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Starting Member
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Last Login: 6/18/2009 7:57:03 PM
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| I am very new in raising chickens and guineas...since April 2009. Learning from others is a great resource. However, what I have personally learned to bond with your chickens and fowl .... be patient. I feel if you want to be successful in keeping them alive and thriving, they are no different than having a human child. We purchased 24 chicks mid April and I have 23 still. I treat them not as some farm animal. I treat them as if each one of them were a child. Then a chicken stork dropped 10 more chickens overnight. Real story. our best friend who has not professed yet, in the middle of the night gave us 10 additional chickens. It was a hoot. I love them all. Each of them has a personality. Now my new guinea keets are a different story. I feel we bought tooooo many at first ..8. Then our best friend the chicken stork, asked if we could get him also 8. We lost two keets within the first 3 weeks. Chicken stork came over and got his 8. Left us with 7. These keets would not have anything to do with us. All the reading says they are so social. These keets were not. What am I doing wrong. Well, Dwight, was too aggressive in picking them up. So, in my reading, fowl are more acceptable at night. We moved them to a pen. Over whelming to them after 4 weeks. Still babies. Finally, I decided to treat them as if they were a human baby. It worked! No different. I wait until around 9:30 p where they are perching. I come in slowing with a low light. I start singing to them in a lullaby tone. They are perched all together in a row. I put my entire two arms around them giving them healing energy as I am singing low to them. It is working. They are accepting me. Then I put my hair against their beaks and rub back and forth. They love it. Then the real test. I put my nose up against each of their beaks one by one rubbing them back and forth. They are now cooing. Several days ago they would not have anything to with me. I was feeling I made a big mistake in purchasing guineas. This is not going to work. Finally, I realized. It is not them...it is us....we have to come to their safe level. This is proven in any specie in life. I cannot wait until tomorrow night when I continue my experiment in love. Shel
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Junior Member
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Last Login: 6/30/2009 4:08:45 AM
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My birds and I just watch Dr Phil or Opera...l eat Ice cream and cry 
I'm just kidding
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Senior Member
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Last Login: 9/21/2009 3:50:17 PM
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| <sigh> Okay, all my life I've been called gullible (and I am--I can never tell when someone is jerking my weinie) but Mother Hen Shel, I hope your post is on the level. I don't treat my animals exactly like children (well, some of the goats I do) but I think it would be cool for someone to work so hard at bonding with their birds. If you don't already belong, you should consider joining the house chickens list at YahooGroups (you needn't keep chickens in your house but subscribers truly love their poultry; the list is at http://pets.groups.yahoo.com/group/housechickens). Re the guineas, despite my early intervention, we've never had a tame one yet. They're cool birds and very durable (our free-ranging bachelor guineas are five years old)--but wild. Sue
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Junior Member
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Last Login: 6/30/2009 4:08:45 AM
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| Check out the backyard poultry show on radiosandysprings.com
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Senior Member
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I don't think this is a big issue but I should point out that sometimes creating a bond with livestock or farm animals is not in their best interest. I am not just saying it for the emotional "if I meet it, I can't eat it" doctrine, but because livestock need to be wary of humans.
I recently had a sheep that had a pretty bad case of foot rot. It is mended now, but it took a few days of isolation, hand feeding (versus pasture) and injections of LA-200 to get her foot rot under control. During that time the sheep bonded with me.
Now whenever I am out doing something in the pasture, she comes over. It is not even breaking from the flock because she is kind of black-balled from the flock. That makes her vulnerable to predidation so it literally could kill her. I saw a duck one time that would leave the pond and walk up to my Grandfather's house if he was not grained in the morning. It was cute until the fox got him one day.
An LGD is the same way. You should not spend time with them or they lose their focus. Petting rams is another act you want to be wary of. There are numerous examples of livestock really needing to be just that...livestock and not pets.
I am not chastising anyone, just showing a different take on the role farmers and livestock need to have in some instances.
Eat lamb...because 50,000 coyotes CAN'T be wrong!
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Senior Member
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Last Login: 9/21/2009 3:50:17 PM
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| Our LGD was socialized from the get-go but always within the goat pen when she was little. Now that she's an adult she can be in the yard and pastures with our sheep and goats but she protects us too. I like that. :o) I'm the opposite with my sheep. I want them to come up to me so I can body score them without penning them or can check a gimpy foot without a hoo-ha. We do interact with our rams but by scratching their chins (or in the case of Rumbler, his chest) and never touching their polls. When we sent Woolson to Iowa, his new owner contacted me saying, "Why does he run up with his nose in the air?!" We never turn our backs on our rams and we don't make pets out of them but again, I want to be able to feel them all over without cornering them to do it. If I couldn't trust a ram outside of rut (we cut them a bit of slack when their hormones are raging, though none of my present three rams has ever butted, even during rut), he'd become a wether, fast. I think the difference is that these animals are for my enjoyment. They're nice to look at but for my needs, it's a whole lot nicer to be able to interact with them too. Sue BTW, Woolson, the Iowa ram (a registered black Miniature/Classic Cheviot), is the only ram I've ever known that I would trust implicitly, 100%. He is a pussycat. He's 5 years old and never in his life put a hoof down wrong.
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Junior Member
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Last Login: 6/30/2009 4:08:45 AM
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Had a bull I could love on and hug.. like a big big....big dog. his sale weight was 1,895 lbs. He was wonderful but imagine your family dog loves you and he's that heavy. when he'd come over to rub on a person or get a head scratch.. he'd use all his force. I respect my creatures and work with them up to a point... just like anyone I hire. That line stands with anyone I hire that even I won't cross because..well because.
Just ponder what damage that bull could have done to a person he wanted to love on.
and the shorter the life span..the less I "bond" with the animal.
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Average Member
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| I was notified on Friday that our son will soon be getting 6 guineas as a b-day gift. Any suggestions? We've raised a lot of chickens. Are they any different than baby chicks? And of all the time of the year we are getting them in August. We handle our aniamls every day and call them by their name. Carmen a Production Red runs to use when she hears her name.
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Starting Member
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Last Login: 7/14/2009 6:33:12 PM
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| I have a Phoenix hen that is a very special family member, she will stay on her perch untill my grandmother gets up and opens the blinds in the morning; then she will get down and start eating. she is very tame compared to our other hens, and will only let my grandmother hold her. I am very excited because she is setting on 7 eggs and they should hatch around july 25th.
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Junior Member
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Last Login: 8/30/2009 6:50:45 PM
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Bonding with my chicks - yes, from the day they arrive I'm constantly talking to them. Plus, when I feed them I reach down and touch them. I agree Sue, I want to be able to pick them up to see if there's something I need to pay attention to. I have special times that I go out and feed them 'treats', like bread or grass. My chickens don't run most days because we have neighbourhood dogs that run wherever they want. Generally they get their run just before roost time.
When asked about the chickens I tell people, these are the egg layers and these are dead (meat), they just don't know it yet. Do I have trouble with that... well, lets just say I couldn't kill them last year, I could gut them but not kill them. If I had to to eat, I would, but with trouble.
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