Recent content by suderm

Only veggie scraps! I think i might have been overdoing it. I am such a natural eater myself that I assumed chickens getting veggies and greens would be natural compared to some factory created feed.

Update, havent seen any thin shells since stopping treats altogether. Yesterday was the first day back to 2 eggs. 1 was dark brown and thick shelled and the other 1 was between the thick one and the thin ones that I was getting. So maybe she is coming out of the thin shelled situation.

Ok cool. Thats what I did. Back to just layer feed and still have access to the calcium.

I cut out all treats just to hopefully get them "re-centered." I was going to wait for a little while before giving them some tums or caltrate. How many days roughly could it take for them to get their nutrition right where they are back to laying normally without some "calcium intervention?"...

I am going to try it out. No veg for a while. I kicked it up lately especially because, well, winter in Pennsylvania. Calcium is available all day.

Yeah I have the dumor "oyster shell" and it doesn't look anything like that. Can too many leafy greens really make them not lay (or lay these thin eggs)? I figured in nature they are more likely to bump into some greens than pellets so I figured every day was probably better for their diet.

I have 4 all the same age. They will be two years old in a month or two. I am unsure which one is laying the soft egg.

Every other day or so I am getting 1 egg that is so thin that it is often broken by other hens laying in the same nesting box. They have regular access to layer feed in the coop/run. They also have free access to grit and calcium in the run. I also give them fresh veggies every day (kale...

Thanks for the tips all! This will be my second year with the girls and I started with a pre-fab coop figuring I would learn what I liked and didn't like and build one for next spring. The prefab coop has very low roosts only inches away from the nesting boxes, so I will definitely be adding...

I am planning my coop rebuild. Is there a way to make nesting boxes so that chickens don't want to sleep in them by changing the size/shape/position in the coop? Or is this just a learned behavior?

I saw that other people were looking for the old 100s of pages-long coop photo thread that I guess was lost in the site migration. Is there a new one that I can't find? Trying to start my coop rebuild and looking for hints. Thanks! Have an awesome day everyone

I actually went to go cut a vent in and realized that the peak of the roof has a soffit style vent at the peak where the walls meet the roof. I have beeen checking during the cold nights and I dont notice any moisture and everyone seems fine. Seems like all is well.

I donthave a proper picture of the attached run on me, here is a screenshot of a video of my daughter putting the girls away at night :) I have four rhode island reds. They are 8 months old or so. The run is 10'x12' with a covered hardware cloth roof over 3/4 of it and then one area with...

So I am approaching my first winter with chickens (Eastern PA, USA) and I was getting everything ready in my coop and run last weekend and I have a question about ventilation. I purchased this prefabricated coop from Tractor Supply I modified it so that my chickens have a protected run...

Good morning everyone! Every late summer my family has a corn day where we buy hundreds of ears of corns and peel, boil, shuck, bag and freeze the corn for the rest of the year. Would the husks be useful in the run? I am a little worried about my girls picking apart and eating all the corn hair...