I had an accidental hatching from a hidden nest in my coop. These chicks are the last three survivors of eight (four were deceased before we'd even found them). I asked for advice about how to help them yesterday, here but now I'm sorta at a loss as to what's wrong with two of them.
They are...
The baby that couldn't sit up has died. I'll set up the dog crate and put the babies with the frizzle since she is broody, small and gentle. Thank you for the replies. Fingers crossed for the remaining babies..
- Emmi
Today just sucks already.
Looks like we missed a hidden nest - as we had 8 babies in the coop this morning - only 4 of which were alive.
I had a parent-teacher conference early so I grabbed two babies that weren't walking - so they wouldn't get trampled - and put them in a box temporarily...
We found these three tiny eggs this afternoon... all of them sank so I guess they're okay. We haven't mounted the nest boxes up high yet but found these on the ground next to one.
We weren't expecting eggs for another 4-5 weeks, so I guess one (or three) of my girls lied about her age.
The...
Sort of. They will stay on their roost if put there but have really taken to roosting on top of the nesting boxes. We are getting ready to add an inner coop because we have 7 pullets in the brooder going outside in just a couple of weeks and I really don't want to worry about them being cold.
Pecking themselves or pecking each other?
I had a chick with a deep wound from the other chicks pecking her... cleaned it out and applied antibiotic ointment (the one that has a mild anesthetic in it) and it ceased immediately.
How many chickens do you have? My suggestion would be to ankle tag them. Then it would be easy to tell the onery ones from yours.
Do it now so you seem proactive.
Place an ad for anybody that wants to round up the wild flock.
Your defense at that point would be that it is the city's...
Your coyote has found a reliable source of chicken dinner, he's not going anywhere.
Your options are to lock up your flock, put him down or risk injury to your family from an increasingly bold predator.
Just checking in..
The girls seem to like their new coop - except I think they are confused.
They roost during the day... and then try to hang out in the run at night - all curled up next to the waterer - basically in the open air. My husband took the nesting boxes down and placed them on...
Thank you ChemicalchiCkns - we were wondering about that.
What we were considering doing was adding a floor just above the lower vents and putting the roost up higher still with a chicken ladder so they can back up there (they seem to get down from higher elevations without any issues) maybe in...
We started with a basically useless-to-us structure that came with the property when we bought it - a 4-foot tall doghouse with three and a half sides and a fairly significant shade extension. This area housed, as you can see from the photograph, mostly construction and lawn junk - as well as a...
Before
After
We still have some other projects to do, related to the chickens - including an automatic waterer.. but as far as I'm concerned, the coop is done and the chickens will live there instead of my garage.
Unfortunately, now my husband wants to fill the empty brooder box with...
Old lady student here - freshman even.
Told my husband I wanted to move into the dorm and like, party and stuff. He didn't really know what to say about that.