Bear with Me

I'm trying to switch urls and blogger seems more like booger at the moment.  I promise all the links will work again once I'm done (or at least most of them :)

My pinterest widget is gone! This might take some doing to get fixed so in the meanwhile you'll have to go to http://pinterest.com/sparkycrows to see all the latest!

Also, don't forget I'm stashing the references I've found at http://scribd.com/sparkycrows

Have a wonderful day!  -Sparky

One of the first pictures I took with a camera phone, this is Marissa in a chimnea with her first of many broods.
 May 2010 

Gorgeous Colors

We have had an amazingly colorful fall that just seems to go on and on......

The Pirate Egg Projects are on track.  The challenge now is sorting out which pullet is laying which egg and then making decisions as to which birds to carry forward into the 2014 breeding programs.

Chocolate anyone? We've had a bit of confusion over how chocolate genes (both dun and sex-linked!) have infiltrated different project lineages and what to do about it.  I can't say I'm hating the look but I am having to do some test hatching to figure out what the heck we've actually got going on.

I've decided this is actually Zerya's first egg!

Zorie lays long thin blue eggs;
 ZERYA lays the olive eggs.

Zelda's eggs look just like her mother Orchid's;
alas...not shiny but definitely white pores on a pastel mint shell.

The rumpless girls have identical blue eggs.
Love the shine!

   

These are just some of my favorite pictures from this fall.  There are many more on the pinterest account.

Birdie It's HOT Tonight

The heat is on!  

The ground has mostly dried up inside the coops and we're down to just a handful of broody hens in nest boxes.  The rest of them are out teaching their chicks to forage and keeping them near water.  

We're two weeks into the heat and it was about this time last year our well went dry....and stayed dry until the middle of August.  Right in the middle of that parched dryness we had 14 back-to-back days of heat indexes over 100 humid degree temperature, barely dipping out of the 90s at night.  Yeah, it was a downright nasty evil hell for our feathered friends.

All things considered this year is a cake walk (so far.....) Over the last year we've strengthened our housing infrastructure to better buffer the heat. We now systematically conserve and store water.  This is good and has meant being able to manage the bumper crop of chicks, poults, and keets.

Several of the projects have had excellent break throughs. The Aikikos have finally produced several dark skinned, rumpless, pea combed GIRLS and we hatched our first barred chocolate rock!

Also, I've been tinkering with a genetics app to make it easier to document and track field observations.  Yeah, I'm geeky but at least I aspire to someday be organized.  I'm looking into how to put it together so other people can use it too.

I'll be selling eggs here and there - it's best to just contact me directly to find out what's available.  sparkycrows@gmail.com

WELCOME

New nest box loft

We're in the spring-to-summer transition period right now.  Most of my flocks are resting right now while we get ourselves organized for summer. Our January chicks are being integrated into their originating flocks but it'll be a few more months before I anticipate having any new layers.

Broody fever is rampant and we're deep in the throes of spring cleaning. I've been sharing stories at "The Barnless Barnyard".  Enjoy!

SparkyCrows

A limited supply of purebred eggs are still for sale through BeakHouse.com

Chicks, turkey poults, ducklings, and keets of varying ages with more hatching weekly.

Also, this is an excellent time to hit us up for adult birds as we are rotating our breeding stock. Selling our birds has never been our forte. It's really hard to say goodbye to birds you've raised and cared for the same family of birds for several generations.  However, we recognize that realistically we only have space for so many animals and that many people out there would be absolutely thrilled to have these birds.

Call me directly to visit about what we have available. 785-550-3558