Buckeye chicken owners

OK, my curiosity has finally gotten the better of me.

I began my adventure with the buckeye breed last fall when I received hatching eggs from Chantecler eh? They were brought all the way from the prairies to Armstrong. Of the eggs received, all hatched, the fertility was 100%. Of those chicks now only four remain. Two roosters were culled (I had four cockerels and 6 pullets) and three of the pullets made it to the adult stage. I lost a rooster recently due to a poisoning thing (oh these terrible lessons we learn in life). So I am now with 1 rooster and 3 hens.

I think very highly of this breed of bird. They turned one year old on October 1st.

They cockerels began to crow around the 22nd week of life. The pullets began to lay very sporadically at the age of 27 weeks. By the age of 30 weeks, they were all three laying every day.

Every day. Seriously. Every day. I have taken great note of the egg laying capability of this breed, and the hens do not stop to take a break. They lay every single day. Now going into winter, I am not going to be using artificial lights with any of my birds. This will be the first year that I have ever done this, but I want to really see if the lighting makes a difference with the three breeds that I keep. That be buckeyes, cochins and buff orpingtons. I know that last winter with artificial light of 15 hours a day, the buff orpingtons still laid solidly through the cold winter.

I am asking now the observations of others that keep the buckeye breed. Has anyone noticed if their hens lay every day, or maybe that has not been noticed. I am very stoked to see if they will lay right through winter without the extra lights on, and time will tell that tale. Please relay your experiences on how your buckeye hens rank in the egg laying capacity. I know mine are bang on, as I said, every day, not missing one day since they began the task of making eggs.

I am kind of wondering if I may have a special line of the breed that only lays every day for just me, and only me, smiling that big smile. Have a wonderful and beautiful day, CynthiaM.

You know it would be cool if there were lot of "closet" buckeye owners out there in Canada but as far as I know Cynthia there are just not that many viable flocks around right now...all the more reason to promote them and encourage them and I agree with you, they are wonderful plump, docile every day layers with good personalities and everyone should have some around!

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Good to know you will have a good sized flock there now Glenn, we will send those 7 on their way to you tomorrow...
and yes I think the WC X Buckeye cross is a great combo myself.

Perhaps a little off topic. I have noticed also, that the buckeye had an enormous breast, they are a heavy thing when you pick them up, and when I had to give an injection into the thigh of one of the one year old roosters, when I had to adminster an injection of vitamin k for the mouse bait poisoning, I was surprised at how much thigh there was on this dude, no way to make a mistake in which way to put the needle. I am thinkin' that a buckeye cross with something else would make a magnificent egg layer and a meat bird as well. Yep, lovin' those buckeye birds!!! those beautiful and wonderful days, CynthiaM.

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reneggaide wrote: I have 21 originating from you CynthiaM and I'm looking forward to the 7 from Ethan. .

Oi, oi, oi, am I losing it? Honestly, I don't recall sending any eggs to you and didn't sell any chicks. Maybe I did, but I don't have record of it either. I don't want to sound rude, but I think that maybe you have me mixed up with someone else. I only sent out buckeye eggs (14 of them) once, to the Greyhound at Grande Prairie, but I don't think that was you, smiling, maybe it was....you need to help me here, I don't like it when I feel like I am mistaken about something. But yes, I love the breed. I have a couple of old barred rocks with the buckeyes. I think that might make a very nice meat/egg laying bird and the offspring are certainly sex-linked. Might just give that a whirl, just for the fun of it next spring. Have a most wonderful day, CynthiaM.

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Two boxes of Buckeyes on their way to you today Glenn!
Just met up with the fellow taking them, had to pull a couple eggs out of the box before I left...so you may have a dozen eggs in there by the time you get them home, ha ha..
That's one of the reasons why I think Buckeyes are such great layers...nothing stresses them much so they just keep right on laying, I know some other breeds that if you move them around or change pens they quit laying for a while, not so the Buckeyes!

are any of you Buckeye people coming to the Dec show?

I had a lovely little starter flock of about 25 chicks and between the weaslw, the hawk and the flood, Im down to 3 juviniles. I would really a few really nice adults.

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I'm a Buckeye fan too but keep making the mistake of giving into their plea of "free range, please!" and losing a few every week or so to predators.

I have five mature birds, 8 adolescent and 4 just fledging. They are all very handsome and I want to specialize in Buckeyes and White Chanteclers and yes, as Miry Creek knows, my cross bred hens are just fabulous - docile, broad, and excellent egg layers. And great winter birds. They get the Buckeye broadness which is really nice. As Cynthia M says Buckeye breasts and thighs (we're talking poultry remember) are especially fabulous.

But nothing beats their temperament.

heda gobbler wrote:I'm a Buckeye fan too but keep making the mistake of giving into their plea of "free range, please!" and losing a few every week or so to predators.

I have five mature birds, 8 adolescent and 4 just fledging. They are all very handsome and I want to specialize in Buckeyes and White Chanteclers and yes, as Miry Creek knows, my cross bred hens are just fabulous - docile, broad, and excellent egg layers. And great winter birds. They get the Buckeye broadness which is really nice. As Cynthia M says Buckeye breasts and thighs (we're talking poultry remember) are especially fabulous.

But nothing beats their temperament.

I would be very interested to see some pictures of this cross! What colour are you getting, mainly? What comb seems to be showing up? Please post some pictures.

I get mostly white with grey/brown patches. Nice broad fluffy hens. Don't keep mixed roosters so dont' know how they finished.

Will try to get some photos. Know Miry Creek has a few too- we compared notes way back...

They are my son's birds and I do admire them daily but if I had to find a drawback to them it would be their trusting/docile/free ranging habit.
A positive in terms of friendly flock and so easy to catch but I could see it as a negative in terms of survival in a free range flock.

