Author Archives: frankie

About frankie

Maiden name is Farmer so I guess I am getting back to my roots. I love raising chickens and especially when the baby chicks are hatched out. I am a senior citizen and live with my husband in Florida. We live a quiet, peaceful life on our two acres with our one dog ( two dogs died past year and we miss them) and various amounts of chickens. I have had up to 120 chickens but now at about 45. That seems to be a good number for us. Feed and medicines can be expensive and you certainly don't get enough money for the eggs to pay for the feed. Selling the chickens and chicks helps, too. It is not a business for me though....they are my pets. I have three terrific grown children that I am very proud of and two wonderful granddaughters. With my children living in DC, Texas and North Carolina, we will be doing a lot of traveling now that my husband has retired from 40 years with civil service. If you are new to raising chickens, I hope I can tell you amusing stories as well as give you information that will make your experience with chickens fun. I sometimes feel like raising chickens is like raising kids. Some days it is so rewarding and other days, it is a darn lot of work. I am very much interested in making life simple and trying to be self-sufficient as much as I can. I enjoy grocery shopping and getting the best prices as well as stocking up on food and household items. I also love to go to the thrift stores. I have bought numerous pairs of name brand jeans for $3. It just makes sense to be thrifty and since we have the time to look around and find bargains, that is what we chose to do. It also gives us something to do. We planted our first garden this year. Though it is small (squash, watermelons, sweet potatoes and tomatoes), it is a start. My daughter bought me a dehydrator for Mother's Day and we are looking into buying an upright freezer. Those things were needed before we plant a bigger garden. Hope you enjoy my blog....God bless.

Too Many Roosters and Sexing Chicks

The only bad part about hatching out chicks is you have a 50/50 chance of winding up with roosters.  Buying chickens at age 6 months, guarantees you end up with a hen.   Or you can buy day- old chicks from a hatchery but you often have to buy at least 25.

A Craigslist contact I made sells her day old chicks straight run.  That means she doesn’t sex them for you.  You pay the money and may end up with all roosters.   It doesn’t matter to some people because they eat the roosters but I just can’t do that.  It is a messy,  smelly job and my husband says he doesn’t want to do it either.

So I have been researching how to sex the chicks.  You have to do it within a couple hours of their hatching.   You can go on U-tube and see videos of feather sexing and vent sexing.

The vent sexing is gross.  You squeeze the chicks butt to remove any poop in the area and then you can see inside the vent to look for the bump that indicates it is a male.  It says the vent with be shiny and have a bump.  The female vent is dull and no bump.  I would be afraid I would squeeze the poor little chick and hurt it.

The other option is feather sexing.  The primary wing feathers are the ones that are farther away from the body.  If the feathers look like toothpicks (pin feathers) then it is a male.  If the primary feathers have fluffy feathers on the ends of the toothpick-looking feathers, then it is a female.  Again, look at the U-tube videos for more details.

I guess there are a lot of things you can learn from specific breeds, too.  Barred Rock roosters have a yellow spot on their head and have lighter colored legs.  The hens of this breed have darker bodies and darker legs.  They have a white spot on their head, too.  I guess it is just a lighter color spot.

There is just so much information on the web.  Can you imagine if we actually had to go to the library and look this stuff up or buy books?

White Silkie Rooster Added to Flock

I purchased a white Silkie hen with some Partridge Silkies recently.  I want more white Silkies so I knew I needed a white Silkie rooster.

I went on Craigslist and this nice lady named Patty was looking for a home for her free white Silkie rooster.  It was just meant to be.  She had only listed her post 15 minutes before I read it.  After talking, she knew I would be a good match for her rooster.

I offered to give her a hen instead of just taking her rooster free.  I could not find a hen I was willing to give up so I just gave her 10 bucks instead.

She had a nice setup.  They had built nice houses for their chickens and a great goat house, too.  I got some good ideas from that visit.  Plus, they gave us a bunch of oranges off their tree.

As I said before, it is great going to other people’s chicken yards and getting ideas for my own building projects.  People are so nice, too and willing to share their experiences and knowledge of chickens.  I shared with Patty about hatching out chicks and offered to lend her one of my incubators.

I brought my white rooster home and put him in with the Silkies and the black rooster jumped him and fought for awhile.  I just couldn’t stand it so I put him in with five small Silkies and added the white Silkie hen to keep him company.  The yards are side-by- side so they can get use to seeing each other and hopefully that will help them adjust.   I hate that peeking order that they go through.  That is one reason why I always try to add more than one chicken at a time.   I also try to sell at least two chickens.   If there are two or more chickens added, it seems to confuse the other chickens and they don’t bother the new ones as much.  They gradually do the peeking order thing but they don’t do it all at one time.

I am hoping that I will be posting some news about white Silkie chicks in the Spring.   I have to keep the white hen with only the white rooster for at least a month to guarantee HIS chicks will be hatched.   This means I will be making more chicken houses and putting up more fences to divide my flock.   I am constantly drawing diagrams.  Oh well, at least I am not at the bingo hall wasting money.  lol  By the way, I am more of a slot machine grandma instead of a bingo grandma.