nearby. Most of the time, I'm able to sleep through their noise. It's a matter of getting used to it, just like (minor) earthquakes & typhoons (plus karaoke neighbors). You'll learn, Topper.  :Smile:

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## Shutree

> (plus karaoke neighbors)


No one can possibly get used to the drunk karaoke noise. Join them is the only answer.

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## katie23

> No one can possibly get used to the drunk karaoke noise. Join them is the only answer.


Fortunately, most (not all) of my neighbours (in both places) sing OK-ish - correct tone and/ or timing. Sometimes they have parties and have guests, and that's the unknown as I don't know if their guests sing well or not. Occasionally, there are neighbours who sing very well that I sometimes want to whistle, applaud or shout "more, more! " when they sing.

My most hated karaoke song (by neighbours) is "She's Gone" by Steelheart. Listen to the chorus at ~2 min and you'll know why.

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## Mendip

Getting the dogs vaccinated last week reminded me that the chickens are long overdue so I popped into town today to pick up some Fowl Cholera vaccine. I would urge anyone who keeps chickens to vaccinate every six months... we once lost almost our entire flock to fowl cholera and it was heart-braking. Even Ziggy, our first cock, succombed (pun intended  :Smile: ). Afterwards all the locals asked why I hadn't got them vaccinated?... if only they had told me beforehand.

I'll try and do the vaccinations over the next few days, time allowing.



Of course while I was at the chicken shop I noticed a couple of young chickens in a cramped cage that could do with a nice home. We don't need any more but I just felt sorry for them.

Meet Kane and Saka. Kane is the big gingery one at the front and Saka is the small dark one.



Their first ever experience of space. Let's hope Kane and Saka find as much space tonight in the Wales penalty box.



No trouble finding the refreshments...



Kane proved an instant hit with the girls. That's Camilla having a little nibble.



The full team came to greet Kane and Saka. Good luck guys.

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## malmomike77

Kane has a bad ankle and Saka blew his wad in the first game, you should have chosen Foden and Grealish, or if you want them to go further than next week then Mbappe and Junior.

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## Mendip

^ I can always get some more.

Maybe Kane and Saka will go for an early ba.... becue!

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## malmomike77

Get that Pla duk and have some surf and perch

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## DrWilly

> Of course while I was at the chicken shop I noticed a couple of young chickens in a cramped cage that could do with a nice home. We don't need any more but I just felt sorry for them.



they saw you coming. Probably stuffed them into a small cage as soon as they spotted you…

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## Mendip

I wasn't going to mention this but I just went down to the chicken run to check on Kane and Saka and both are up roosting with the others.

ON THEIR FIRST NIGHT!!!

This is unheard of and is obviously an omen. Kane's ankle must be OK and Saka must have his mojo back.

England 3 - 0 Wales is our prediction.

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## DrWilly

Lemme guess...its coming home?  :rofl:

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## Reg Dingle

^ Coming home to roost :Smile:

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## Edmond

> 'Gai' is chicken and I think 'baa' is old, although I'd need a cunning linguist such as Edmond to confirm.


I'll be a twat and answer.  :Smile: 

It means jungle/forest, pretty much a literal translation if they're known as jungle fowl in English.


The only thing I know about chickens involves cutlery.

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## helge

> fowl


Exactly how we pronounce the word for 'bird' on our little island.


Btw also how PH and Hermanowich was beurteilt in their 'realschule' days 
 :Smile:

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## Mendip

Today was the day to vaccinate the chickens against fowl cholera. This was well overdue for which there is really no excuse.

The first step was to shut the dogs away from the action in the front garden. The dogs go mental when we're trying to catch the chickens and start barking and running around the outside of the chicken run, joining in the chase. Things can get pretty chaotic which doesn't do the birds any good at all.

 When looking at this photo afterwards I noticed the look Anna and Yogi were sharing. Anna is having one of her pseudo heats at the moment and is getting on 'very' well with Yogi. I think it's only a matter of time until he does the deed and I was considering separating them for a few days but why not let them enjoy a bit of Christmas cheer? I know that I'm hoping for some this year.



The vaccination kit. I keep the vaccine in the fridge.



Each bird should be given 1ml / 1cc of vaccine although I give the smaller wild jungle fowl hens and bantams a bit less.



The vaccine offers protection for three months so after today we're good until March. The young, egg laying hens are vaccinated on leaving the rearing farms so our two new egg layers, Kane and Saka, technically didn't need a vaccination today but they still got one. I don't see why they should get any special treatment at the moment, especially Kane.

Here's one of the girls getting her 1cc into the breast muscle.



The system is to catch a bird, vaccinate, and then put into the holding pen until the job is complete. I used to catch them all first and keep in the holding pen, taking one out at a time to vaccinate. I think the new method is better because it means less handling and some birds at the end of the job spend barely any time confined, so less stress. Also any instantly recognisable birds such as Blackie, Nelson or the two jungle fowl hens Fanny and Emma could be injected and immediately released back into the run without being confined at all.



