R and Bs Rainbow Cackle Bricks

24/09/2023

Quite Happy With All Four Of My Black Copper Marans Pullets,
All Now Laying Consistently, Getting 1 Dozen Eggs From Them Over 4 Days. 😁

Eggs And Chook Spam,
The Roo Is My
Blue Copper Marans ~ Bluey.

29/08/2023

I found this very interesting and informative it’s always good to read about something you never knew about 😊

A common homestead question is “Can chickens and ducks live together?”. The answer is “Yes, but…”.

If you have all girl ducks, then no problem. If you have boy ducks (drakes) and a good boy-girl ratio (about 1 to 6), then also no problem. The problem occurs when the drakes don’t have enough girls, or worse yet, when you have only drakes. Here’s why.

Most male birds don’t have typical male genitalia. In fact, of the 10,000 species of birds, only 3% of the males have a p***s. That’s right, ducks are in that 3%, along with geese, swans, ostriches, emus, and several others that you probably wouldn’t recognize. Drakes are highly s*xual, and when they don’t have enough duck girlfriends, they turn their attentions to chickens.

A drake’s p***s can expand to 8 inches, and it’s a corkscrew shape. Since roosters have no p***s, hens aren’t built for duck love. After repeated duck-chicken s*x, a couple of things can happen. One, the drake can rupture the hen’s large intestine or oviduct, causing sepsis and death. Or more likely, the hen’s intestine or oviduct will be pulled out, and because it is irritated and inflamed, it will not return inside her. This will also result in death, although slower.

We had a young drake that was dropped off last summer. He was a sweet drake and we even gave him a name. Even though he had plenty of girl ducks to choose from, his passions were for the chickens. Before we figured out what was happening, two hens were dead and a third had to be put down. We could not break his desire for chickens, so our only option was to dispatch him.

Our advice: Keep your duck boy-girl ratio in check, and they can coexist with chickens.

You might be thinking, if a rooster has no p***s, how do chickens (and the 97% of other bird species) make babies? Both males and females only have one hole in back, called a cloaca, or vent. Hens p**p, lay eggs, and mate with the same hole. When they mate, males and females touch cloacae (yes, that’s a real word), and fluid transfer occurs. For a chicken, the entire act is 5 seconds of positioning, and a half second of actual s*x. The hen can retain s***m for up to a month, meaning she can easily lay an entire clutch of fertilized eggs from one mating.

So there’s half of the
“Birds and Bees” lesson.
Bee s*x isn’t nearly as exciting.
Spoiler alert:
The boy bee dies!

30/07/2023

My 1st Test Batch In For This Year's Hatching,
Blue Copper Marans Cockerel x
Black Copper Marans Pullets,
1 x Bloom Egg
And A Couple Of Olive Eggers & Cream Legbars
22 In. 🤞🤞🤞

🐓🐓 🐔🐔🐔
🐣🐣🐣🐣🐣 💘

24/07/2023

Brown Eggs, Blue Eggs, and Green Eggs

When you crack a brown egg open, the inside of the shell will be white. When you crack a blue egg open, the inside of the shell will be blue. The color or "dye" is applied by the hen depending on the breed. Brown egg layers apply the brown color fairly late in the egg laying process and, therefore, it doesn't pe*****te the shell. It takes 26 hours in total to form an egg. A brown egg layer will apply the color in the last 4 to 6 hours of the laying process. Blue egg layers apply the color early in the process, therefore, the blue pigment pe*****tes to the inside of the shell. Green egg layers are a result of a blue egg laying breed and a brown egg laying breed, thus, creating a green exterior shell that is blue inside.

Some believe that brown, green, blue, or pink eggs are healthier than white chicken eggs. The truth is, there is no nutritional difference between colorful chicken eggs and white chicken eggs.

Fascinating Stuff 😁

19/07/2023

About the egg bloom !

It's not a magic antibacterial seal on the egg, you can safely wash eggs to clean a major dirt/dropping buildup using water at
41C - 44C.

Wet droppings damage the bloom anyway, washing dirty eggs makes them much safer than leaving the droppings on and trusting the "bloom" to prevent issues (hint: it won't).

