I have 6 chickens. They are all in some state of moulting. I have had them for at least 5 years but I don't recall seeing this before. All of them have some feather loss and a lot of weird reddish scabby things on their faces and combs. It could be scabs from pecking but it is ALL of them. We...
I have not seen any pips and I am on day 23. After the one healthy one hatched on day 21 (sorry not day 20 but I can't edit the title of my post for some reason), on day 22 one appears to have pipped but then died. I also picked up the eggs yesterday and scratched/tapped at them but did not hear...
Been gone for five days, pet sitter keeps saying there are no eggs. I told her, I have five hens, there have to be at least a few eggs... she says no, she's checked everywhere. So I came back last night to find one hen broody in one of our two nest boxes (which I'm pretty sure wouldn't have...
Hi, I'm out of the country for three weeks, and we have one more week to go before we get home. We have someone house and petsitting, and one of our hens that I'd just gotten unbroody about two weeks ago decided to go broody again, probably a couple of days after we left. Unfortunately, the...
One of my hens has really really bad crooked toe that did not respond to any treatment. It doesn't seem to slow her down (however I do need to trim her nails on that foot- you will see in the photo). I only mention this because I don't know if this could be related or not. Right now I think not...
When I was a kid I lived in the suburbs in Northern California. One day a white chicken flew over our fence and ended up in our yard. My dad thought it might have belonged to someone down the street who had chickens but they said it wasn't theirs. We never found out whose chicken it was so we...
I will try and post a photo, but I've looked at a bunch of pictures of gleet and in those photos you can tell something is obviously infected...its yellowy and pretty gross. Also, supposedly it smells like a dead thing too.
With my 2 year old hen, her vent looks fine (normal) but she seems...
I incorporated a lot of things from these forums, so thank you very much :) The roost is above a manure tray filled with Sweet PDZ. The lanterns are turn-of-the-century Mason jars. I put battery operated candles that have a timer so they go on every night at the same time automatically). The...
I have four pullets that I moved into the bigger coop a couple of days ago. I just moved my two adult hens in with them. During my doing this, both the pullets and the hens woke up. I put the hens next to the pullets on the ground (that's where the pullets sleep, and the hens have been sleeping...
A couple of days ago, one of my pullets started shaking her head, kind of like a horse whinnying, if that makes sense. It happens every couple of minutes. She is getting close to laying, and initially I thought she'd been pecked in the head as I could see where she'd been pecked near her beak...
I have a combined coop/run (open design) where the roost is in the back about 1 foot from the back wall -the front wall is six feet from the roost. I put the chickens (pullets) who have not had a lot of chance to roost previously on the roost to get them used to it, but when they fly down they...
I have 4 point of lay (but not yet laying -they look close though) pullets and 2 older hens (2 years old) they are in separate coops. During the day I have put the pullets in a little baby yard covered with chicken wire, and let the hens free range, and they seem to have gotten used to each...
We built our combined coop/run (we live in a warm climate, so its really like an enclosed aviary- the front 2 feet is hardware cloth, the last three feet is enclosed) on concrete pavers, which I thought would be secure but then someone told me that a digging raccoon can push the pavers up...
We have our nest boxes about 3' up off the ground, and I want to put a 1" (about the same size as a 2 x 2) branch in front so that the birds have something to fly up to to get in. How far from the cutout do I need to mount it? 2"?
We hired a contractor that we've been working with for the last 8 years. He's always done great work, but he's a little bit touchy to work with- let's say you have to be very careful how you tell him things. So I hired him to build a walk in coop/run combo. I don't think he likes the project, he...
The exterior will be painted, and originally we were going to paint the inside too, but then it looked nice with just the plain pine boards, so we decided not to paint it (for now, figuring we can always change our minds later). Please note that we live in a hot climate (Southern California) and...
We put down concrete 12" x 12" x 2" pavers for the floor of a combined coop and run (we live in a hot climate so we didn't build a separate coop). After building the heavy structure on top of the pavers, a critter exclusion specialist told me raccoons can still dig into the coop and lift pavers...