Here's my cock just before it was vaccinated.



And job done! 

With two of us it only took about an hour to do around forty birds and they were released by just lifting the cage at the end. I'm slightly annoyed that in the excitement I forgot to count them which had also been the plan.

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## Mendip

The fickle hand of fate.

Most of the eggs we collect every day go into the fridge and will maybe contribute to a breakfast, such as the one I had yesterday.



The very occasional lucky egg will go under a broody hen. 

Yes, Nelson has done it again. Welcome to our newest member of the flock who hatched sometime overnight.

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## DrWilly

Do you eat them as well?

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## Mendip

^ Nah, the chickens are pets. A lot of them have names and you can't eat a pet with a name.

Edit. Shutree, you asked about what we do with all of our eggs today but I can't for the life of me find which thread that was in. Anyway, we eat quite a lot of eggs... boiled, fried, scrambled, scribbled, poached, omelettes etc. I make quiches a couple of times a month and the dogs get a fried egg on their dinner a couple of times a week, they love it.

The wife seems to barter our small bantam eggs with a friend who sells some kind of food on the street and we swap a few eggs a week with a noodle vendor in return for their leftover soup at the end of every day which goes to our 'outside' dogs.

That just about takes care of our eggs.

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## katie23

^I agree with this (that you can't eat a pet which has a name).

My mom now only has 1 hen, named Blackie. Blackie had a sister, Whitie, which died of sickness early last year. Their companion male duck (Wakwak), died of old age last year. We buried Whitie & Wakwak - didn't think of eating them even when they were alive. We did eat the eggs of the hens. I think the remaining hen (Blackie) has entered menopause - she's not laying eggs anymore.

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## malmomike77

^ menopause  :Smile:

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## DrWilly

What good is a chicken that can’t be roasted or deep frie?

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## malmomike77

and has a dry vagina and complains of night sweats

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## Mendip

^ Not to mention the headaches...

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## katie23

> What good is a chicken that can’t be roasted or deep frie?


Actually, mom's Blackie hen is more of a white elephant nowadays, since she doesn't lay eggs anymore. She just eats a lot (and sometimes destroys mom's vegetable plot because she likes to scratch the soil). But she gives some joy. When I visit mom's house, she always comes to me - to ask for food. Lol.

The remains of Whitie (hen) and Wakwak (duck) are currently serving as fertiliser in mom's backyard, so their carcasses are not useless even after death. But yeah, they cost more to feed than the value of eggs that they gave. But they also gave happiness, which is priceless.  :Smile:

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## Mendip

^ Exactly!

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## DrWilly

That’s what dogs are for. 

chickens = eggs and chicken legs.

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## Mendip

After a busy day my habit is to spend an hour fishing down at the pond with a Leo and the pack of dogs. This is my relaxation time and I don't think that one hour out of twenty-four to myself is overly selfish.

After a short while tonight the dogs went mental... and a short search revealed a strange cock strutting around on the roof of the chicken run. 



From where he came I do not know but it's a good job that Nelson and his flock are protected because this big guy would make mincemeat of our resident, much slighter jungle fowl.

But there's no denying he's a handsome cock.

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## malmomike77

Do you own a sling? i like them a lot in Thailand - there are so many targets, takes me back to when i was a lad.

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## DrWilly

I kinda feel like Mendy has left us lacking on this story…

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## Mendip

^^ I can knock a fish on the head but that's about it for me these days. As I've aged I seem to have lost the ability to kill animals.

^ It got dark KW and I imagine that the cock went to roost in the overhanging trees. It's dawn now and I can hear Yogi going mental down by the chicken run so I'll go and investigate.

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## DrWilly

And…any update?

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## Mendip

^ Sadly, no.

No cock, no pile of feathers, no nothing.

Another mystery of Isaan.

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## Mendip

One of our hens has a bad leg. Occasionally they seem to fall off the perch while asleep during the night and hit the ground 7 or 8 feet below with a sickening thud and I guess this is the origin of this injury. I've prodded around and the leg doesn't seem to be broken but the old gal has trouble getting about and has spent the last few days sitting on the ground and only getting up for food and water.

She has her own personal water bowl and gets bedside food e few times a day and fingers crossed she'll get better.



Hens are apparently one of the few animals that show empathy and it's interesting so see a gaggle gather around our poorly hen to keep her company. 




But it's not all doom and gloom. Blackie has been sitting on 3 eggs since just before Christmas...



And over the last 24 hours all of the eggs hatched... yes, 3 out of 3. Just like his name's sake, it seems that Nelson has been doing his duty!

The yellow chick was the last to hatch from a big brown 'egg layer' egg. The first generation egg layer/jungle fowl offspring often seem to be white and I'm hoping this chick is a hen and will introduce a bit more colour variety into the flock.

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