Recent content by KidDynamite

I put pinless peepers on my flock of 7 about 3 weeks ago because I was having serious issues with pecking. The pecking seems to have decreased significantly, however a few days after installing the peepers, I experienced a substantial decrease in egglaying. I've gone from a consistent ~6...

Hi Folks, I have 9 assorted laying hens who are about 10 months old. While they were cooped up inside for the winter, they did a lot of pecking - at each other. Several of the hens have the feathers on the top around the base of their tail pecked off. Many more also have the soft little...

thanks for all of the replies. I took out the insulation insert we had built for the second window - so now I have 1 window (interior to the barn) open, and 1 half blocked with plastic sheeting. This should definitely improve the airflow. I hadn't even considered that the air quality in the...

@Elmo - I can't tell if this chicken was laying. @ChickenCanoe - thanks for the advice - I'll discuss it with the wife: she wants to turn the heat lamp on because she thinks they're too cold... coop size: my coops is about 14ft x 14ft. we started with 12 birds and are now down to 9 (2...

ChickenCanoe - let me see if I can describe the coop for you: it's built into the barn, so three walls of the coop are "interior" and one is exterior - the outside wall of the barn. On one of the interior walls, there are two windows - about 5 1/2 feet off the ground. They are covered with...

I didn't notice any odd behavior other than this: I think a lot of my chickens would do this, but this one in particular: they got into this stage in the past few weeks where if you approached them, like opening the door of the coop when they were in the way, for example, instead of moving...

Last night it was about 18 degrees here in central New Hampshire. My 10 hens have been in the coop for several days - the coop is in the barn, rubber mats over wood on the floors, and pine shavings over the rubber mats. They have plenty of food, and water that's on a defroster (heated tin)...

we were very excited to get our first egg on Sunday - 19 week old Buff Orpington was the layer, as I'd come to find out the next day. I know it's early - does that explain why the egg was so small? (the second egg the next day was the same) - like maybe double/triple the size of a quail egg...

update: a few days later, and the hen's limp seems to be better - definitely limping less if at all. So it's a good thing I didn't "diagnose" her myself earlier last week and cull her. The plan for now is definitely to assume it was a physical leg injury and not Marek's disease, but we will...

the other strange thing is that this hen is the largest of the bunch - not a weakling/runt of any sort...

thanks, sonew123 - that's helpful. I'm not planning on introducing new birds anytime soon, so my plan right now is to keep an eye on her. I understand your point about culling her and others if symptoms worsen and spread, and that they've all been exposed to Marek's already if that's what she...

am I putting the rest of the flock at risk by "keeping an eye on her" though? thanks...

Hi folks, we have 12 young hens - born late-June which makes them about 14 weeks old. Today we noticed that one of our reds (NH Reds) was limping badly - looks like she can't put any weight on her left leg. My wife and I checked her out but couldn't find anything that we could see. She...

TinyChicky - I can only tell you what the form from the local feed store where we ordered the chicks from said. "Araucana" and "NH Red." Thanks for the correction in the NH Red name (but don't be offended if I continue to call them NH reds!) Does that mean that I have pure Araucanas? they...

thanks folks - my wife and I have found it amazing how quickly we notice differences in personalities between the breeds. does anyone else notice this? in our flock: the barred rocks are like velociraptors - the most aggressive, first one out the door, first one to explore every time the buff...