Hi. My Rouen drake Sam became a widower last week. He is doing ok but is quiet. We would like to get him two females. We found a farm that will sell us Pekins, which we have owned before. But the farm also sells adult Saxony ducks. They are also a heavy breed like Sam. My question is what...
I have a pair of Barred Rock hens who are about 1.5 years old. They are a flock of two, separated from my 3.5 year old hens b/c they were constantly picked on. Well, one hen is constantly picking out the feathers of the other one. She has a big patch missing on her back, at the base of her...
My alpha hen Dora has been periodically sitting in the nest box, but when I go to check later there are no eggs in the box. It doesn't appear that she is eating them at all. Otherwise she acts normally and is eating and drinking and pooping fine. Anything to be concerned about?
I noticed she was acting funny yesterday and took her off to our wonderful avian vet. They x-rayed her and found an egg in her 3x normal size. Today she had a C-section and came through the surgery with flying colors. Four hours later she collapsed and died. She was the sweetest of all my...
My black sex linked hen Delia (she will be 3 in April) was diagnosed today with egg yolk peritonitis, poor thing. She stopped eating yesterday and I noticed she was sitting off by herself. Last year she had an impacted egg shell (which she expressed) and a resulting infection, so I thought...
I went into the run to spend some time with my girls a couple of days ago and had my 2.5 year old RIR in my lap and noticed she was shivering. It wasn't horribly cold that day, around 50. She is definitely the low girl on the totem pole and has had feathers pulled. Plus she has had crop...
My Rouen duck Ella is about 1.5 years old and had been laying good, solid eggs every day since about October of last year. In the last 2-3 months she gone from laying good eggs, to laying a few soft eggs a week, to laying nothing but soft eggs every day. I've given her free choice oyster...
I have 6 hens that are now two years old and they were all raised together. We spent a lot of time with them and they are very sweet and friendly. In April I got two more babies (both female) who are a little over 5 months old, who are also very sweet. The babies have been outside next to the...
My 1+ year old Rouen duck Ella has been laying eggs for awhile. Lately, say in the last month, she has been laying soft eggs at least 2-3 times a week. She lays an egg every day. I have her and her mate on Flock Raiser, and she gets some free choice oyster shells to supplement her feed. I...
I have a mated pair of Rouens, Ella and Sam. They're a little over a year old and Ella has been laying eggs for awhile now. They have a very large coop/run area with a swimming pool and plenty of space to roam, but when I clean out their run I let them out into the fenced in part of their...
I have 6 hens that are two years old and they are the sweetest things in the world. Three weeks ago we got two babies, and they are currently in the brooder. When they get their feathers I will put them outside. I have separate coops and runs (but I can open them into one big run if need be)...
I have four ducks that are about a year old and they have a large enclosed run, half of which is protected by a roof and half isn't. I have always used pea gravel for their run b/c it's easy to hose down, and I've put straw in their beds and wood shavings in the nest box. I had to take one of...
I have 2 two week old Barred Rock chicks who will eventually hang out with the rest of my flock. This is my first time using medicated starter feed for chicks. The bag says they should be on it for 8 weeks. Can they be put on regular food before this? My other 6 girls never were on medicated...
I have a mating pair of Rouens and two Pekin drakes, almost a year old. They were a straight run and I got the worst possible combination. I separated the drakes from the mating Rouens a long time ago by putting up a fence between them in their run. I have been reading about how at this time of...
My two year old BO just went broody a couple of weeks ago. We have no rooster so there won't be any babies but that's not stopping her. I have been taking away the eggs that everyone else is laying and she is basically sitting on an empty nest. A couple of times a day I have been pulling her...
My little Rouen female has stopped laying eggs in the last couple of weeks. She tapered off from one a day to about one every other day, then stopped completely. This is my first winter with them so I'm wondering if this is a normal thing to happen in the colder weather. She seems healthy and...
I have 6 hens and 4 ducks in separate coops/runs. In fact the ducks are even separated into a drake/duck pair and two male Pekins b/c the Pekins try to mate with the duck and she objects! Sometimes I let them all mingle together if I'm cleaning out the coops but it doesn't take long for the...
I have 6 hens, about a year and a half old. One (Delia) was recently in the hospital b/c a soft shelled egg collapsed in her. She did expell it but it was infected and she was on antibiotics for 10 days. The past 4-5 days I have seen eggs without shells on the poop boards. I can't say for...
Ella is my 9 month old female Rouen and has been laying eggs for quite a few months now. She has a nest box filled with straw and wood shavings and she also has an enclosure with straw. She had been alternating between the nest box and the enclosure to lay her eggs, but now I find them all...