Recent content by WarmChick

Thanks for all the responses! So one female duck won't likely be enough? And if we get a duckling, I'm guessing it'll be a good few months before it'll make a difference to my drake? Are there specific mating periods when this is the worst? Or will we need to keep him separate indefinitely?

Last spring we got 2 Rouen ducklings and 3 chicks to add to our other hens. We realized that, while we had intended to get 2 female ducks, we ended up with one male and one female. An unfortunate predator attack took our female duck and a couple of the chicks/hens. Since then, the male duck...

I have 2 Rouen ducks who are about two months old. One quacks constantly and the other never has. I was thinking both are females but is it possible one is a drake? The larger one in front is the silent one.

I'm not so much grossed out by it, just curious as to WHY it's happening. I gave a friend some eggs and she said one basically had blood instead of white. That doesn't seem normal. Should I be investigating the hen who laid it??

Boo!

the chicken in question is the pretty black & white BSL.

I have a 14-wk-old BSL that I thought was a hen. But the other day s/he crowed! A full on cock-a-doodle-doo! I've read that hens can sometimes crow. How can I tell if it's a crowing hen or a roo? If it's a roo, we'll get rid of him.

I'm curious about this too. I have a 14-wk-old BSL. I thought it was a hen since I got it from a hatchery. But yesterday s/he crowed loudly. ??? How to tell for sure??

I have 7 three+ year old hens and 4 13-week-olds. I found this wrinkly looking egg. I'm guessing it's too early for my little girls to be laying, so that leaves the old gals. Is it that one of my older girls is nearing the end of her laying cycle and that's why I got this strange egg?

Thanks! I think the shoulders looked more red in the photo than they actually are. Tough to get the lighting right!

Yikes--then Townline Hatchery {Zeeland, MI} messed up because that's who our farm store gets their chicks from and the entire galvanized tub of chicks {with a sign stating that they're Isa Brown Pullets} had white wing feathers. Uh-oh!

Update: since my hubby and son picked out the chicks and didn't think to ask if they were pullets or straight run, I went back to where they got them. There were signs by the isa browns saying they were pullets, so that's that! Aaaannnnddd while I was there I just had to grab another cute little...