We are small backyard chicken people with only 7 hens, and they just turned one year old. My daughter found, Lola, one of our black stars eating an egg a few weeks ago. She cracked it open in the nesting box and was eating it. We caught her with her beak in it. I put the ceramic eggs back in the...
We're in WI and had some wicked bad lightening storms last night. I went out this morning to find a White Rock dead under the roosting bar. She is always closest to the outside window of the coop. She did not appear sick yesterday and none of the other hens appear to be sick. All eating...
Our Easter Eggers just started laying a few weeks ago (even though we got them May 30!!). I noticed last week that one Easter Egger (lowest on the pecking order) has stopped sleeping on the roost and started sleeping in the nesting box. It was about a week after she started laying eggs. She...
I think we might be crazy "city folks", but now that we've built a nice coop and kept our 8 chickens alive for 6 months...we think we can move on to a hobby farm in the future. When we bought this house we were looking for more land than we got (0.75 acres), but internet access was an issue for...
We are having our first snow. We have about 7 inches already with more today. I checked on the girls this morning to find some snow had blown in the coop. They have a completely enclosed box on the top part of the coop where their perch and nesting box is located. There was NO snow in there...
Our hen Eggy seems to have blood coming from her ear and a little spot on the point of her comb. After realizing this is her ear, I'm wondering if she has something going on inside and she's bleeding out her ear or she caught it on something. How should I treat this? Clear away the blood and see...
We have 8 hens (2 Americanas, 2 White Rock, 2 Black Star and 2 Silver Laced Wyandottes). They hatched May 30, so they are only about 18 weeks old. We are in WI and the days are really starting to get shorter. Will they probably still lay this fall/winter?
Put 2 ceramic eggs in the nesting...
So our ladies are about 15 weeks old. We have 2 of each: White Rocks, Silver Laced Wyandottes, Black Stars and Americanas. We just added the nesting boxes to the coop with straw in them. Should we occasionally put ceramic eggs in there so they can see them in there? Or do they just sort of know...
We knew this fence would be temporary. Just enough to contain the girls when we were home during the day. We do plan on making that outside run more secure.
Today it was funny because I think the girls finally realized that there's a weak point in the fence and the dog was going keep them...
My husband calls it the "fortress", but we'll see how predator proof it is when winter hits. We worked some long hot summer days to get it done for the girls. Home to 8 hens: 2 Silver Laced Wyndottes, 2 Black Stars, 2 Americanas and 2 White Rocks.
The top coop area is a rectangle box enclosed...
I'm not sure where to post this. I was originally thinking of putting my chicken coop boots outside upside down next to the coop. I'm not sure how this will work as the weather gets colder. What we ended up doing was keeping chicken boots outside lined up on the patio attached to our house.
My...
Hello,
I posted this 2 days ago and I had one kind person reply. He suggested treating for corridosis. I found poop with blood 2 days in a row on the poop board and then today I didn't find any. I did find some later in the day in the run. None of the chickens are acting "sick" from what I can...
Hello,
I've been stalking the forums since we started thinking of getting chickens. Our 8 girls are nearly 12 weeks old now. We have 2 Silver Laced Wyandottes, 2 White Rocks, 2 Americanas and 2 Black Stars. We're in WI and the girls should start laying just in time for the colder weather. We...
This is our first flock of hens. We have 8 (2 Silver Laced Wyndotte, 2 Black Star, 2 Americana and 2 White Rock) that are about 12 weeks old now. We have a poop board under the girls perch at night. I scrap it every morning. Yesterday I noticed what looked like blood on top of normal poop glob...