So my chicks are a little over one week old. I have two in the brooder right now and so far they have been great. Seem to be acting completely normal. Today I was holding our little RIR and she suddenly let out a huge long clear mucusy drool from her beak. Almost as if she had spit up, but it...
My little 1 week olds are already trying to dust bathe in the pine shavings. I want to put a little bowl of sand/dirt in the brooder but I want to know what is safe. I have some colored reptile sand from an old gecko we used to have. I was going to use that but I wanted to make sure it would be...
We've only got two little chicks in there and they already have wet the entire brooder! We have a little chick size waterer thats sitting raised on a plastic lid but somehow when I woke up this morning all of the water had soaked the pine shavings. No leaks from the waterer. This happened all...
So I posted about this tacked onto another thread asking questions about introducing new hens to the flock, but this is a chick only question so I thought I would ask it here.
Our local feed store has some chicks right now. We are looking to get two new chicks to add to our flock of three. We...
Ok so here is my story.
About 3 years ago we got 4 chicks. We got the first two and then about 3 weeks later got 2 more and kept them separate until they were all put into our new coop together. They developed personalities and one of the younger ones turned into quite the bossy hen. Pecking...
My poor little gabby who sleeps on the floor because she cannot fly to roost and is at the bottom of the picking order, and who has never laid an egg never seems to get a break from her problems. I picked her up today and saw this:
Is it fowl pox? What should I do? Will my other hens catch it?
I have 4 hens. A barred rock, buff orpington, blue cochin, and a leghorn. All of them seem normal enough and have been laying fine except for my little leghorn. She is 6 months old and is smaller then any of my other hens. She is not at the bottom of the pecking order, my cochin seems to be the...
So I live in a suburban area and have a tiny backyard with limited available space. After researching chickens I just had to have some of my own, so we decided to repurpose an old wooden play house into a coop to save some time and money. The coop is about 4ftx4ft and has 2 nesting boxes...
Hey, I am writing a paper on urban chicken farming and am studying the costs of raising hens in your backyard for egg laying. If you could please post how many hens you have in your flock, what you feed them (commercial feed, homemade, kitchen scraps, a combination of things?), and how much you...
I just got my first two chicks a couple of days ago. I got them at 3 weeks old, but one is significantly larger than the other (see picture).
The little one likes to get under the big one, especially when people are around. We thought it was cute at first and thought maybe she was thinking the...
So Excited to go pick up my standard cochin and buff orpington today, they are already 3 weeks old but still super cute! I'm getting a big palstic tub to keep them in for the month, I'm also picking up some starter mash and a chick water and feeder. I have an old heat lamp clip that I've...
There are some baby chicks available right now and Im thinking of getting a standard cochin and a buff orpington but I live in Southern California and standard summer temperatures are in the 90's and get up into the triple digits on really hot days. Will these breeds be ok in that heat? I have a...
So my famility and I are building our first coop. To save money we are thinking of converting an old wood play house we have into a hen house. Pictures Below:
The coop will be for 4 or 5 little Hens that we plan to raise from chicks.
We intend on cleaning it out and painting it and have a...
My family and I are going to set up our first backyard coop. We have checked the zoning and we are good to go. I wont be able to work on building the outdoor coop for another 3 weeks until I'm done with finals (One of my research papers is on backyard urban chicken farming!) I'm wondering if it...