A chick’s baby feathers are delicate and vulnerable while the bird grows a complete set of adult plumage. Until then, unsightly feather loss in baby chicks may be caused by rubbing or picking. Sequential Molting When a chick reaches the age of three and four weeks, its body feathers grow and fill out. By the […]
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If you would wonder what the word poultry means, you might think first to look in the American Poultry Association’s Standard of Perfection. At the front of the book is a glossary covering 8-pages of terms from “A.O.C.” to “yearling,” but no “poultry.” So, what is poultry? Definitions of Poultry Even though the Standard doesn’t […]
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Whether or not using more than one incubator makes sense depends on how much hatching you plan to do and how many different chicken breeds or poultry species you wish to hatch. Most incubators for home use are designed for batch hatching. Sometimes, though, you might not want to wait until the eggs hatch before […]
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Most chicken keepers know that a hen will lay eggs whether or not a rooster is present. But a rooster is needed in order to get fertile eggs that will hatch. Less well known is that eggs can hatch without a rooster. Virgin Birth Virgin birth, or parthenogenesis, is the process whereby an unfertilized egg […]
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A longtail chicken is one of several breeds selectively bred for growing particularly long tail feathers. The roosters have two specialized genes that allow their tails to grow longer than those of other breeds. One is a nonmolting gene that causes some of their tail feathers to not molt. The other gene produces rapid tail-feather […]
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Turkey poults and guinea keets are difficult to sex, and therefore are typically sold as straight run. The males and females of both species, within the same breed or variety, look pretty much alike until they are nearly mature. Sexing Turkeys As turkey poults grow, you can take an educated guess as to which gender […]
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Egg yolks get their golden yellow color from the same plant pigments that result in the skin color of yellow-skin breeds. These pigments are also responsible for beak and bill color in chickens and ducks, and for their brightly colored feathers. The pigments are of two main types— carotene and xanthophyll. Carotene is orange to […]
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Four traditional methods are used to tell male and female chicks apart. Which method is most appropriate for any specific batch of chicks depends on their breed and variety, their age, and the skill of the observer. Vent Sexing Vent sexing, also called cloacal sexing, is a method of determining a hatchling’s gender by examining […]
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Autosex chicks have differing down colors at hatch, by which the males may be readily distinguished from the females. Autosex differs from sex-link in being a straightbred (purebred) characteristic, rather than the result of a hybrid cross between two separate breeds. Here is how to tell the males from the females in 22 autosex breeds […]
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If a hen and her newly hatched chicks are left to wander around the poultry yard, the babies may fall prey to house cats, hawks, and other predators. And baby chicks can slip through most yard fences that are properly built to confine mature poultry. Chicks wandering around a yard can get chilled in damp […]
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