I bought chicks in April and Frances was one of them. "She" has recently developed lots of pretty plumage and a wavering crow, which indicates that "she" is actually Frank the Rooster.
I live in Seattle and City laws don't allow us to keep roosters. My husband and neighbors are not very big on...
Yeah, my predator research is definitely secondary at this point. The first chicken lost was due to my own negligence, but losing the last two was a shock because it was *so* early in the evening. I'm fostering out my remaining chicken while I reinforce the run and hopefully install an automatic...
I'm having a similar challenge. My flock of three is now a solitary, depressed, lonely chicken who has literally never been without chicken company. I feel like I need to solve my predator problems before I can be a good home to new chickens, so I've found a foster home for the survivor...
I need some help ID-ing a predator. I've lost 4 chickens in the past 6 months. I have been assuming that it was a raccoon, but as I read more about predator MO's I'm wondering if it might have been something else.
Here are the facts...
In March, the coop and run were left open over night and...
Seattle chicken peeps - I just started a thread that might get buried - I'm trying to find a chicken foster home. Pardon the cross-posting - the other thread is here https://www.backyardchickens.com/t/827551/seattle-chicken-friends-need-help.
Thanks for reading!
Hello, chicken people!
I am in a sad place. Thursday night a raccoon snatched two of my chickens sometime between 6:00 pm and 8:00 pm. I now have one lonely chicken left, and both of us are pretty depressed. LuAnn is jumpy and nervous and droopy.
She also seems very lonely - she's never been...
We thought that our new girls had stopped laying for the winter, but it turns out that they just decided to start laying in a secluded corner near the shed. My son found the cache on one of his rambles around the yard and we brought all the eggs (18!) inside and I rinsed the dirt off of them...
Is her abdomen swollen? Most descriptions of internal layers include a swollen abdomen. I've seen it described as feeling like a water balloon. Someone posted a pic of a hen they suspected of being an internal layer, maybe hunt around or search for "internal layer photo."
I've been doing a...
I just lost a hen, who I suspect was an internal layer.
Age: 3 years
Breed: Black Sex-Link
Origin: local breeder (who I later learned had a poor reputation)
She was my most prolific layer. This spring, when all the other girls started laying, she didn't. About five days ago she started limping...
I thought about that, and actually looked around for information online on chicken autopsy (I remember reading on here somewhere that you can send an expired chicken to local extension colleges for autopsy), but by the time she died, I didn't have the heart for it. My son, who is 6 1/2, was my...
She's gone... she went downhill this afternoon, and when I went out to check on her, she was dead. I'm very sad, but I'm glad that she didn't linger. I was trying to decide if I had the guts to go buy a hatchet to euthanize her.
Thanks for the post, OR. I'm not convinced that it's just her leg,
I went out and gave her a more thorough exam, and I think she might be eggbound. Her abdomen feels swollen, and I think that might be why her bum is so messy. I gave her another warm bath and massaged her abdomen, but I can't...
My hen Daisy is not looking well, and I'm concerned. It started with a limp, and I figured I'd give it a day or two to resolve before I started really worrying, but she's not looking very perky. It mostly seems like a mobility issue. The other odd thing (to me) is that she has always been my...
Hardware cloth can be pricey, but it's worth the money to do it right the first time. I skimped on my run initially, and then had to re-do all of it when we had a raccoon incursion. Turns out that doing it twice is even more expensive than doing it once.