Recent content by Blueline29

Hi all. My parents have a tom turkey who ran away 2 days ago, apparently with a group of wild turkeys that routinely roam the woods around here. Today, he's back, but is acting as though he's in quite a bit of pain. He's got 1 wing outstretched and has a pretty bad limp. We're thinking he might...

So sorry to hear of your loss!

Thanks for the kind thoughts, everybody. I just spoke to my mom and I think we're going to try training the current crop of babies to sleep in a coop at night. The others are too ingrained in their ways to convert now (especially the 10-year-old hen); they've always spent nights up in the...

Stopped by my parents' house tonight & received the news that my beloved Buster, the only chicken I've ever really loved, was killed last night by a $$#%^&*@##$% coyote. They've been HORRIBLE lately (gotten probably 8 chickens in the last month+ ), but somehow I always thought Buster would be...

I don't know if it's an option where you are, but what my parents do when they catch raccoons or opossums in their traps is they take them across the river and then release them. That way, nobody's killing anything, and it seems fairly effective in keeping them away. We almost never have...

My vote goes to coyotes, the worthless pieces of %$@#, at least in the instance you found feathers. I lost my 2nd-favorite rooster today to them, and MAN, did he put up a fight. I think I found 3 separate piles of feathers, one of which looked big enough to reconstruct an entire chicken...

Quote: My parents have a feeder in the barn that all of the chickens use, but they really seem to like it when you toss some handfuls of corn out to them as well. They could all have JUST been eating out of the feeder, but reach into it and get a handful of corn to toss out, and they go nuts...

I'm so sorry for your loss.

Quote: That's what my mom does with pretty much anything she cleans out of the garden...they really love tomatoes and strawberries, but only want the beans if you open the pods up and toss them the little inside beans. Otherwise, I guess it's too much work for them. Ditto with squash.

I think one of the oddest things I've ever given them was Chicken in a Biskit crackers, and I debated for a while about that one because of the whole "cannibalism" thing. They also got doughnuts one morning; my rooster looked hilarious when he finally came up for air out of the center of a...

Quote: No. They LOVE these... funny to watch them figure out the worms. If you think about it, imagine a Hen taking her chicks around scratching up bugs and worms for them... It's funny--we only have a couple of chickens who are interested in worms at all; the rest come running if I throw...

Quote: sooooo cute!! what kind? Lol, I wish we knew! They're all mutts. My family didn't intend on "getting into" chickens; it happened by accident when one of the neighbors' hens ran away and set up shop in my mom & dad's barn about 10-11 years ago. Most all of their current chickens are...

DARLING baby pics!

Honestly, the bread and fruit seem to be their favorite things. They seem to like white bread the best but I try to sneak in some whole wheat just 'cause it seems like it should be healthier for them. Out of the current batch of babies, there are already a few who'll run up and grab the...

Ours also like things like cantaloupe rinds (they eat all of the cantaloupe remnants off of them), bread, sweet cereals that are able to be crumbled into smallish pieces (for some reason, if the pieces are too big, they want no part of them), cookies, crackers, etc. They also like regular...