Silkies On The Shore

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Silkies On The Shore

NPIP and AI clean! Breeding quality splash and paint silkies. Located on the Eastern Shore MD!

28/12/2024

Welp. My baby Bronco has been upgraded. Guess I can haul even more chickens now! 😂 Gives me an excuse to bring more birds to any shows I do next year 🤣

27/12/2024

The best sight ever!!! Getting off work, opening the barn door and seeing rows of pens! 😍 Bill has been busting the b***y to finish the barn. He only has a few more pens to go. I know he’s ready to be done with the barn building so he can work on his hot rods 😂😂

27/12/2024

😍😍 flashback to this b***yful girl! I don’t give my splashes enough attention 😂 but I feel like it’s my weakest color I breed. Hopefully next year I can work on it more. I don’t hatch from them often. 🤣

26/12/2024

She was looking at me with such concern 😂🤣

26/12/2024

Eeeek my first generation of salmons hatched 2 days ago and I forgot to share! 🥰

25/12/2024

Soon enough it’ll be New Years!! What are your chicken goals for next year?!!

My big goal is always working on paints! But I also hope to have a chocolate pen ready to go. I’ll also be working on bettering my chocolate mottled! What about you?!?

25/12/2024

Mottled frizzled satin pullet available, she is laying. Will consider 🚢 options after the crazy holiday madness dies down. Local pickup Salisbury MD is an option too, she is non-bearded which is why I’m parting. 5 toes! 125💲

25/12/2024

Happy Holidays!!

24/12/2024

How many of you guys have off work on the holidays?! This lady doesn’t 😂 A lot of people who work in pharmaceuticals don’t get days off! I’m fortunate I don’t have to be stuck at work all day just for a little. We have to be here every holiday. So remember us next time you vaccinate a dog or chicken 😂😂 you’re welcome 😆 I rather be in bed with my dogs.

Don’t forget to thank first responders too! 🇺🇸

22/12/2024

Just a quick video on how I deworm my birds for those who don’t know how. It was 17 degrees out so excuse me 😂

22/12/2024

Local peeps!! Anyone local to Salisbury MD interested in bantam salmon chicks? They will be uns*xed, but you’ll be able to s*x them after a few weeks. I rather not toss my salmon eggs out and I’m not keeping all the chicks! Chicks would be available the week of January 13th. 15$ each. My breeders all have come from various show breeder lines. These are bantam, not large fowl so they will not get large.

21/12/2024

Let’s chat!!! I want to have a discussion about vermin. This is a 0 judgement zone! Let’s be honest. This is a long and informative post for those struggling!

Specifically, I want to discuss mice and rats. If you have chickens that live outside, I guarantee you have mice 😂 even if you don’t see any clues that they are around. Let’s hope you aren’t in the group of people that have suffered from rats 🐀 Some of us have been there, and I’d like to take you on a journey of how I successfully eliminated rats from my coop area. I’ll also give tips on how to prevent rodents. You do not want rodents romping around all over - they carry mites and diseases.

Backstory - I’ve had chickens since about 2018. Winter of 2024, I noticed a giant HOLE the size of a baseball along the base of my one coop. Keep in mind, my OLD coop had cinder blocks going around the entire perimeter, and wire buried underneath. I ignored it and was oblivious to what it was. Until I started noticing a few more. I was walking in my coop and almost lost an ankle because a tunnel collapsed from under me. I then realized this is war, and that I was dealing with rats. I’ve never dealt with them before, I keep things clean, and I felt extremely embarrassed. I was worried that this could have been prevented. Long story short they did active construction on an abandoned building by our house, then the rats fled and they ventured into my coop.

So. I’ve been going full on warrior mode now since about March of 2024. I have the situation completely resolved. It was NOT EASY. I do not recommend ignoring the issue if you see any larger holes or droppings in your coop area.

So how did I remedy the issue? First off, trial and error. But I’m going to hopefully save at least one person who is reading this 🤣

1. Study. By study I mean you can’t just go out there and set a few traps, and pray the problem is gone. Rats are intelligent. Every morning before work, I’d go outside at 4 am and would look for signs of vermin. Active tunnel entrances have loose dirt spread out around it. It is very easy to see if you get up before or during sunrise and check. I’d make note of any active entrances. If you have one or two rats - you have more. I hate to be the bearer of bad news 😂

2. Invest in traps. Do not waste your damn money on rat glue traps - I’m here to tell you they don’t work. At least not in a typical coop setup. Rats run away with them half stuck to their body. And once it rains and crud blows on them from the wind, it’s just a waste of money. I invested in literally about 60 TomCat black snap traps from Amazon. I also purchased 2 Ratinators. Yes, Ratinators are expensive but they work well. I’m telling you, investing in good traps is what you need to do. This later can help you prevent the issue by keeping them out.

3. Invest in trail cameras. I know this sounds dumb but this also helps determine the patterns of the rodents and what they are doing. I didn’t buy anything too fancy but it’s honestly a must. You have to study them and their habits.

4. This one sucks but you have to remove what’s keeping the rodents there. In other words - food and water. For the longest time I never put my food up at night. I found out that my birds weren’t eating the sunflower seeds in the Kalmbach feed. I found empty eaten sunflower shells from rodents eating the seeds. You MUST pick up the food and waterers at night, and store them in a metal trash can.

5. Place the traps. Okay so, this is hard if you have them inside an area where chickens are. You need to make sacrifices lol. One of two ways - you can either place snap traps inside your coop at night fall, close to active tunnels. Then remove them before sunrise so the dumb chickens don’t step on them lol. I know, it’s a pain in the buttocks but I did this for months straight 🤣 you get used to it. Or you can lock the chickens up in different areas and kinda move them around so you can set the traps. This depends on your coop setup and room. The Ratinator won’t harm the chickens so I used that in heavily trafficked bird areas.

