Post pictures of your questionable rooster. It would be a shame to get some really nice hens and then cross your boy over them and end up with a bunch of questionable offspring. There's lots of help here to let you know if you should use him... if you want that advice.
Maybe tonight when he is on his perch in the dark, you can take a flashlight out and pull him off his perch and check him out? I use a mini mag flashlight and if I need a third hand, I just pop it into my mouth to hold it.
I have been looking into them but I don't know if they live where I live. Is it too late in the year to start a colony? Plus, I was defending cbnovick's statement.
Some of us don't have range for our birds and the only bugs available to them are the ones that come into their run. I live in the desert but I have sage brush and rabbit brush but there are many stray dogs around here and so I can't let my birds run all over my ten acres! Therefore, any...
I did bathe him before the show and he was alone for at least a week before traveling. The pullet is with another pullet, only the two of them, in a 3x6 coop with a 6x8 run. This pullet seems to enjoy chasing the other one around but not the reverse.
I live in a really really dry climate...
Another question... I have never hatched birds in December before last year so this year I have a bird that was hatched in Dec 2012 and she's been laying fine but seems to have stopped all of a sudden. Will a bird hatched in winter go through the big molt the next winter? I've checked her and...
Hey y'all
I seem to have an ongoing problem with feather quality in my birds' wings. Not every one but most of them. I need to know if any of you have seen this before and if so, is it a breeding issue or a feeding issue?
Primaries:
Secondaries:
The feathers aren't "damaged" as in...
I have some snakes I allow to stay around too. I don't remember the name of them but they're not poisonous and I let them eat as many mice as they can catch. There are no snakes in this pen though.
My cats are terrified of my chickens!
Their tails were in equally poor shape... looking more like the secondaries than the primaries. Last year, when I first noticed this on some birds in the same pen, they all started looking like that. I thought I had some feather pickers happening but I would watch them and never saw evidence...
Walt, they are all on perches. I kind of peeked in there today to see if I could figure out how the mice would get up on the perch... unless they can scale a perfectly vertical and smooth wall... I don't know.
Scott, thanks for that info.
I don't leave any food or water in the coops overnight except for what MIGHT get spilled. But in this particular pen, they are fed and watered outside so I am 100% positive that there are no food tidbits inside. I go through the aggravation every single evening...