Darren U. Talissen asked:


As most of you know, at this point in time, gamefowl are among the best cared for animals out there. This does not only apply in the livestock world, or even the pet world for that matter. I strongly believe that most gamefowl receive quality care rivaling that of animal performers. The farmer’s wife who has a small flock of chickens typically will feed her birds some scratch and table scraps, and maybe a few laying pellets. The elderly man down the road that keeps a single rooster because he misses hearing the roosters crow from his childhood probably feeds his pet rooster some corn, maybe some leftover oatmeal and toast from breakfast and whatever else he decides to throw in there. Your commercial poultry farmers feed their poultry a mixture of grains that are ground up into meal and while the nutrition level is acceptable, the gizzard is not doing what it was intended to do because the food is already ground.

On the other side of the coin, gamefowl enthusiasts take painstaking efforts to custom mix a properly balanced ration. Sparing no expense we add corn, oats, pellets, barley and a hodgepodge of other grains that makes a feed mixture so complex that most of us can’t remember it, we have to carry a piece of paper with the recipe. In addition to this we also give our fowl supplements on a regular basis, whether it be a grape, a few mealworms, a peck or two of tuna, or maybe some crushed boiled egg.

A large percentage of gamefowl enthusiasts are members of the National Poultry Improvement Plan. Voluntarily submitting our fowl to tests so that we can insure that the most dreaded of diseases are not present on our farms. Many of us learn to do post mortem examinations on our fowl so that we can try to get to the bottom of it, should one pass for unexplained reasons. We treat for worms and mites diligently, and clean our pens regularly. In the hottest of weather we water multiple times per day, and in the coldest of weather we brave the weather several times a day to go outside and check our fowl.

Now, in spite of this, we have been blamed for the spread of every disease known to fowl, including Avian Influenza. Presently, if one of us were to find such a disease in our flock, it would be dealt with quickly, if not through NPIP testing, then at least through the fact that we so diligently inspect our flock daily. If we find a problem with our fowl that we don’t recognize, we quickly contact a fellow poultry man, a veterinarian, the local extension office, or maybe post on a forum.

If it were illegal to own gamefowl, all that would change. We could not participate in NPIP for obvious reasons. We could not speak with the county agent about poultry concerns, or a veterinarian for that matter. The gamefowl forums would be less used because so many would part with their fowl, and others would be afraid to admit that they owned gamefowl. In short, we would be forced to take our fowl “underground”.

We would have access to a smaller array of health care needs, such as dietary supplements and antibiotics. Gamecock specific feeds would no longer be marketed. All of this due to the diminished business due to the lower gamefowl population, and the secrecy involved.

The end result would be that gamefowl would no longer be cared for as well as they are today. This, of course, would lead to the current propaganda regarding the spreading of disease, to some extent, becoming truth.

While I don’t agree with the views of animal rights organizations regarding the illegalization of cockfighting, I can at least understand where their beliefs come from. Much of it comes from misconceptions about the sport, and while I know that these are misconceptions, to the uneducated person, they can easily sound like truth. So their lobby for the illegalization is understood by me, but not supported. They, however, don’t plan to stop there.

They have also lobbied for it to be illegal to ship gamefowl across state lines for the purpose of fighting. Again, I can understand this plan, even if I disagree with it. What I cannot understand is why some people believe that shipping any chicken is probable cause to accuse the sending and receiving parties of violating this law. If this is allowed to continue, almost all poultry breeders cease to ship fowl, in fear of trumped up charges. If this happens then the potential income of breeders drops significantly, as does his financial ability to offer his fowl the best care available. Again, I am not only referring to gamefowl here, but all fowl in general.

Of course if these organizations have their way, it will not stop at harassment of people shipping poultry, but will also include interrogation of anyone found transporting poultry in their vehicle. I am waiting for the day that I hear of a roadblock at some state line where police are checking vehicles for contraband chickens.

Another of the goals is to make it illegal to own gamefowl. Maybe they aren’t aware that gamefowl produce meat and eggs just like all other chickens. They may not lay as many eggs per year as a leghorn, but their egg production is certainly adequate. While their feed to meat conversion does not rival that of cornish rock crosses, they do produce a good quality meat. In my opinion, even if cockfighting were abolished throughout the world, gamefowl would still be the ideal breed to own. Meat and egg production are adequate, game hens make the best mothers and are quite broody, they do well on free range because they are athletic enough to escape many predators, they require less feed because they are such efficient foragers, and they are among the most beautiful of breeds known to man.

Animal rights groups want to hear none of this, though. They want gamefowl to be extinct. How can these groups say they are fighting for animal rights, if they are trying to deny gamefowl the right to exist? Of course they deny this goal, but if it is illegal to own them, they cannot survive. Even if they were all released into the wild, the majority of males would kill each other within the first few hours, additionally any man finding a wild flock of gamefowl on his land would hastily kill them, in fear of finding himself behind bars for having them on his land. This would lead to extinction.

