Plank
-
Content Count
95 -
Joined
-
Last visited
Content Type
Profiles
Forums
Gallery
Articles
Gun Dealer's and Fieldsports Shop's
Reloading Room
Blogs
Calendar
Store
Classifieds
Everything posted by Plank
-
Bad luck with those traps. What do you feed the call birds on? I've used tinned cat food which was okay but attracted flies. I guess roadkill etc. would have the same problem?
-
Hello Blackdug, Modern hybrids lack resistance and so they are generally vaccinated. Most traditional breeds are, or should be, bred for resistance. With a few exceptions of particular traditional breeds that are prone to a particular disease and so are commonly vaccinated against that. What kind of chickens are they?
-
Hello, Individual cocks will suit themselves, there are no hard and fast rules. If anything it easier to identify ones that are likely to be noisy rather than quiet, these would include most breeds of game and Long Crows (bred for crowing comps). It used to be possible to ask a vet to operate on the vocal cords of a cock to silence it, but the procedure can no-longer be carried out without a medical reason. You are right to identify light as a trigger for crowing. Other triggers include loud noises, especially the noise of others crowing. It is possible to reducing crowing during anti-
-
Be sure to give that ego constant maintenance. Who knows what might happen if you stopped inflating it?
-
Thanks for the reply. It's nice to know what works for you. I see that the Defra code of practice for snares recommends boiling in washing powder for an hour to remove the manufacturer's scents. Then boiling in tea leaves and oak chips for another hour to stain. I guess that might also work for other traps. But without a vat it's impractical for cage traps. Or wooden traps. http://archive.defra.gov.uk/wildlife-pets/wildlife/management/documents/snares-cop.pdf From what I've read on the net in America they spray cage traps to 'kill' the scent. The commonest recipes for home made scent k
-
No problem. I forgot to say, but if you do decide to go down the route of cutting the feathers then a stout pair of scissors are the tool for the job.
-
Normally I like bumble bees, but they've set up a nest in a brick built lean-to next to my mother's kitchen door. Now during every day there's several buzzing around the kitchen and a few more exploring the house. It's only a matter of time until she sits on one or something and gets hurt. I'm confidant they are red tailed bumble bees, not the red-shanked ones. What is the best way of dealing with them?
-
be brave man -- what have you got to lose next time try a few -- then you`ll know if it works or not first hand ..like i said the best way to learn -- trial n error .. Overloading a hen can lead to none of the eggs hatching, it's not always the same egg going cold.
-
No. http://tinyurl.com/3l5z63m Their ability to fly can be restricted on a temporary basis by cutting through their primary and secondary feathers on one wing just beyond the tips of their covert feathers (so the cut feathers are left a little longer). Don't do this until after their feathers are fully grown though as when they are growing feathers are supplied with blood and the duck may bleed. They look a little prettier if you leave two primary feathers at the tip of the wing whole. Any thing other than a 'natural' wing, so clipped or pinioned, will knock off show points. Altho
-
Let me start by saying that I don't have any experience of that particular cross and I'm not aware of any statistics for that cross. However I would expect a batt x Rhode Island Red bantam cross to lay more eggs than a pure bred Rhode Island Red bantam. Large pure RIRs were developed as a egg laying utility strain. They feature in the ancestry of commercial hybrids (usually along with some Leghorn). There are separate cock and hen lines that produce the parents of egg laying hybrids. If you were to rescue a cock of the same generation as the laying hens and breed them the off-spring won't
-
Hello all, I'm relatively new to trapping, I've had some success with a Larson but that is all. I've got lots of questions, but first of all I'd like your thoughts on scents. Should I wear gloves or is it better to rub your hands with earth? Should I wash new traps with soap and water to remove factory or oil smells? What about wooden traps I try to make? Is it a good idea to 'kill' the smell on a set trap by spraying it with a bleach and baking soda mix? How long do traps left outside take to weather? Thanks in advance.
-
I'd wish I'd read the above more carefully before I replied to your later post, you already know about feeding milk. Your obviously knowledgeable but it might be worth making clear to people new to chickens that like feeding vegetable waste from the kitchen like peelings (not garden waste), feeding meat scraps is technically illegal, something to bear in mind if anybody official is likely to be about. Although according to an episode of last weeks 'Farming today' on R4 their are signs the EU regs might be relaxed. Also while cooking the meat is a very good idea there is some evidence tha
-
Hello all, I hope this is the right forum for this, I'm new. I'd be grateful for recommendations of field sport memoirs. More for the atmospheric tales than technical details. Like old time poacher/gamekeeper stories. Thanks.
-
Also, Hybrid chickens have been bred to convert food into eggs not meat so compared to pure breeds they will be very thin. The chickens may have had eggs inside them nearly ready to lay when you were catching them if these eggs were broken when you pounced there egg making bits could be completely http://www.thehuntinglife.com/forums/public/style_emoticons/default/censored.gif although if that happened they would usually look ill with a few days. Of course you've had a couple of whole eggs so at least one must be working. Although as I said I expect the stress of the move has stopped t
-
I'm glad wetting the pellets works for you but different makes of pellet use different 'binders'. By binder I mean the non-nutritious 'stuff' that holds the powder together in a pellet shape. For some, usually the cheaper, pellets this binder can react with water, not in a dangerous way but to change the flavour of the pellet which can reduce consumption of the pellet by the chicken. If the food is available in a powdered form then it can be mixed with liquid as a mash without a reaction as their is no binder. In the good old days cheap layers mash was mixed with a little surplus milk when ch
-
Hello, I agree with the folks who say that chickens go off-lay when moved. It takes time to make an egg and they will lay any eggs that started production before they were move after they were moved. To tell if an individual chicken is laying you can feel it's pelvis. The bones around the gap the egg comes through will be wider for a chicken that is 'in-lay' than for one that is 'off-lay'.
-
Commercial hybrids are capable of laying the most, but that doesn't mean they will! How much of it's laying potential a chicken fulfills depends on how it's kept. An important factor is the amount of light they have and how bright that light is. By law they should have a period of darkness so you can't just leave the lights on all the time. Typically people keeping chickens on a small scale who manipulate the light set a timer to switch artificial light on early in the morning then off again about mid-morning when their is natural light, the chickens then can roost normally as dusk falls. For
-
Good advice. Some folks go for silkie x larger breed hens as sitters. They (Usually) keep the broodiness but can cover more eggs.
-
Thats a very good method most of the time, to see the feather tips clearly some people get a square of white card and hold it behind the feathers. Unfortunately it is not so good for breeds with unusual feathers like Silkies.
-
Hello, I've moved into the smallholding I used to patrol with an air rifle as a teenager. Then I had plenty of time to stalk the pests around the place. Now I'll need to learn new ways to fit in pest control with all the other jobs that need doing. Plank
