rachels.haven's Journal

[rachels.haven]

Different male

Female

Another female

Head spot/shading male

Female

And chicks vary, so there will be the occasional nonconformer, but that's usually the way it goes. Usually.

 

[Bruce]

Interesting, I guess I got a non conformer. Here are my 2 BR girls at 1 week

As you can see, the one on the right has a huge white spot on her head, the one on the left has almost no white. They do both have black on their legs and toes though. No idea which is Arcadia and which is Vienna but they have both been laying for months so I'm 99% sure they are girls

 

[rachels.haven]

I bet the legs are more reliable. On day one all my chicks spots looked the same. Later the males seemed to lighten, but it could just be I could tell them apart then, but the legs seemed to stay consistent. Where'd they come from? Also, I'm suspicious if you took chicks from one line and mixed them in with chicks from another line or hatchery you'd wind up with a bunch of mostly unsexable chicks because they need to be compared to chicks of the same line. It's kind of all about comparison, and that's not the best kind of autosexing. But it sort of "works"...most of the time. I'll take a slightly greater than 50%change of sexing them correctly myself over not knowing.

Well, today Angel did not want to jump on the milk stand for her grain. It was too high this late in pregnancy for her, so she only got what she could reach from the ground. Then she did not want to go into the doe stall where I let her go during the day after spending the night in the kidding stall with free choice, no competition, alfalfa pellets. Then she didn't want me to leave her in the doe stall and cried and cried her mournful "maa" for about 20 minutes after I left (she can see me through the windows of the house and KNOWS I'm there). Then around lunch time I decided to see if the does wanted to go out to "roam". The two young does took off like shots, expressed disdain for the mud, were led through the mud where they quickly ate a few mouthfuls of dry leaves off dry ground, then hoofed it to the barn where they refused to come out...probably because the ground was wet or they were overwhelmed. Angel walked. She can not go fast. I'm thinking of letting her stay in the kidding stall if she's inclined on her own-but that's 6 days! She's not happy to be in with the lunatics though. I may try to get her to hold off a few more days, then let her have some peace and quiet.

 

[Bruce]

My original 12 came from Ideal in 2012, still have 1 BA, 1 Faverolles, 1 Ancona and 1 EE. All the rest came from Meyer. I have no idea about their breeding or if they care if their BRs are autosexing, they have vent sexers so maybe all the non straight run birds go by them. I do believe that their BA line is muddled. The 2 I got in 2015 do not have slate legs and pink soles, they are black with yellow soles. My bet is someone sometime decided they needed to get some size in their line and threw in some Black Jersey Giants.

 

[rachels.haven]

d'oh! I wonder if your BR's had a little muddling in their genes too. Hatcheries usually just vent sex unless they specifically breed for sex-linkage, so they may not care. And hybrid vigor is good, hatcheries and keepers like that, and technically birds are pure bred native on appearance, but it can cause little off things to pop up. I wish they'd just cross strains within the breed. Lots of hatcheries keep australorps, and breeders too. Go figure, I guess though.

Mine may have muttage in them too for all I know. All I know for sure is that they have the textbook sex-linked characteristics and it's working for now.

 

[Bruce]

Who knows, some time I may be down your way and can see your critters Though mostly I have my twice a year trip to Northampton and that isn't very close to you.

 

[rachels.haven]

Fun idea. Maybe by then if it ever happens the ground will have thawed and I'll have pens up. Maybe we can have you over for dinner or lunch or something similar. We're not really close to much of anything, though, just as a heads up. Not exactly rural, but kind of out there probably due to slow roads.

 

[rachels.haven]

It's Sunday and today Angel has refused to leave the kidding stall for a walk. Eventually, I just left the stall door open and walked out of the barn and very, very slowly she walked out, watched my husband and I talking for about 10 minutes then lumbered back to her stall. Her wide load has stared to settle downward in her body too, so she's starting to look a little more hollow. She is willing to stand, stretch, yawn, wait for you to bring her food, and slowly take a few steps to the other side of the stall to the hay, pellets, and water. I'm sure she has a ways to go, but I'm starting to wonder if she is going to stay pregnant until Thursday. I did manage to find her ligaments today-soft and gummy feeling, but definitely there. I couldn't find them at all earlier. Now they're clearer. Her rump seems to have changed angles as well. I'm sure it will get more pronounced as the week wears on for her.

A neighbor came over today to try to drum up some babysitting for her daughter and bring a treat and say hi. They seem nice. They also let us know that each of them and their horses also got Lyme disease when they moved here and they advised us to get our yard and into our woods sprayed. And that they already found a tick on them from their yard today. Yay. I guess we'll be spraying too. I really don't need Lyme disease on top of my other health issue and my kids DEFINITELY don't need it (DH either, can't forget him).

Got a family history insight on my health issue recently, but don't want to go into great detail here. I'll just say that my grandmother (you know, the one that doesn't like my mother and her kids, I'm sure everyone has one of those) and three of her daughters have it, and my sister just got the diagnosis and it runs in families. And it's an autoimmune thing. And it's hard to catch. And it's often misdiagnosed and the symptoms are almost every single one of my symptoms to a T. If it is what I have, and they can catch it this time, I might be able to live pain and damage free for the rest of my life. My rheumatologist only called what I had non-steroidal rheumatoid arthritis because she couldn't figure out what it was and put me on meds "to see if it would control it" and it would take a few months for the drugs to have an effect (we specifically asked her about this, she was dodgy). I'm a little disappointed in her. Telling her it didn't help for months was disregarded, and eventually I told her I refused to take it anymore and nothing changed except the meds side effects going away. Then we moved. Yee hah! Obviously I'm praying and asking family and friends for extra prayers and thoughts. I feel like catching this thing before it seriously alters your life and body takes quite a bit of luck and/or blessings. My sister's doing better though. Maybe it will be okay for me too. I really hope so, at least.

BUT that's enough of that (way too much in fact). We're just waiting for baby goats here!

 

[Bruce]

You are close to Boston. Must be some good RA doctors around. Much as I'm sure you don't want whatever this is, at least you can attack it better than guess work, trial and error.

DW has RA, has had it pushing 20 years. She was on Enbrel a year after it was approved, switched to Humira about a year ago. I expect without those she would have been in a wheelchair long ago. How is DH's medical insurance?

 

[rachels.haven]

It's "good" insurance. I need to get tested for this family thing first before going on with the RA thing. I'd also rather be absolutely miserable and immobile before going back and risking going on the hydroxychloroquine or something similar again, plus the symptoms I had didn't quite match up with RA, I didn't feel settled on the matter, and the meds didn't change anything after 9 months (if memory serves). Still painful, but now with drug side effects. This other thing may result in an appointment with an endocrinologist. If I have it, all my symptoms will be explained, will be treated, and RA will officially be a misdiagnosis.
I'm living on ibuprofen right now and having trouble with the other symptoms getting worse, so solving this mystery soon would be enough of a relief to make me cry. In the meantime the chickens and goats will get fed, and the kids will be clean and fed and the one put on the bus, and the house will still be cleaned, even if I have to stay on acetaminophen and ibuprofen to be able to move.