Posts by big mami

Hi all, Out of 24 eggs in the incubator I'm only getting two chicks, looks like.  Oh well.  I happen to have a broody hen but she has only been sitting for a week.  The chicks are due in three days (Mother's Day!) and...

By the way, broody hens don't lay eggs.  When they stop bring broody, they go back to laying.  So it might still be that she is broody.  Just a guess...  

She sounds like she is going broody, and has picked an odd place to decide to nest.  You could move her on to a nest in the coop, on a couple of eggs (or not), and see if she stays.  If she stays and squaks when you try to...

Now two of my 16 hens have died.  They had similar symptoms: inability to walk (weak?), pasty butts, almost no pooping, and what poop there was was very green.  And super, super nasty smelling.  The pasted butts weren't...

After we got our roo and he was fertilizing the girls, I noticed many of our hens' vents were very poopy and they laid a lot of poopy eggs.  That had never happened before.  I never did anything about it (laziness, I...

Well said, Wingless!  And may I add that while I was living in the closely-packed suburban-type area of a big city I successfully had three hens in a very small back yard with NO smell at all.  We cleaned their run and coop...

Thanks for all the info.  After trying a little with treats and holding, he's still problematic so he is headed for the crock pot sometime this week.  And it might have just been his true nature coming out, since he's now 6...

Well, he was fine before the weekend.

Here's the story: I found out after the fact that my animal-sitter couldn't come close up the coop after dusk on Saturday, so she went early and "shooed" them in.  But my roo thought she was attacking the girls, so he tried to...

Got our first egg today!  We have 11 Barred Rocks (plus one BR roo) and they're all 19 weeks old.  Just one egg from 11 girls, but it's a start!