On another note, it is their goal to have all dogs and cats spayed or neutered. I would love to hear their explanation of how they expect the species to NOT become extinct if all of them are spayed or neutered. I am guessing that their response would be that not all of them should be spayed or neutered, just most of them, and that if a certain number were left intact, they would be able to provide enough pets for everyone.

So, who will decide which people are to leave their animals intact and corner the market on pets? These people undoubtedly would be able to demand a higher price for their animals, since the supply is so low. This would lead to the breeders becoming wealthy, and only the wealthy being able to afford a pet (translated as people who can afford to make financial contributions to these animal rights group’s). Should it ever be made law that in order to keep a pet intact, a person must have some sort of license to breed dogs or cats, who would decide who gets the licenses and becomes wealthy? I am sure HSUS would be up to the challenge. But what would be the qualifications for the license to breed pets (translated as license to become wealthy)? Would HSUS members and donors be near the top of the list? Would such a situation be in violation of the Sherman Anti-Trust Act? I think it would.

What it boils down to is the almighty dollar. They lobbied for money to make cockfighting illegal but the donations didn’t come in fast enough. Their next step was to write a cockfighting fact sheet that is about as close to the truth as the story about Goldilocks and the three bears, but it pulled heart strings and donations started to flow better. Eventually they saw that they had almost attained their goals of making cockfighting illegal in every state, thus slowing the donations coming from the anti-cockfighting people, so they needed a new plan. This was to lobby for banning of interstate transport of gamecocks for fighting purposes, now that has been accomplished, so they post a $5,000 reward for information leading to the conviction of a cockfighter, just posting this reward, in the minds of some, validates that cockfighting still runs rampant and more donations are needed to fund the rewards. I wonder what their next ploy will be?

I will close this post here, while I know I have only touched the tip of the iceberg on this subject, there is far too much to cover in a single post. We must learn to cooperate, each of us must contribute to our cause, and we must mount a strong offense if we want to stop the hijacking of our culture and our heritage. I offer my plea to each and every one of you to help in this fight for the rights of our noble fowl.

These are my opinions and I am Darren U. Talissen

If you keep 2 chickens around to have fresh eggs each day, then raising chickens isn’t a big thing for you. In contrast to the chickens in cartoons of old, nests don’t come complete with tiny tubes in which the eggs roll down to a waiting basket, prepared for you to pick up and cart away. Correct handling and maintaining of both your chickens and their eggs can make all of the difference, not only in the quantity of eggs that are produced, but also the numbers of chicks that successfully hatch twenty-one days after they’re laid. Raising chickens means setting up chicken homes correctly, maintaining clean and sterile conditions for producing uniform sized eggs, and knowing what to do after you gather and transfer the fertilized eggs into the incubator. Sure, you might let the chickens do it, but in today’s fast-paced, competitive world, you want to be before the game, and take the right steps to get maximum potency in your egg and chick production. Everyone knows that to do you need satisfied, healthy chickens, with perfect hatching conditions. There’s more to hatching an egg than just placing it into an incubator and leaving it till it hatches.

There’s also a ton more to maintaining your chicken hatchery and chicken houses than just feeding the birds. Cares must be taken for the security of the chicks as well as the hens and roosters. Chicken to rooster proportions must be precisely right. You also have to know what to do and the way to care for your chicks after they are born.

As an example, chicks have to be introduced to a perch when they reach 6 weeks of age. Checking your chickens for avian diseases, and knowing the procedures to help stop them, is also urgent. Then, if unlucky circumstances arise, and you notice that you have some sick birds, you want to know what to do to stop further infestation. Too small action too late could result in enormous losses, and no business can bear that.

Matthew Smith asked:


Chick sexing is a method of determining the sex of either chicks or other hatchlings. Big commercial hatcheries perform chick sexing to put the chicks on the right track from the beginning, depending on the purpose for which they are being raised. For example, when raising for eggs, males are unwanted. For meat purposes, both male and female chicks are needed to raise hybrid birds. After chick sexing is done, many hatcheries kill the birds of the unwanted sex immediately to avoid future expenses.

The people who can actually determine the sex of birds are highly trained professionals, known as chick sexers or chicken sexers.

There are two methods by which chicks are sexed; feather sexing and vent sexing. Feather sexing is based on the difference in feather characteristics and vent sexing is based on identifying the sexual organs visually.

Feather sexing is based on the characteristics of the feathers that differ from male to female. It is easy to learn, but the appearance of the feathers is usually determined by some genetic traits present in the chick strain. Many chicken strains do not have the characteristics of feather sexing and feathering of both sexes appear the same to the normal person and only trained chick sexers can distinguish.