The Buckeye pullets in the summer didn't seem to realize what tempting targets they are...as soon as they were let out they would fly/run as far as they could go and compared to the the other breeds, they would consistently be on the furthest ring of the circle which would often make me a little nervous, a funny thing for such a tame bird, you'd think they would stay close to home.
On the other hand, my much more suspicious, "wilder" Dominiques stay in a much tighter circle around their house when they free range and unlike the rarely flying Buckeyes they can sometimes be found right up on top of the chicken house roof..
Hmm maybe I could talk my son into putting a Buckeye roo over a Dominique hen and see if I can get a friendly hen with more "street smarts"?

Exactly. The White Chantclers are much more vigilant and less docile and can fly up to the hay loft when needed (Buckeyes are just so heavy and easy going..) but they are almost glow-in-the-dark white which is their downfall.

Rennegade, I may jsut take you up on that! A couple of nice roosters would be lovely.
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Glen, that would have been Milkmaid on the ACE forum that got my buckeye eggs. They should have hatched around the very end of August, they are very young birds. I wonder what went wrong there and why they didn't want the breed, they were so stoked on getting eggs from me. Oh well, it is what it is.

Heda's juvenile buckeyes come from the line that Pretty Feathers has at her place in Chilliwack. That line originates from Chris McCary (think that was the name), president of the buckeye club in the states. I think with some work on size that this line will be very nice. She had a couple of very dark, mahogany cockerels that were in the breeding group. When Heda's get going, I am going to request that she send me hatching eggs, that would be in the spring. That way with the line that she has from the states, and my lines here, we should really get some nice diversity in the gene pool. I also would like to get some more eggs from Ethan, if the Meyer's line turns out to be nice, can't remember the comments he had made (chime in here Ethan), but I think that some were looking good, if memory serves.

Buckeyes and free ranging. Totally have to agree with the desire for them to forage. They are the first ones that get out to free range in the morning here. I open their door, throw them some scratch and then they head out and off to the wild blue yonder. So far, so good with no overhead predators here, which is surprising, but there is a river close by, so the osprey are busy there, the bald eagles must have somewhere else in mind too, smiling. Been here now over a year and haven't lost any birds to any form of predation, be it air or land, knock on wood -- the mountains on either side are a long ways off, with clear fields on either side, north, south, east and west, so four legged critters don't venture here during the day. I do hear coyotes at night. I wonder why the coyotes up here in our new life sound so different than those that haunted our area down on the coast of B.C. I always find that weird to listen to and think about.

The buckeyes wander, and they wander so far. They even wander all the way up to our place, which by foot, takes about 60 seconds (that doesn't seem like much, but it really is). We are 1/2 way down a three acre land parcel, they are about 1/4 way down. Right, that makes a whole lotta sense, now didn't it....OK, another description of how far they wander. Our home is the entire length of an enormous riding arena, probably about the size of a professional ring or bigger. They come as far as our home and then don't go any further. Gad, that still didn't make sense, think I'll leave that alone for now, smiling. Buckeyes really do like to wander, I totally have to agree. Have a wonderful and great day, CynthiaM.

So do you want me to keep the juvenile line (Pretty Feathers'?) isolated? I was going to cross them to my bigger line (from Cbrookelly and Ethan) for hatching. Not sure I have the housing for that but I'll see what I can do in the spring. Think I'm going to sell out of Buff Orpington's - they are great but one breed too many.

You are lucky about predators. Wish I could say the same, we seem to have endless hunters around and it only takes a few nights out before anything left outside is taken.

Eeeks, Heda, now I just don't know. I think that crossing Pretty Feather's to yours would bring some really nice size to the line. Offspring from that cross would work in my line, cause I know that they would have great size from your line. This is something that really needs to be delved into, about how distant breeding lines should be. I know that VERY distantly, yours are related to mine, but so far is the distance is huge!!! I wonder if there can be comments from anyone that can read between the lines and give some good advice about breeding distantly related distantly related birds, like how yours and mine are.....we have to discuss how close is the distance between yours and mine, gotta figure that out. But I think it is so much discussion that we need to bring it to email format, wanna go with that? We have lots of time to figure things out and I don't want you to be put out by having to make another pen for Heidi's line, unless absolutely necessary. Blah, a big can of worms, but it could be very cool in the end...have a wonderful day, CynthiaM.

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One of my hens has smut - I'll try to take my camera out and take photos. It is quite attractive - black tipped tail feather around the vent - but apparently not correct.

I see my mature rooster has a bent back toe on each foot. Not good either. Hope Pretty Feather's group don't have this.

Lost two of the mature Buckeyes last night to something - a fox? Time to put the survivors in the main run instead of the tractor which predators can dig under.

aww thats no fun feeding the wild ones with your stock....sorry to hear you lost some more....my husband always says "everything likes chicken" (except himself apparently,He is mostly a beef eater....)
well he does like OUR chicken....(or so he told me as he chewed on a Buckeye leg last night) but definitely not that store bought stuff...

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Blah, I am still a little confused here. Rennegaide, did Milkmaid and her Husband already have a flock of buckeyes before they got my hatching eggs, that you got those chicks from? Can you more clearly define, I don't like it when I feel confused, and this has been being very confused.

About the smut. I am going to start a thread, because I think smut is something that is hidden below the feathers. Follow that thread, Heather may chime in and help to speak more to that, as she was the one that showed me it....follow that thread, if and when Heather will make a post and speak to that. I don't think it has anything to do with dark feathers around the vent area, but then, I probably didn't pay enough attention to what Heather showed me, I was absorbing a whole lotta information that day she was over to help me choose the best of the 4 cockerels to keep. I need to know more also about duck feet on the chickens.....have a most wonderful day, CynthiaM.