Thank you again, everyone! I will continue to keep a close eye on her. I'm very grateful for a community to help when I don't know what to do. Thank you for sharing your expertise!
Follow-up question. Could this behavior have been caused by the hen's pre-first-egg stress? She laid her first egg this afternoon and has stopped pulling out other chickens' feathers, as far as I have seen. I watched her for hours (lazy Saturday afternoon!) and she was much calmer and sweet to...
Those eggs are so cute! Congrats on 2 days in a row!
No, I wouldn't be able to guess which girls laid eggs. The girl who laid today was acting really, really spooked this morning so she caught my attention, and if I hadn't seen the girl lay yesterday I would have been clueless. :)
Lady#2 laid her first egg today! Unlike Lady#1, who was serene and calm and sat in the nesting box and laid her egg then loudly proclaimed her victory, Lady #2 paced around the coop/run for about 3 hours looking for a place to escape, clawing at corners and bawking non-stop. She eventually laid...
Thank you, everyone! I checked the crude protein level of my feed and it's 17%, while the grower feed at my local supply store was at 15%. What is ideal for this phase of their development? I did buy a flock block and I can definitely supplement with scrambled eggs - I eat them every day myself...
Yes, I have had them on Layer feed, so protein deficiency sounds likely. I've been giving oyster shells free-choice and give them mealworms as treats daily. They free-range for about an hour a day. I have 6 birds with a ~40sq.ft. coop with an additional ~50sq.ft. run attached. Any other...
One of my 20-week-old Marans/EE girls has started sneaking up to the other Marans/EE girls and plucking feathers from their backs. I read that this can be boredom- or stress-related. She started this yesterday, the same day we got our flock's first egg. All 4 of my M/EE girls are ready to lay...
Nope. She's the first of my 6 girls, 4 more are ready any minute. The last one is one of the lighter of my two Red Sexlinks. She seems to be more immature than the other and survived a dog chase last weekend, which may have set things back even further. :(
When I grabbed the egg, she hopped down into the coop and sang her egg song LOUDLY! She was just as proud as I was. Or relieved to finally have laid the egg. :ya
First egg this afternoon! One of my Marans/EE mixes laid a teensy 1oz egg. I went to check on my girls and found Mrs. Featherbottom in the nest box, so I camped out by the coop door for about 20 minutes before she stood up and popped out her egg. She'll be 20 weeks old tomorrow. Proud Mamma here!