Poultry Central - The New Zealand Poultry & Chicken Forum

We've a mature (read: huge) macadamia tree in one of our chook paddocks. Pros: macadamias for us, shade for chooks. Cons: rats love macadamias, we needed to buy a really good nut cracker to open them in one piece (ended up buying three, discovering that two were not up to the job, but love the third...

Hi from Whangarei. Good to see another chicken-addict in the making. Similar to what Eae says, when reading about chicken keeping the list of things to worry about seems enormous! My reality is that most of the things I read about as being possible to happen have just not happened or happen rarely e...

Happy Christmas all.

Two lots of xmas day chicks here. One planned in the incubator - have been hatching out all day much to the delight of family. The other unplanned - broody sitting in the garden somewhere brought her brood out mid afternoon.

I usually catch them all, then hold up each bird & wait for them to speak - QUACK = girl, squeak = boy I usually catch one and then it goes completely silent. Annoying little things. But, yes, quack sexing is really obvious once you know what you're listening for. People that buy ducks off me t...

I've got my ducklings playing in a few spare meat dishes (from the oven) - hopefully it won't mentally scar them! For some reason this brought this image to mind. http://www.boatdesign.net/forums/attachments/all-things-boats-and-boating/59501d1312610790-safety-yachts-bathroom-chicken-reality-tv.jpg

does it do 'burst' type photos - where it takes multiple photos in one go - I would think that would be good - I think my camera does something like that, but the photos are too small to bother printing from (more like thumbnails) and mine has the endearing habit of, push the button, wait a second,...

It's a nice camera - yes - DSLR with a basic zoom lens on. The secret though is to take 200 photos...

Because one set of photos is never enough, and a paint tray provides a great photo shoot opportunity... All pile in! http://chez.geek.nz/Ducks/AllPileIn.jpg Too cute not to include: http://chez.geek.nz/Ducks/TooCuteToOmit.jpg Water everywhere! http://chez.geek.nz/Ducks/WaterEverywhere.jpg Who invite...

Although most of them are untested mothers so not sure starting them on ducks is a good plan - they'll probably be very confused on hatch day! I did a first-timer on ducks. Hatched half under her and half in the incubator, then grafted the incubator lot onto her as well. She spent the next six week...

A quick weigh of the eggs in our kitchen: 83-90g for the duck, 72-74g for the hylines.

As a rough idea, my incubator takes 18 size 6-7 hens eggs, but only 12 appleyard eggs. So somewhere between 4 and 6 appleyard eggs, depending on how large your chicken eggs usually are. Our ducks definitely have the wrong brick : wing ratio for flying. They can glide down a slope, and if pressured w...

No idea about online resources, but the Silver Appleyards get a big tick from me. Our girls lay 5-6 large white eggs per week. The ducklings grow up fast and big (good if you're into eating your own excess drakes). And of course they're pretty to look at too.

I've had success grafting ducklings onto a duck (wish I could say the same about grafting ducklings onto Super Broody hen, but that's another story). I penned my duck mum up in a broody hen run, which made sure the ducklings could find her and didn't have to spend all day chasing her around a paddock.

Thank you for coming back with a progress update. Good to hear that she's doing well. If one hen has had scaly leg mite, there' s a good chance that others have been exposed too. It may be prudent to treat the lot and hopefully avoid further cases - vaseline for a few days should be fine. I should p...

its actually a Crested gigantic duckling! +1 Yeah, it's a gosling. Most likely a girl. Removed from negligent parents - well, mum continued sitting for 7 days after this thing hatched. Dad was not very attentive or protective, and another of our females was having a go at the gosling, so it's been ...