Recent content by Silattahoe

I am sure there have been threads on this but I couldn't find one... I have a broody hen (been on the nest for 3 weeks - eagerly waiting for hatchlings!). Today, when my hen was out and I handled the eggs, I saw a yellowish crawly on an egg! My guess is that it's a louse. My hen takes daily dust...

Cool - thank you.

Galanie, do you mean medicated or not medicated starter food? I had heard that medicated cannot be given to lay hens as the medication would end up in the eggs. Thanks.

These photos helped me to understand how old the embryos in the eggs are that I found under my broody hen today. thanks.

I have a broody hen that has been broody for about 1 week. Today I took her out of the nest (as she never seems to leave on her own) and found 6 eggs. I candled and found that 4 were infertile and 2 fertile. I would like to know how far along these eggs are as I am considering adding some eggs...

I am doing this all backwards: I had meant to update you first on what happened today. We have kept a very close eye on the broody hen since yesterday and she has not gotten up to eat, drink or poop or whatsoever. We offered her food and drink right in the nesting box but she wouldn't touch...

Question about feeding the chicks: so, if they stay together with the mom (and possibly the whole flock), how do I get the chicks to eat their medicated starter food and keep the other chickens from eating it??

Thanks for the encouraging rooster thoughts. I don't know if I will have much of a choice, though, to separate the broody hen and her chicks from the rest of the flock. Come October, we'll start having snow here and then the chicken run will get much smaller. I have an inside coop from which a...

My kids were so excited when our first hens layed their first egg, they just had to eat them and I let them! I don't know what should be different between the first egg and the one that follow, except for that I have read somewhere to make sure that the hens haven't had access to medicated feed...

Thanks for all the answers! That is very encouraging. One more question, though: if the hen really successfully hatches chicks, should I separate her and the mother from the rest of the flock, especially the 2 roosters?

One of our young layhens (6 months old, started laying 1 month ago) started breeding her eggs (and the other hens'?) about 6 days ago. My kids are the ones that get the eggs from the nest boxes and there haven't been that many this week but they didn't tell me that always the same chicken is...

Hm, now I just found that Showgirl Silkies always have dark skin. My guy (or girl) has bright pink skin!

Thanks for the info - it makes me feel so much better to know that there are chickens without feathers around the neck! I will look into Silkies and Naked-Neckers right now. FYI - the farm that gave us the eggs has all kinds of chickens and they all (about 200) run freely around, so they could...

Hi all - this is our first time incubating chicks - after candling, we saw that 11 of the 12 were viable. Then on day 21 nothing pipped or hatched. I thought they had died. Then on day 22 came out a very healthy young chick. On day 23 another healthy hatched. In the night to day 24, one hatched...

Hi all - my kids and I built an incubator and are trying to hatch chicken eggs for the first time. We candled on day 6 and saw one egg with a bacteria ring and one that possibly had a ring and one that seemed not fertile. All other eggs had those spidery blood vessels as far as we could tell (a...