I have a 21-week-old Polish hen with unusually long crest feathers. Every time she drinks water, the crest feathers get wet, dripping water on her head, face and chest. She has a perpetually wet head. With winter approaching, I am concerned that she may get hypothermic. Can I safely trim the...
Help! I have 5 fertile eggs/chicks, in various stages of hatching right now. The mamma hen stepped on one of the chicks and extruded a yellowish-red mass from the chick's vent. I moved the hen, as she didn't seem to understand that her chicks were hatching-she was walking all over them. The...
We have two five-week-old chicks that were hatched by a 1-year-old RIR. When the chicks were about 4 weeks old, the RIR lost interest in them and is back to moving with the rest of the flock. The chicks started following a 3-year-old Ohio Buckeye hen who has never been broody and is generally a...
Has anyone ever started incubating eggs in an incubator and then moved them to a broody hen? If so, at what point should the eggs be moved to the hen? I have two hens who are often broody and have hatched chicks before but I think it would be better for the health of the hen to not sit on a nest...
My husband and I have 18 free-range chickens that we let out of the barn every morning to forage. They spend the day roaming our property, but recently have started going to our neighbors property. Our neighbors have asked us to keep our chickens off of their property. We have a 500' property...
We have an 11-month-old free range rooster and 15 hens, all about the same age as our rooster. Our rooster is very gentle and does an excellent jobs of looking after the hens. At night, we close them in the barn, where they have plenty of room to roost. Beginning around 3:00am, the rooster...