6. Bait the traps with various bait. I used peanut butter, chocolate, just about anything. You must rotate bait, they get used to the bait and learn to avoid traps once they see a fellow family member get slaughtered.

7. Repeat the cycle. Study behavior, move traps, and keep going. Don’t give up even if you didn’t catch anything for days. Once the rats are deprived of the food source, they resort to cannibalism. I’d catch rats on traps and I’d wake up to them being eaten off the trap. They kill each other! Which helps dwindle the population. After MONTHS of this, eventually you’ll have a serious decline in activity. To hopefully no activity which can be verified by checking for new tunnels and using the trail cameras.

Now onto prevention!!!

1. Possibly consider a coop redesign if it’s in your budget. Fortunately my husband built me the new barn that is fully concreted on the ground, and I line traps and cameras inside and outside even though I haven’t had an issue in the barn. My issue was with our old coop design which is traditional to what most people have. Not everyone has a hubby that builds a barn on a concrete pad with raised cinder blocks 😂 so you must keep out traps. Do NOT think you can just go back to how life was before the vermin 😂 you want to keep the issue at bay. So keep traps and still be observant.

2. Keep out traps. Which I went over already.

3. Keep the food source removed. It’s okay if you get lazy for a few days but I’m telling you to put up the food. It sucks in the winter going outside and picking up food but it’s worth it. I only let my birds eat from the time I get off work until sunset. This also helps keep feed off the ground because they don’t have access to a feeder all day. Don’t keep eggs in a coop overnight.

4. Invest in bucket traps too. I forget to mention these. These are good at keeping mice at bay. You get a 5 gallon bucket and order off amazon a little bucket trap and fill it with seeds or something.

5. Don’t invest in poison. I was so worried I’d be struggling with this issue for so long that I’d have to invest in poison. You can do it naturally if you aren’t lazy.

6. Consider a dog lol 🤣 my one pittie has such a high prey drive that she’d dig up rat holes. I’d let her out at night and she’d track rats and kill them. Kinda a more fun method if you have a smart dog 😂😂

7. Do thorough coop checks, check along the edges of coops, etc.

8. Remember you aren’t alone - this isn’t something many people like admitting they’ve dealt with. But I’m here to tell you I’ve dealt with it and have completely resolved my issue with perseverance. Even if it included losing sleep to check on things outside. It is well worth it once you have the peace of mind that everything is back to how it should be. Just don’t give up!

20/12/2024

I love seeing a young pullet that looks this wonderful already. She’ll definitely be showing this spring! I’ve put a lot of work into my paints. They are nowhere near where I want them to be though! It’s continuous improvement throughout this entire journey.

Paints are such a tough color. I try to cull pretty hard. You can hatch so many eggs and sometimes end up with more blacks and whites than paints 🤣 it sucks. I only have 3 or 4 paint pullets from my hatching over the spring. I hatched more boys this year than girls. Way more blacks too, but I keep my nice black from paints. They come in handy!!!

18/12/2024

😍😍 throwback to this handsome hunk!

18/12/2024

Incase anyone was curious on the DNA test of my new rescue, Jade! Her momma was a Merle Bulldog. I had no idea who the dad was! But this explains her trying to already herd the chickens and nipping at heels 😂😂

16/12/2024

Helloooo gorgeous!

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Videos

Who needs Christmas presents when I have these guys?!? Older juveniles pen, all under a year old and will be breeding in the spring if they make the next cut 🥰 #silkie #silkiesofinstagram #chicken #chickensofinstagram #cute #silkiebreeder #silkiechicken

Deworm birds with me!

Just a quick video on how I deworm my birds for those who don’t know how. It was 17 degrees out so excuse me 😂

Nutrena Harvest Blend vs Kalmbach Henhouse Reserve! Long story short if you don’t feel like watching the video : the feed nutrition wise doesn’t appear to be drastically different. Ingredient wise it’s also practically the same. I looked at the nutrition labels and they were interchangeable 😂 the Nutrena is 1% higher in protein so that’s nice I guess lol 🤷🏻‍♀️ The color is noticeably different. But as I pointed out in the video, I’m pretty sure it’s because of the extract that Kalmbach uses for color that Nutrena doesn’t. Price wise, this harvest blend is incredibly more cost effective for me. I know prices vary throughout the states. But I paid 21$ for this 40lb bag (the place that just bought out my feed store sells this for 16.99$ PER BAG) 🤩 Like what? I pay 35.99$ for a 50lb bag of Kalmbach (yes I know it’s cheaper on chewy but I hate cardboard and unboxing it lol). So long term I’ll be saving a lot by using this feed. I love Kalmbach, don’t get me wrong. But I almost feel like this is a Walmart brand vs name brand scenario right now lol. I’ll be testing it to see how it goes - because of course it’s up to my birds in the end. But they don’t seem to mind it at all. They were eating everything except the protein pellets that they usually pick around anyways 😂 some things don’t change. I have a few pens that won’t touch that pellet for some reason. I do not thing it’s a bad thing to try out with your flock if you’re looking for a more practical long term alternative. If my opinion on this feed changes, I’ll make sure to give an update. 🙂

Paint cockerel available. He can 🚢 I’ll post a few photos in comments. He’s 45💲, flying and box are separate.

Available paint pullet to 🚢!!

She flew the coop!!! Available paint pullet to 🚢!!!! 150💲for bird, 20💲for box plus your shipping. Please expect shipping to be roughly 60-100💲….temps must be 80 and below