About a year ago, I had to cage my chickens due to predators, specifically hawks. I have been told that the raptor rehabilitation center at the local university has gotten so many injured raptors that they have just started releasing them locally as they get well. Some of them are obviously...
I put an electric fence wire about 6 inches off the ground around the outside of the fence around the garden. It works very well at keeping them out. It's not particularly powerful. I touch it often to verify that it is working. It keeps other animals out too.
The hen house is about 10' by 10' with plenty of room to roost. We had 19 hens and a rooster, but we are down to only 12 hens and the rooster now. 2 just up and died this year and a bunch have been eaten by predators. We lost none last year. I don't believe she is bullied from watching them...
I have a ~3.5 year old leghorn who decided to quit roosting with the other chickens in the hen house about a month ago. She hangs out with them during the day, but then disappears close to sundown. At first, she would roost on the fence, and I would catch her after sunset and put her in the...
I had to shoot a coon who got into my hen house a few nights ago, with my 22. I went the next day to retrieve the casings, but I could not find any of them. Could the chickens have eaten them? If so, will they hurt them and will their eggs be toxic from lead on the casings?
I'm more convinced now that my dogs were not out at all that day. Additionally, there was a pile of dead animals this morning at the fox den, with several of the pups there with it. The mama fox is clearly killing animals and bringing them to the den. She is not particularly scarred of people...
He is a mutt. He was a rescue puppy. He is very submissive. If our chickens want his food, he will quit eating and let them have it. When we got a very young rescue kitten, he basically mothered it - licked her until she starting cleaning herself and let her sleep on him. He just doesn't...
I've remedied my dog getting out - my children letting him out. If it was my dog, I'd gladly replace their chickens or pay them for them. But prosecution? Really???
Something killed about 20 of my neighbor's chickens without eating them. Their property backs up to a state park. I have a ~35 pound 2-yr old mutt. He is very timid and I regularly leave him with my chickens all day, even for days at a time when I'm on travel (someone comes and feeds him over...
Well I haven't gotten around to getting a night light yet for my hens, and some of them have started laying again without it. With 18 hens (19 before a hawk got one last Friday), I'm getting about 1 or 2 eggs a day now.
I am considering installing an LED light in my henhouse on a timer so that my chickens will continue laying over the winter. Does anyone have experience in doing this? I've read that LED light has less red than incandescent bulb light; so I wonder if that might be a problem. My chickens are...
It's actually been unusually cold here: 19F one morning this week. We are getting a little over 10 hours of sunlight here right now. Even in June, we only get a little over 14 hours max, this far south. Most of the hens lay in the boxes in the hen house, although one or two sometimes lay...
We have 19 hens and a rooster. We purchased chicks in June of 2013 and started getting eggs around Thanksgiving of last year. For a few months in the winter and spring, we were getting about 12-15 eggs a day. That started decreasing around June. Now we might get an egg a week. I realize...
We are having a lot of snakes this year. I shot a copperhead in the head in July. Then we had a water moccasin eating eggs by the henhouse a few weeks later - it got away. We are constantly having rat snakes (at least 3 different ones) eating the eggs - where we get almost no eggs now. We...