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Howdy! First, let me say that you sound like a person after my own heart. I’m a big advocate for a return to rustic breeds of livestock that can be mostly self-sufficient on a patch of normal farmland (with “normal” being defined as a typical patch of green land of a few acres). I have no...

It happened to me today. This morning in one of my chick brooders I found a sickly chick. Lethargic and emaciated in spite of having plenty of food. I cull for any sign of sickness, so I rung its neck, nearly pulling its head off in the process. I threw it out in the bushes for my dogs to eat...

Yeah, I figure that bald patch is just him being an oriental. I am curious to see how it translates to the Liege crosses. I am wondering if they’ll take on the full feathers of the Liege. I have speculated that the tight, patchy, feathering of orientals may be an inbred trait that quickly goes...

I thought that bald patch on his crop would fill in, but it never did.

Sherman has lots of bare spots where his red skin shows. But I figured that’s just typical oriental feather patterns.

Do you mean just slow to convert fuzz to feathers? Or patchy feathering with bare skin?

This has been my experience. Sometimes a hawk that tries and fails will move on. Probably because its more efficient to look for something easier than to keep trying something that is healthy and constantly being hard to catch. But I’ve also see the same hawk try daily, sometimes multiple...

No, nothing unusual. They’re keeping their fuzz longer. But the Crackers always feather out faster than other chickens.

Was Sherman his broodmate?

This last pic is an improved Cracker and one of the Sherman terrorfowl of the same age/brood, showing the size difference:

I sometimes lose black chickens to hawks. Sometimes I lose natural, partridge-colored, chickens to hawks. And I have several hens of those colors and others that seem to be hawk-proof. Some of my best free-rangers have been white. I aggressively cull against white, but that’s only because I find...

I believe people correctly observe that various black chicken breeds survive well on free range. They’re just drawing the wrong conclusion as to why. Many black chickens have within their background rustic breeds that are simply good survivors.

I’m not trying to be argumentative, I just think its a worth-while debate. So please don’t take offense to my disagreement. As to this point I would respectfully disagree for two reasons. First, it seems like many predators that are still around today are generally good at quickly adapting to...

I think you’re probably hitting right on why the myth seems to be true sometimes. Various black breeds may simply be alert and agile due to their genetics, and their black color may link to those other genes that encourage wildness, or may simply be present by coincidence. I am also aware of an...

I think its a myth. Birds of prey have great eyesight. They ought to be abble to tell the difference between a crow and a black chicken by appearance over great distance. The science therefore proves the hypothesis to be very suspect. Someone once had a good experience free ranging black...

I checked the incubator’s thermostat against another thermometer. Seems correct. It was 99.5°F vs 99.2°F when I stopped the test. Had I let it continue it may have equalized more. The other chicks are doing fine. I may be able to get some pics tomorrow.

The batch of 16 only produced 8. Of the 8 that didn’t make it, 2 were duds I misidentified during candling, 1 pipped and I had to help out (it died a few day later), and the remaining 5 were fully developed and never pipped. The 8 that hatched normally seem fine. 32 are due Monday.

Same two birds in post #85. Batch of 8 bitties the hen took to the ground today.

I would distinguish between Herbert drawing from history and human culture, and Lucas just mostly drawing from Herbert. Its long been known the battle scenes from Star Wars are shot by shot recreations of WWII war footage and documentaries Lucas was familiar with, with the real-world weapons...

Are you familiar with Dune? I don’t want to post spoilers, and thus the reason I didn’t elaborate about the list. But yes, Star Wars is a straight copy of Dune. Not in plot but in characters, concepts, and imagery. For example, the Jedi order and the Jedi mind trick are straight ripoffs of a...