Vent sexing is also known as venting and is a difficult process because the sexual organs of the birds are located within the body and not easily distinguishable. The copulatory organs of chickens can be determined as a male or female by the shape, and venting involves squeezing the feces out of the chick, to open up the rectum, which allows the chick sexer to see if the bird has a small bump. This small bump indicates that it is a male. Some females also have very small bumps.

When compared to both the methods of chick sexing above, the easier and more convenient method, and usually one preferred by small poultry owners, is to wait until the chicks start showing other characteristics of their sex. In male chicks, the wattles and combs will grow larger than that of the females and the head will also be a different shape and masculine looking. The female will be smaller than the male and is more feminine looking. In some breeds, the feathers of each sex also develop a distinctive color pattern that makes it easier to identify the sex. This type of sexing based on other characteristics can be done at about 4-6 weeks of age.

Chick sexing is a complicated process and can only be done by trained professionals who undergo a lengthy training. This is the reason; small flock owners may not be able to afford engaging the services of these chick sexers.

Raising Chickens for the initial time can be menacing. I asked, Do you sell bantams? Yes, the person answered. bantam parenthood is a much of an excursion as kid rearing, only with extra feces per lb of body weight. However, I have been reading a lot on chickens matters. ( Yes, my coolness just turned over in its grave).

So if I am correct and I am quite certain it’s not that I am, here is how chicken rearin’ goes. Go to your local feed store and purchase $10.00 worth of chicks and $50 worth of food and supplies. Remember the water dispensers. Buying the metal ones, never plastic is always suggested. I can’t say I have begun to see a metal one.

Next, place the chicks somewhere sheltered, like a bedroom closet. Toss in some highly flammable straw or wood slices and fast dangle a glowing heat lamp just above them. For the following many weeks feed them 3 lbs of food a day and remove 4 lbs of sh*t each day from the closet. Despite all logic the birds get bigger. As the adult feathers grow in be sure to clip one of their wings. That is one per bird, not only one wing total. This is a bad thing. Clipping can be accomplished by tossing your scissors and your body into the heaping mound of chicks, poop and straw. Grab a wiggling screeching bird from the bile pile. Restrain it with one hand. Clip off half of the wings outer ten feathers with your third hand. As the birds grow adjust the heat light temperature down by one degree every day. That is not my point. You start at a hundred degrees for hatchlings then continue down by one degree a day until your bedroom is at least 3 degrees cooler than the spring snowstorm outside your window. When you have frozen your ear to your semi-cannibalistic down pillow and the chicks have grown their adult feathers, they can be moved outside to the coop. I guess the first closet rearing stage to have taken five years. Before the move, experience the delight in Wing Clipping another time. Feather clipping never works the initial time.

No-one knows why.

Naturally, if you are like me, by this time you might be inclined to pack them each a lunch and leave a heap of Greyhound tickets by the open coop gate. Per habitat construction : Hen homes and chicken coops are a competitive art form. There are a myriad of web sites showing off architectural designs from Chicken Castles to Bird Bordellos. Always modern, I went with a tacky fashionable motif for my coop. The nesting boxes are an eclectic mix of scouse borrowed milk crates joined to the wall by anything in arms reach. As for the coop itself, there is a gift for tight chicken wire, which eludes me. Quite explicitly, my first attempt at a coop looks like Dr.

Naturally the roost is in generally OVER the nesting boxes, so whatever you do, don’t use those punctured plastic milk crates.

For young birds maintain a heat light in the hen house. Then on cooler nights an animal with a brain the dimensions of a bulimic toe nail clipping will make the conscious call to forgo your nest boxes, duck the instinctual roost and hop into a tanning bed. And eventually there’s the feed regime. I asked many pros and read up on feeding too. Make efforts to give your chickens, starter formula, mash, growth formula, start & grow, brood formula, grit, no grit, scraps, no scraps, goat placenta, nothing suggested online, tetramyaicn, no antibiotics, medicated starter, non-medicated starter and never switch in-between. I will not be Queen of the Coop yet, but I am working on it. Though I am still a zoologist and I know Birds 101. Most people, particularly folk who haven’t owned chickens, will endorse you on chickens. Each will insist you would like a rooster for a while to do his manly needs, then you can slip him in the pot. As nice as this idea is, your pot is a new issue. Roosters are only wished to make successful eggs. Successful eggs are just peachy if raising chicks was such a joy the first time you want to copy the whole freakin’ process. In addition there’s always the risk of breaking a fertilized egg open and finding a 50 p.c formed chick fetus hitting your hot pan.

Yum! Years of care will follow. To keep it straight in your mind think about this : you are going about your life. All of a sudden large balls of calcium start stacking up in your stomach. That is down to the Antarctica, not the Arctic! No, they do not loaf around with Polar Bears who live in the Arctic. No, it’s not that I am sorry you look stupid to all those folks you told penguin tales to.

