Recent content by LawChick

Good news! I finally caught Clara II last night as she was roosting. Had to crawl through some honeysuckle, grapevines, and unfortunately, probably some poison ivy to nab her, but she is safely inside the coop with her roosties now, and just in time, too, because we're finally getting some...

Well, Clara II is still living in the rough in the little bit of woods around our pond. Two nights after she failed to return to the coop, I saw her out in the woods, and lay in wait for her with a big net. When she found a roost, I gave her some time to fall asleep, then crept up on her as...

Oops. Fred Astair.

Katy Perry.

Well, the good news is that Clara II turned back up in my backyard today. I am at work and cannot WAIT to get home to try to catch her and put her back in the coop. Oddly, the older birds and the new additions seems to get along better in the coop than they do when they are free ranging.

I've had quite a time integrating three hens into my little flock of nine hens and one rooster. I added the three new ones at night, and although two of the new hens are keeping pretty much to themselves, the third one ("Clara") was pecked mercilessly by the rooster and his a few of his gangsta...

I think your roo is gorgeous!

I have found that my rooster is scared to death of any human doing jumping jacks. :-)

My vet gave my chicken a little cat hairball medicine to get things moving out of her severely impacted crop. My hen was dehydrated, so she did require some extra liquid to get the crop lubricated again. I also fed her very small amounts of bread that I had crumbled up into tiny pieces and...

If it is absolutely impossible to get the olive oil down the bird's throat alone, you might try what worked for my hen. She had a very impacted crop from eating grass that had been freshly mown. I took her to the vet, who had her doubts whether my little hen would make it or not, but we...

I have eleven chickens, ten hens and one rooster. They love being out of the coop after the grass has been cut, and we often saw them chowing down on the cut grass. Not anymore! And here's why: My little Ameraucana, Cordelia, was listless and thin for several days. I finally broke down and...

Okay, I started out not washing any eggs until they were ready to use. Then I switched and started washing all the eggs with water as I collected them, because further reading convinced me that it really doesn't make that much difference to the freshness of the egg. Now I'm thinking I should...

So, about how long does it take for a pullet to start laying regular sized eggs? I've gotten several smallish eggs from my hens in the last week or so, and I'm just wondering when I should expect them to lay the larger eggs.

I'm quite reluctant to guess, since I am new to the world of chickens, and my initial flock of eleven hens turned out to be six roosters (SIX!) and five hens, since corrected to one rooster and nine hens. My birds were about three months old when I bought them in April, and the...