Recent content by SamLockwood

  1. SamLockwood

    Cream leg bar not laying?

    Blue eggs are a shell color. Brown eggs are actually a white shell with a brown pigment on them. To get a green egg it's a blue shell with the brown pigment on them, so depending on a variety of factors the egg color can range from green to blue depending on how much "ink" she has left. As far...
  2. SamLockwood

    Cannibal Mom & Baby

    I've had my broodies hatch multiple chicks and guinea keets over the last couple years, and there's a couple things I've noticed: Chickens naturally practice eugenics. If they sense that an egg or chick hasn't developed right, they'll kill and often eat it. The same holds true if an egg...
  3. SamLockwood

    Training Guinea Fowl to Kill Snakes

    I don't know about killing them beyond a garter snake I found pecked do death, but mine have definitely chased all of them off. I haven't seen any snakes inside the fence in years.
  4. SamLockwood

    Rooster Aggression in Mixed Flock

    Roosters are going to be at their worst behavior from about 6 months until 9 to 12 months, especially if there's no adult roosters to curb his behavior. If you raised them all from ducklings & chicks together his behavior is defintely aberrant and you may either have to separate the flock or...
  5. SamLockwood

    Free range chickens

    Some of them will get crazy ideas on where to lay their eggs. This year I had a young pullet that repeatedly tried to make nests in the eaves of the roof of the chicken coop (which she barely fit under). A couple years ago I thought I'd lost a hen and she'd made a nest deep under the front deck...
  6. SamLockwood

    Question about chicken behavior during a stalking incident

    Unless they've been attacked by a canine before, likely they were just anxious about this big strange, animal poking around their domain. They do have survival instincts, but they only go so far. They have to learn what's a threat and what isn't, and what works for a good hiding place and what...
  7. SamLockwood

    Chicken making very strange high pitched noise.

    From my birds it could be a predator they see off in the distance, a noise they don't like, or you or one of the other birds is doing something slightly annoying. One weird thing about their vocalizations is they're often context-dependent. For instance, what people call the "egg-laying song"...
  8. SamLockwood

    What the heck??l?!?!?!

    Looking up the breed, they appear to be a hybrid. All my marans and maran-based hybrids have red earlobes. White earlobes I've only seen on my cream legbars, so maybe somewhere in that hen's family tree there's some blue-egg-layer genes.
  9. SamLockwood

    Did I get dealt a crap hand or….?

    Are they all the same breed? If so are they a breed that tends to be sold out a lot? It could be they're somewhat over-bred and the genetics are weak. I say this because my cream legbar hens I got from one particular hatchery seem to be prone to health problems: I've had three die prematurely...
  10. SamLockwood

    A problem with two Roosters

    Multiple roosters can always be dicey, and even if you free-range them every day and they have a big enough coop things can still get messy: at the very least someone's going to get a nicked comb and / or wattles and some pulled feathers. You need at least 4 hens per rooster and a LOT of open...
  11. SamLockwood

    Chicken making very strange high pitched noise.

    That's a low-level threat-alert. Either she's not comfortable with whatever you're doing or she thinks there's a predator somewhere in the vicinity.
  12. SamLockwood

    Thinking of getting Rooster

    Like the others said, wait until the hens are older before getting a rooster. At least laying age, or better yet 9 to 12 months old. Adult hens are much less likely to put up with a.young cockerel's nonsense. Otherwise they tend to bully and stress out younger pullets when their hormones kick in.
  13. SamLockwood

    Can’t stop flying over fence.

    Even with clipped wings they can assist a jump with their wings and leap surprisingly high. I even have a few birds that are agile enough they can climb straight up a solid fence with enough foot-holds by flapping their wings as they climb. They have more trouble with fences that arent' as...
  14. SamLockwood

    Extended broodiness?

    Some of them are like that: they'll stay broody much of the summer. I have some others that will phase in and out of broody for a couple weeks at a time. I have noticed the ones that stay broody longer in the summer are the ones that tend to lay more frequently in the winter, but if you have a...
  15. SamLockwood

    Cream legbar 9 months - egg strike.

    On the hidden eggs thing, you'd be surprised some of the places they'll decide to lay an egg. I've even had some bury them in the bedding to hide them.
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