New quail owner, recently bought five hens plus a cage and would like to eventually get a rooster and hatch eggs so we can harvest quail for meat. But I wonder if people keep their breeding stock in a separate cage from their meat birds? I realize baby quail will need to be separated for a while...
I have two 6 week old cuckoo Marans (supposedly). Both of them are completely black, except for some white on their wing tips. I don’t have pictures at the moment because they range during the day and are hard to get close to.
I thought cuckoo Marans were supposed to have barring? Now I’m...
I feed my flock an organic, soy free pellet feed from Modesto milling. They also get fresh grass/weeds, and vegetable scraps from my kitchen. My other birds seem healthy and are laying, so I don’t know why she would have adverse effects with her diet 🤷♀️
I processed a RIR hen today that had a TON of yellow fat in her body cavity. She was three years old and had stopped laying, and I butcher my laying hens that quit. It seemed strange to me that she had quit already, and she seemed slightly lethargic at times over the past 6 months, but no other...
Broody hen has accepted her chickies! Unfortunately, she accidentally crushed one during the night, but that’s just the risk we take sometimes. I went outside this morning at dawn to make sure she didn’t peck them again, and she was acting very gentle and sweet when they popped their little...
I have a Wyandotte hen that hatched a brood of chicks last year successfully, and she went broody again. So, I put some day old hatchery chicks under her tonight. She seemed to accept them, but she did try to peck at a couple of them, and even pulled one around by it’s leg. They are all cozy now...
I have a mini fruit orchard in the area where my chickens free range. Up until now, I’ve been hand watering my trees, but would like to put in some soaker hoses to save my time. Or, some kind of drip system so that I don’t have to spend 2 hrs every weekend watering.
But I’m worried that my...
Well, the mystery is solved! My OE laid the egg on the right, while my BCM/EE cross laid the egg on the left. They were both laid today. They have slightly different shades of green, the OE being slightly more on the blue spectrum. So, apparently it is possible for a pullet egg to be a different...
Hmmmm interesting. Now I wonder if the green egg came from my olive egger. She normally lays eggs that are light green, like in the attached photo. She hasn’t laid anything since last fall. Maybe she laid an egg with extra pigment because she just started back up again? I dunno, but I’m sure the...
I have a pullet who just started laying. She is a BCM and EE cross. Her first egg was a teeny tiny “fairy” egg that was dark brown, like a BCM egg. Today, about 6 weeks later, she laid her first full size egg and it was dark green. Is it possible that she will lay different colors of eggs like...
Interesting... I did notice what looked like a couple of small blood clots after the head was cut off. How closely do you cut the head off to the body? And how much blood should I expect to see? Maybe if I had an idea of what to expect, I can be more confident next time :)
I'm a first-timer at processing chickens. I culled a laying hen today using the broomstick method to break her neck. Once she was done flapping, I cut her head off and tied her up by her legs to drain, but after nearly 30 min only a couple tablespoons worth of blood came out. Ended up discarding...
I have three BCM babies that are almost 4 weeks old. Two of them are purebred (chicks #1 and #2), and one is half easter egger (chick #3). The combs on the two purebreds seem kind of large to me and their heads look pretty much the same, and I've noticed some play fighting between them. But...
It looks like everything is ok. Another one hatched this morning and it's alive and well, momma hen is taking good care of it. I guess that first chick was probably too weak, and the momma accidentally squished it
One of the eggs my broody hen was sitting on hatched today, and the baby bird is dead. I missed it because I was at work. not sure if she killed it or what. There were no wounds, but the chick had a broken leg. Could she have crushed it? Should I remove the rest of the eggs from her nest? I...
My broody Wyandotte is ridiculous... she never leaves the nest to eat or drink or poop! She's been sitting on eggs for 6 days now. Over the last few days I've been putting a little dish of scrambled egg and water in front of her in the nest so she won't dehydrate or starve. She won't eat chicken...