Recent content by NatJ

Probably not dangerous. You could do the same thing with leaves of grass, dandelion, clover, and various other chicken-safe plants. For things with big or long leaves, either cut them into short pieces scissors so they cannot tangle in the chicks' crops, or give the chicks a whole plant with...

Probably not, because of this:

Unfortunately I don't know anything about the genetics involved here, or about that specific condition. Unless someone more knowledgeable chimes in, that is what I would do too.

Genetically, I do not see any way that can work. There are only so many sex-linked genes in chickens, and none of them can be used to make white males with black-and-white females. So you might get some chicks with each coloring, but that will not tell you which ones are males and which ones...

It usually works best if all the eggs in one incubator hatch at the same time. If you have two incubators, it can work well to put in eggs once a week. Eggs of different ages can all incubate together in one of the incubators. Then once each week, move the due-to-hatch eggs into the second...

Unfortunately, I am not good at recognizing most aspects of good or poor quality in a chicken.

It looks like that is meant to be mixed into the birds' drinking water. For that, you would mix it at the recommended dosage, and provide that as the only source of water for her to drink. For a single hen, mixing 1/4 teaspoon in 1 quart of water, then using that to refill her water dish each...

I wasn't sure what kind of terms you were asking about, so I was trying to cover some terms (like breed, variety, bantam) that I had not yet seen in any responses, in case the one you needed might be one of them.

Are the offspring fertile? As in, can those offspring produce babies of their own? I think horses and donkeys have always been considered separate species, ever since the concept of species was around at all. And it has been known for thousands of years that donkey x horse produces a mule...

Again, some things will be more applicable than others, but in most cases broiler chicken studies will be more useful than cattle or pig studies. Since there are usually no studies on chickens kept in typical backyard flocks, the broiler studies provide more information than the "none" and "a...

Here is a link to a post I made a few months ago, for someone else with a similar request: https://www.backyardchickens.com/threads/bbs-breeding-and-dilute-white-splash.1608685/page-7#post-27444190 That post includes some discussion of how to use a chicken genetics calculator, but I don't think...

I would see what your smallest measuring spoon is, and try mixing an amount that uses that. 1 gallon uses 1 teaspoon 1/2 gallon uses 1/2 teaspoon 1/4 gallon = 1 quart, uses 1/4 teaspoon 1/8 gallon = 1 pint = 2 cups, uses 1/8 teaspoon 1/16 gallon = 1 cup, uses 1/16 teaspoon In most sets of...

I think it would depend on what information you are trying to find. If you want to know what foods will kill a chicken, and what foods will cause major harm to a chicken, and what foods appear safe for a chicken, I think the broiler studies should be just fine. They will be much more useful...

Bantam means a small chicken. Standard can mean a big chicken (not a bantam.) Standard can also mean several other things, as other posters have said. Silkie is the name of a breed. The Silkie breed has several color varieties: White, Black, Buff, Partridge, and some others. The Silkie breed...

For that exact set of genes, I don't know of any breed. But if you add Co/Co (Columbian), you have any of the blacktailed red chickens: Rhode Island Red, New Hampshire, Production Red.