Yes, some penguin species even reside on the Galapagos Islands at the equator ( Cold weather would kill them ), not wafting around on icebergs - and not in the Arctic! Yes, I realize my eggs are not all in one basket. Delusional, close-minded people who insist you would like a rooster to fertilize your penguin eggs so polar bears will not loose their food supply drove me crazy!

Of all of the ornamental chicken breeds, the Silkie Bantam is an example of the cutest and beloved, and

certainly one of the most entertaining to observe. Can’t you tell why? They are the lap kitty of the chicken world, complete with hair-like plumage and an incredibly sweet temperament. We have heard it announced that Silkies are like a “flock” of kittens… But unlike your other pets, your chickens can really provide your breakfast! Silkies came from the Far East, where they are still kept ( and eaten ) today.

They have black skin and bones and five toes rather than the standard four.

In addition, Silkie hens make superb brooders and mas, and are even known to take on baby ducks if given the chance! 

Class: Feather-legged Bantam
Type: Bantam
Rarity: Common
Size: Bantam
Purpose: Ornamental
Recognized Varieties: Bearded & Non-Bearded: Black, White, Partridge, Buff, Gray, Blue

Sebrights are a particularly special kind of bantam chicken in that the males and females have precisely the same feathering. It took Sir John Sebright over thirty years to develop this mark.

In nearly every other sort of chicken, the showy feathering of males is simple to distinguish from the females. Sebrights are preferred among chickens fans for their sweet nature and gorgeous plumage.

Class: All Other Breeds
Purpose: Ornamental
Rarity: Common
Type: Bantam
Size: Bantam
Recognized Varieties: Silver, Golden

Serama is a reproduce of chicken originating from Malaysia. Brought by Steven Bourland and Tito Marquetti. They are the lightest bantam chicken breed in the world, with hens being in the range of 175-500 grams ( 6-17 oz. ) and roosters 225-500 grams ( 7-17 oz ). The Serama are identified by their vertical tail feathers, near-vertical wings, full breast, and short legs. The Serama is a comparatively new reproduce to the U. S. , being lately imported from Malaysia in two thousand. As of now, they remain a uncompleted work, and need much more work before they’ll be accepted by the Yank Chickens organisation or the Yank Bantam organisation. The biggest difference between a Serama and a regular chicken is both their little size and friendly personality.

Serama are minute, so they have to be kept safe from predators, and to also be kept toasty. If they are authorized outside access, they’ll be give an acceptable place to use for shelter. This could be a coop, a shed, or a partition of a building.

The interior should be warm, dry and free from bugs. Wood slices make good bedding, as the birds don’t consume them, they are simple to scrub, and they last ages. The Serama is a particularly charming tiny bird, and prospers on human interaction. Serama can eat regular chicken feed of twenty p.c. protein, but they have a tendency to do better on crumbles or mash than on pellets.

They may also have free choice grit and oyster shell. Some suitable treats include grapes, bread, corn, and meal worms. Most Serama breeders haven’t begun to reproduce them true, meaning 2 things. Over all Serama can produce any of over 2500 documented color varieties, with single pairs presumably manufacturing offspring much different from themselves in color and pattern. Breeding a black bird to a black bird does not mean one will get black offspring. Serama breeders also have not reached the point at which they are breeding them true to size, suggesting that if one takes a Class A bird and breeds it to another Class A bird, one could get birds that are either Class An or B. The Serama makes a gorgeous pet and companion, both inside and out of doors. Their tiny size needs tiny space and a pair or threesome can nicely be caged in a twenty-four in. by eighteen inch enclosure. Seramas should be let out of their cages when they are safe from predators like dogs, moggy and birds of prey.

Seramas sometimes raise a racket when an unfamiliar animal or object is sighted and are safe all alone so long as there are folks inside reach who can recognize when they are under threat.

They make great companions whilst gardening and enjoying the mornings / evenings on the porch. Their regal appearance and natural beauty adds to the splendor of any garden or home. They’re cheap to rear as each Serama consumes only about one pound of feed each month. Male Seramas must be caged individually as young as feasible to stop disfigurement and confidence loss from fights. Adult roosters must not ever be penned together as the dominant rooster may kill or disfigure the weaker rooster. Show quality females should, similarly, be individually penned. Show coaching should begin as quickly as the confidence of Serama chicks starts to appear. This will be seen in the way the chick carries itself and the bright red in the face and brush. Chicks also have a tendency to chirp incessantly when their confidence is high. Coaching is carried out by catching and holding the chick with both hands and putting the chick on a table. It’s likely that new trainee will squat and refuse to move for the 1st few times. Leave the trainee so long as required till they stand and move around. After they stand, stroking gently on the throat beneath the wattles of the chick inspires the chick to pose with its head held regally high and vertical to the ground. When they get use to the routines, posing with a regal position becomes natural for most Seramas.