Recent content by ybmagpye

GAK! I have young Black Copper Maran pullets too. And today I found an egg exactly like the one you show a photo of! My first thought was also INSECTS! Then when the little pills would not scrape off, I decided it must be weirdly deposited shell. Geez, these hens are always coming up things...

I have two 2-year old Faverolle hens, one 1-year old-ish Americana hen and a pair of 6 mth-ish Copper Maran Pullets. The sun rises around 6 Am-ish now and sets around 5:15 PM. The days are in the mid 60s, the nights are mid 30s to mid 40, the cotton is high and the living is easy. So why aren't...

I know French Faverolles are always at the bottom of any pecking order. However as I'm going to be gone for better part of two months, I took my 2 hens to a friend's place for boarding while I'm gone. My friend has a Cochin buff hen with 10 two month old chicks. My 2 faverolles entered the...

WARNING: graphic and sickening story to follow. Yesterday a house guest and I were looking in my back yard and I noticed there were only 2 of my 3 Faverolles hens marching around. Seemed suspicious, but distracted I only had about 5 brain cells focused on my birds. An hour passed and my...

I just had one of my Favaerolle hens lay a snow white egg yesterday, and my first thought was, "OK, who snuck a white egg in there...?" Here's how I see it. The yolk goes down the bird's egglaying tract, and then the albumum is added onto the yolk, and next comes the membrane, then the shell is...

My 3 prima donna diva hens, Faverolles haven't laid any eggs since last November. I know it's a cold weather/hours of daylight thing. They tend to go to bed (roost) smack at the crack of sunset. When the weather went cold, they started climbing into the egg laying portion of their coop (an Eglu...

If the eggs were fertile and NOT refridgerated, there would be a minute chance they'd hatch - but it would be a miracle worthy of 3 wise men and a virgin.

This is a cheering story about a missing hen in the Bedford-Stuyvesant area in Brooklyn, NYC. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/03/garden/03domestic.html?pagewanted=2

That looks to be a short-tailed weasel. They are brown in the summer and go white in the winter. In its gorgeous white winter coat it is called an 'ermine'. In their white coat they have a beautiful black tipped tail. If you look at paintings of european royalty, they wore ermine, mostly the...

Totally interesting article about a woman whose backyard chicken grew ill, resulting in a trip to the vet's office. I'm sure many of us can relate. For myself, I have 3 hens and I love the darn things, they are my pets. But if one of them grows ill, I will cry and then either put the critter...

Thanks for the comments. That's what I thought, leave it alone and it'll work itself out. The weird thing is it's not cold here; we're in Northern California and the lowest temp last night was 57 degrees - darn near toasty, plus my hens roost in a Eglu which is thick, insulating plastic. I have...

EEEEEEK! When I let my 3 Faverolles hens out of their run to roam the back yard this morning, I discovered one hen has a black tip on her comb. Obviously the tip is gangrenous and I've no idea how that happened. Am I right or wrong to assume the black tip will just fall off, in the manner of how...