You must not supply dirty eggs for eating.

Eggshell is porous
air and water can move through it - in both directions,
and some things can hitch a ride on those molecules, such as bacteria, to a certain extent, the egg bloom can prevent salmonella bacteria from moving into the egg.

However the bloom only reduces oxygen exchange through the eggshell, it doesn’t stop it entirely.

That’s why eggs go rotten, and why the float test works - air and bacteria can pass through the eggshell.
Older eggs float because there's more air inside the shell, which has got there through the shell bloom or not.

Bloom is not antibacterial, if there’s droppings left on the egg and those droppings have the salmonella bacteria in them, the bloom can't prevent the bacteria potentially getting into the egg through tiny cracks or damage.

So retaining the bloom wherever possible is good, yes. But a really grubby egg has already damaged the bloom so you can often see the mark on the shell when you remove the droppings, so for health purposes, it's best to wash the egg and then use before any eggs with naturally clean shells and intact blooms.
Don't supply dirty eggs for eating,
if you're supplying eggs for human consumption, the law requires - clean uncracked eggs.

If the egg has come out of the cloaca perfectly clean and the bloom is intact, you can safely supply (sell) the egg as is.

If the egg is a little dusty or has some dried droppings, they can be brushed off and safely supplied.

If the egg is quite dirty and you need it to complete a dozen, -WASH IT.

Use water between 41C and 44C, and dry immediately.

Yes, this reduces the shelf life somewhat, but a grubby egg is a salmonella risk and it's illegal to be supplied for eating purposes.

Don't hatch dirty eggs in an incubator
Incubators heat eggs up to body temperature - about 37C.

Bad bacteria adore body temperature, protein-rich food sources.

The risk of bacteria getting into the egg is very present.

Broody hens rub eggs under the body, removing the bloom and replacing it with her own body oils.

Any egg that started grubby gets cleaned and oiled within a couple of days.

But incubators don't do this, so the bacteria can sit there for 21 days. Not so good.

So the bloom is good, but it's not magic.
Removing it to remove a major dirt dropping situation will reduce egg life a bit, but assure you of that egg's safety during that shortened life.

If you use cold water, colder than the egg, it causes the air in the egg to contract, sucking in whatever is outside the egg - which since you are washing it, will be the bacteria-laden wash water.

If you wash it with water that is warmer than the egg, the air inside expands, pushing out.
It will again contract when the egg cools off, but at that point the egg will be clean so there won’t be bacteria for it to suck in.

16/07/2023

Such a simple byproduct but is so very useful, I put a small coal in my fish pond to keep out green slime 🐟 in my chook nests and the floor of the roost to keep away fleas and mites 🐓also on the floor of the horse stables and the milking bale to keep away ticks🐄🐴and most important in the garden soil 💐

16/07/2023

Just Some Info For Rainbow Egg Breeders.

16/07/2023

😂🤣😆😆😁

8 Pieces chicken helmet pet safety helmet funny parrot helmet chicken bird hat headwear small pet hard hat pet helmet costumes accessories for chicken bird parakeet cockatiels Helpful protector: The pet safety helmet helps small pets to avoid direct sunshine and rain, reduce the risk of serious ...

05/07/2023

😂😍😂

The Most Talented Chickens! - The Bock and Roll Band Auditions to "Footloose"

03/07/2023

And so we are starting,
ever so slowly, 😀😍

02/07/2023

This Is The Beginning Of Our New Chooks & Eggs Page, As A Hobby We Began With A Couple Of Couple Chooks Just To Have Fresh Eggs, Giving Way From The Ordinary Old Isa Browns & Hylines.

And Quickly Escalating To Breeding Rare Breeds Heritage Chooks, 😁

Black Copper Marans
Blue Copper Marans
Araucana
Cream Legbar
& Crossing A Few To Start Our Olive Eggers etc,
After Loosing 2/3rds Of Our Flocks, Late Last Year, Due To The Flooding Bringing Out So Many Foxes 😥😓 We Are Slowly Building Our Flocks Back Up Again,

Barb and Ruby,