Ameraucana Forum
The Official Ameraucana Forum => Housing, Health & Hatching => Topic started by: Janie Vila on January 05, 2017, 01:50:04 PM
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Early in the morning hours, i lost my favorite bird. He protected his hens, was never aggressive to people or young birds. He was my first silver Ameracauna cock. Bred by Joshua Pennington. I feel like i have failed in a sense. I chose to let them free range, to get out of their muddy nasty pen.
My dog, who likes to escape the very generous quarter of an acre yard she has, decided to catch him and pull his feathers.
I am so very sad. All i have left of him is a silver/ wheaten pullet.
RIP Fu Manchu.
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More evidence of one of the axioms of exhibition poultry. If you lose a bird, it will always be one you value the highest. Sorry!
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Janie, I am so sorry for your loss. He was a handsome fellow (saw his pic on FB recently)
Hope you get to enjoy his daughter for a long time
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Thank you. I hope his daughter lives long and produces well for me. I have some eggs in the incubators from his pen but not from my silver girls.
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I'm so sorry, he was a beautiful boy. Well said, Mike. It always seems to be the special ones... :'(
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Sorry for your loss, unfortunate you had to learn a valuable lesson the hard way. I too am guilty of learning lessons the hard way. I now keep several cockerels and have a number of pens as predator proof as I can get them. More importantly I never let my breeding stock free range any longer. Around me my biggest threat seems to come from the sky.
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I know Russ. I kick my self a lot. Silvers are hard to source here locally.
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I've done it, too, Janie. The bird in my profile picture was one of the best birds I ever raised (you can't tell it from that picture, but sadly, I couldn't find a better one). She was never beaten by an Ameraucana, and landed on championship row a couple of times. She also had nice egg color, hard to come by in buffs. During a period of construction/reconstruction that was taking longer than expected due to weather, everyone was confined to one muddy, over crowded pen. Torrential rains made it impossible to keep it dry, much less clean, I worried about the birds getting sick, so I made the fateful decision to turn them out. The next morning I found her headless body. She'd been killed by a hawk. The only bird it touched, of course. I was sick, and still am. Not only was she a great bird but I won't deny I'd grown attached to her - I'd had her 5 years.
Try not to beat yourself up too much, as they say, hindsight's 20/20...
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That really exceptional bird comes along very rarely. When I have had one in the past, I always mated it with the best possible bird available and raised as many chicks as I could. Then I saved the best opposite-gender offspring and mated it back to the exceptional bird. Again, raising as many as I could. That preserves the genetics, as few birds have a productive life of more than a few years.
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I was very fortunate to be able to do just that with her. And to have so many seasons - she layed until the end. Janie, I hope you will be able to find a good silver male to pair his daughter with.
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Mike, that is the thing. The only pure silver hens i have took me forever to get, and they are very greedy with their eggs. It is very frustrating. Even at about 2 yeats old these hens should be more productive. I have gotten maybe 5 eggs from them. I am tired of them free loading. I hope i am able to obtain a really nice cock to put my wheaten silver split pullet with that is out of him.
You live and you learn. I will not allow them out of the penanymore.