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Thank you both for the responses! I think I need to get a bit more serious with the "better lay an egg or else chat"! One of the new hampshires is named "Cousin Eddie", and she just isn't the best example of breeding. Thinking of maybe culling Cousin Eddie from the flock and keeping "Lola"...

My husband and I are thinking some heads need to be rolling pretty soon, but want to double check to make sure we aren't missing out on potential good layers by jumping the gun too quickly. Our first round of chickens 1 1/2yrs ago all laid between 17-25wks of age. We got a second lot of...

...it. However, you can only hold around 20-24 chicken eggs in it. The foam bator holds something like 60 chicken eggs if I remember correctly. ***What kind did you get and what are you concerned about? Also, keep in mind that no matter what number you start with, the biggest losses are always...

Keep the duckling warm by using as great a wattage of an incandescent bulb as you can so they stay at around 90 degrees. Or use a heating pad covered with a towel/rag for the inevitable ducky poo. Make sure with either heat source they can get away from it if overheating. You will know they are...

Hey Keesmom, I was initially thinking wry neck except for one factor...it sounds like the bird was totally fine and then spontaneously got the crooked neck between the head issue at about 2 weeks old. From what I read having congenital loco/wry neck is something you usually note upon hatching...

...and externally before beginning unzipping. Overall though things are okay if they are kinda-sorta-pretty close to where they need to be. ********One last sneaky humidity lowering trick fyi!***** If you open all your vents in the bator WIDE open full bore this will help to lower humidity too...

I would cull the bird, it sounds quite ill. But! There is one last ditch thing you can try just to double check.... With a younger bird acting off sometimes I will isolate them and give them a bit of sugar and electrolyte water in a syringe and then watch for any sudden improvement. I have had a...

My husband and I have a 100yr old house with a detached garage that isn't usable as a garage since it was made for something like an old fashioned model-t, but it is much larger than a shed....so we use part of the space as a coop. We have a flock of 4 adult chickens total. 3 are laying hens and...

It depends on how prolapsed the vent is. Sometimes with pasty butt it can be a swollen, hemorrhoid-ey vent and the tissue swells on the vent/anus from straining and feces stuck on the skin irritating it, but it isn't technically "inside" tissue prolapsing out. But since you said you pushed the...

I am so sorry, I ended up really busy with health issues with a grandmother and am just back to checking on how you are doing. Hope everything is okay. What is the status of the two ducklings? That was a very good pic you took of the two eggs and AWESOME job with the hatching assistance! The...

I would hop on down to the library and/or Amazon and read up on some books first so you know what you need and will be prepared with everything from what breeds you want, how to care for chooks, and the whole sha-bang! There are good sources online too, but there was also a decent amount of...

I think it is good you are going to cull this ill chick. Sometimes it is the most humane thing to do, and just a fact of life too. I have heard the asphyxiation by gas method works. Some folks will also snip the head off with a sturdy pair of scissors (like heavy duty kitchen scissors) with...

Wow, that is great that the daytime temps are around 95 degrees anyways! That makes life a whole lot easier. I agree with you when you said you were surprised the babies survived the whole night in the cold, because everything you are taught says the babies are super fragile. Yet they often...

...babies have some blankies to snuggle under/into as they dry off, and there aren't any bad drafts esp while they are wet and still fluffing out. *****Oh, and often mamma does leave the last couple stragglers behind if they are too far off from when the majority of the babies hatched as she...

I second what Lazy Gardener said about not washing the eggs. Leaving the antimicrobial properties of the egg's natural " bloom" coating seems to protect the eggs best. Once washed the bloom coating is removed and the egg doesn't have its germ killing coating.

I would first post some pics of the possible roos in question on this site and get other people's opinions as to whether or not they think these two are probably cockerels. Are they acting "rooster-like" too? Generally I hear that 8 to 12 hens per rooster is typically needed so that the girls...

The general rule for eggs remaining reasonably viable after being laid is a max of 7 to 10 days. After 10 days the number of eggs that will grow keeps going down. You want to keep the eggs at a cool temp while waiting to set them...so think ideally basement-ish temps in the 50s or 60s with some...