This is my first year with ducks but I've had chickens for a couple years. I'm surprised at how skittish they are even though they've been handled since they were babies. Will they ever get more tame or are all ducks like this?
Also they have been housed in their coop and the large enclosed...
This is our first year with ducks and I'm still learning about them. I have a group of 4mixed breeds that are only 1 week apart in age and I have 9 that are the same age but they're about 4 weeks younger. The size difference is very noticeable. Do I have to wait before I put them together in the...
Yes, your response was very helpful, thank you! I am reading that the smart thing and probably easiest thing to do would be to carefully kill the bird and then dispose of it. Sounds like it should be a simple thing but thank you for confirming it for me anyway! I have had chickens for over 3...
I have a rooster who has been quarantined for a couple weeks while I tried to give him time and medical care to improve an infection in his foot. He is not getting better though and the infection is now moving higher up from his foot into his leg. I can no longer continue to give him the...
Im about an hour west of Minneapolis. We are expecting it to warm up to the 30's for tomorrow but up until now we've had about 2 weeks of single digit or below zero temps. I think part of the problem is that all 3 had significant feather loss, 2 from too much rooster attention and 1 that was...
I know the normal advice is to skip heat lamps, but we just lost our 3rd hen in 2 days due to the cold. Last winter I lost 1 hen during the coldest snap we had. Losing 3 this fast really stinks and I want to avoid losing any more.
I remember seeing a heat lamp of some kind of that was actually...
Isn't it a bummer when that happens? Lol Glad s/he is recovering though!
I'm bummed because my injured hen was re-injured by a rooster trying to mate her. She's back in quarantine in my garage trying to heal again. How can I stop roosters from trying to climb on her? Would a chicken saddle be...
I'm in Minnesota so i don't think it could be buzzards, but I'll look up worf rats.
Today there was a huge, huge bird very close to the coops and chicken yard and it totally freaked out my flock. They were making a racket like I'd never heard and they were all trying to hide behind the coops...
Good idea about the radio and dog hair. I'll try those to see if it helps. We've been lucky so far, a year and a half with nothing so this was a bit of a shock! Now I'm afraid they'll be back since they know where the "food" is.
I don't think it would be dogs, we don't have any in our neighborhood that would have done this, and I don't think a dog would eat a chicken like that. Maybe racoons. I guess the weird part is that it was almost certainly daylight, multiple birds and the way that one was eaten. What would focus...
Sometime today from approximately 5ish to just about when it got dark around 8:30, we had our first attack and it was a pretty big one. I have to look again in the morning but Im pretty sure we lost 4, maybe 5 birds, but only 1 was found. The one we found was right next to the chicken yard that...
Ok she is isolated for the moment. I am not opposed to doing a humane killing, we will do that if necessary. I was just hoping to do as much for her as possible if I can. If you can see in the pictures, the injury is higher up to the left and is circular. That is where the maggots were. At first...
Sorry for the graphic pictures.
I pulled out about a dozen maggots but it was clearly upsetting her so I sprayed her with more Blu Kote and stopped for now. I will check her again in a little while.
God this is awful. :( I knew owning chickens would be tough but this is harder than I...
I have a young (12-14 week) French Black Copper Marans who was injured somehow on Monday. That morning when I let the chickens out of their pen she initially just stayed in the corner. After watching her for a few minutes she did leave the pen and then I noticed how bad her tail area was. It was...
I ordered some of the push in type nipple waterers from some place I found on Amazon. The price was great, I'll have to check to see which store it was. I really like them and haven't had any leaks. I've read that the screw in types are more likely to have leaking problems so that's why I got...