Recent content by morsekathan

Great ideas - and if I may, people should apply some of these things to their brooders. Baby chicks need stuff to play with and places to explore. It's so sad to me to see big brooders with nothing for the chicks to do! We always put in logs and sticks. Hay is a great idea too.

i just give my hens baths when they have poop balls stuck to their butt. They love the baths. I actually found this thread by searching on poopy butts because I wanted to see if there was anything else. But it seems pretty common and normal and I've had this with other chickens, so I'll just...

This is my feeling too. My production hens laid an egg everyday and then dropped dead at 2 years. They are bred to lay without any consideration on what takes out of them. I don't have them anymore. It broke my heart to see them give their all at that cost.

Nice article, but what it doesn't address is how long these breeds live. We found that every one of our sex linked died around 2 years. Just dropped dead. We had several die within a short period, and I had a necropsy done on one. She was all tumor. I think these breeds are just breed to be...

I would love to provide a home for these hens. I'm not sure how to email you directly, but I'm at morsekathan at gmail dot com. I have 4 spoiled hens living the life of Riley in my backyard and sometime in my house because they have figured out the dog door!

I have had a lot of predators but never had a hen kill her sister hens. I just don't' believe they would do so, and some of my hens are super mean to the other ladies. And yes, it's a little work to raise hens, but worth it. I'm so envious that yours snuggle you. I've only had one if lots...

I have a converted playhouse coop and a big covered run. My hens are locked in the coop at night and I have hardware cloth over the windows (it has three windows). That is an expense I would not skimp on. I also put plexiglass storms on the windows in the winter. The hens appreciate it...

Some people feed them marigold petals to make the yolks a deeper yellow and I once read an article where the henkeeper experimented with different amounts of cayenne to get deeper color yolks. Her customers preferred the eggs with deep colored yolks. She had a whole page of results!

Oh yes. I tried that but it took me so long to teach them their names that they all decided to lay under the porch instead. :hit

I have several hens who are perfectly ok who prefer the nest box to roosting. I personally wish they would roost as the nest box gets pretty poopy, but turns out I'm not in charge in the hen house! If I were, everyone would be much better behaved :wee

My hens never leave the nest box when they go broody and they don't have eggs to sit on either! Because, as we all know, there is only one "good" nest box, the other hens squish in to lay, but I take the eggs away. So, I can verify that no eggs are needed for a hen to sit and sit and sit. We...

LOL - but you forgot one hugely important proof - hens that no longer lay. They don't count at all. In fact, only chickens that lay consistently count. That is why I only have 2 despite my husband, who is super bad at all things math, insisting we have 8. Really Honey, if we had 8 hens...

I voted "nothing, I love every thing", but actually I don't like broody hens! I feel bad that I can't fulfill their desire to be mothers, and I am annoyed that they hog the "good nest" box, every single time and every one of them. So, I am changing my vote to "dealing with broody hens"!

I don't, as a rule, wash my eggs, not in 10 years of chicken keeping. Sometimes an egg will be poopy or have a little something stuck to it, then I wash it, but that's a rare egg - maybe 1 or 2 a month. Occasionally a hen will lay on the floor of the coop and that egg is usually not that...