Recent content by ATRoos314

Hello! I am originally from Minnesota and now in Tennessee. I am not an expert on this, but I can say we had a very good experience with the chicks we ordered from Hoovers Hatchery in Iowa. We got black australorps, rainbow, and sapphire gems. We ordered 15. They all survived shipment. One had...

I don't know what's proper, but we kept our new rooster in a separate container in the run for about three days (we know the person we adopted him from, so there really wasn't an issue of potential disease). We would take him out and let him walk around for a few minutes closely supervised every...

I've been trying to find this information somewhere online and just can't find what I'm looking for. My daughter started raising mealworms for our chickens. We bought 1000 mealworms and they are starting to turn into Pupa. My question is: these 1,000 worms will turn into 1000 beetles that each...

Update: she was suffering too much and we couldn't do anything else so she had to be culled. 😢

Yeah. We ended up culling her tonight. She was suffering too much. She did not have a pasty vent. I don't think there was anything else we could have done.

She only got a tiny bit of lettuce one time. We put a couple pieces in there several days ago, but they all fought over them, so just a few pieces of lettuce for 15 chicks. No other chicks have had a problem, but I started giving them some grit just in case. I'm not sure if this particular...

OK. So we have a 3-week-old chick that has a crop issue. It's crop is full and squishy like a water balloon, but it doesn't smell. It has no interest in eating, but we have been giving it sugar water with olive oil. It seemed to be gagging, so we did massage the chick upside down and it vomited...

Update: she survived overnight, but she is very weak. Won't stand up or open her eyes unless I pick her up. She's curling her toes under her. I'm just giving her sugar water now by dropper once in a while. She won't feed herself or try to eat food if I hold it up to her. I finally figured out...

Yes. The brooder had a heat lamp. The bedding directly under the lamp is about 85°. They don't seem too hot or cold. There is a lot of space they can escape heat if they are too hot. Right now she is in a separate box with a hot pad under it to keep it warm. The bedding is about 80° right now. I...

Today we found our chick, Becky, looking pretty sick. She is a 3 week old Black Australorp. She looks like she is panting or having trouble breathing, keeps moving her head while opening her mouth repeatedly. Her chirp is not the same as the other chicks. She is lethargic. Just sits there...

LOL. Yep. The whole problem starts with the fact that they are a government organization that is trying to be run like a private company. They need to crap or get off the pot. Either the government owns, operates and funds USPS entirely, or they privatize it. This half-and-half business makes it...

My dad just retired from USPS after 41 years. He gets more money now in retirement than he did when he was working. :lol: I mean, part of that is his own investments and stuff. But, yes, there is a good pension. At the same time, he's a veteran and the governement likes to deny him his veteran...

The problem here is, though, that they aren't telling other companies they can't ship their product because of the backlog in undelivered packages. The live chicks are a product just like anything else you would order online and ship to your house. It isn't fair to tell hatcheries that they...

Update: I asked my dad and brother what they have (they live nearby) and apparently my brother's run is only covered with a tarp. He has had problems with wild dogs and coyotes, but has never seen any raccoons. My dad uses bird netting. He has had issues with predator birds, but never raccoons...

Isn't bird netting just plastic thread basically? Or am I thinking of something else.