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Love the pics!!

I just adopted 2 ex-battery hens yesterday. Dirty and threadbare looking white hens with large pale pink combs. The combs will shrink and get brighter eventually. They came from the battery farm yesterday morning and I am amazed by how feisty they are but that's a chicken for you! They are not...

Shade cloth or fencing over the run. I am working out how to do that (there are lots of trees in our run) . The CDs flash in the sunlight and can scare birds off, so you should make long strings of them and hang them up wherever they will catch the sun. Chickens are quite clever at hiding...

Polish are awesome egg layers. Sure, the eggs are a bit smaller, but after a couple of years some of my other girls are laying small eggs too and the Polish's eggs are staying the same size.

They don't usually lay eggs when broody. Their energy all goes to sitting without having to eat or drink much.

Aww he is a beauty!

(cross posted from Predators section, just for follow-up. Some things refer to things I wrote in that thread. I hope this is ok, am still very much a newbie here) Update: I had to put her down tonight. I am writing down some brief observations just in case it helps anyone else to come to a...

Update: I had to put her down tonight. I am writing down some brief observations just in case it helps anyone else to come to a decision in these circumstances. The predator attack definitely caused bad nerve damage that left her unable to control her movements properly. She would never have...

Nerve damage is now pretty much a definite. Thanks Debbi. My hen made it through the night and this morning she was opening her eyes. I gave her some water (she complained at me) and I then went to work for 2 hours. When I got back she was sitting normally for a hen (legs folded under her)...

They really are creatures of habit so keeping them in the coop for a couple of weeks is probably the best idea. Hopefully they are still young enough to learn. I put mine in their coop during the day in nice weather when they were quite little (some RIRs and some Polish bantams). I left a...

My Polishes lay a couple of eggs a week, my mom says they're delicious hardboiled. They also scream about it pretty loudly.

Which only goes to show that when a hen really wants to be a mama, she just might find a way. Anybody who has ever met a broody hen will know that they are pretty much unstoppable.

I had two broody hens literally take turns with a clutch of eggs. Once the first egg hatched, I declared the one who was sitting at the time the "winner" and moved her into the brooding box.

Aww that is so sweet! They might not like the other grit if they are not used to it. They are probably just used to eating laying pellets. Do you feed their eggshells back to them? I smash them up into tiny bits and put them where the hens can eat them if they want to. I have seen them literally...

One of my hens got attacked by a falcon-type bird today (I did make a thread about it) and she also won't open her eyes, although I can't see any injury there. She opened her eyes for a split second when I was feeding her just now so I know she can. She is lying down though, she can't seem to...

It's normal behaviour, he will do this when he mounts a girl. If you don't want a mean rooster, pick him up regularly and cuddle him and tell him how cute he is. I even turn my roo over onto his back some times, just to show him that I am the big boss. That is the main thing, if a roo feels that...

Soft food until the beak gets better! He won't want to eat because it hurts. Soft cooked veg (like baby food)/porridge/yoghurt) is worth a try. Try saline solution as a disinfectant. Just pour it over, it won't hurt.

I prefer to keep my Polishes separate because they get bullied by the others. My rooster had absolutely no crest at all until I separated them. Now he has a lovely Rod Stewart hairstyle. I have noticed that even Polishes will peck other Polishes on their heads :( I don't know if pulling the...