They have a couple extra hours of light in their coop from an LED light. It comes on at dusk and goes off around 10pm. We did the same thing last winter, and while production dropped a bit, it picked back up pretty quickly when spring rolled around.
What should we be feeding them?
Yeah, I...
Hi all, our six 18-month old chickens haven't laid in four months, since they started molting. They molted back in the fall, but now we're seeing down feathers in the pen again, and they are spending a lot of time in their coop. A couple combs are pink, but more than half seem to be pale...
Separating may or may not work. I had two runty chicks who I tried to separate based on the fact that they weren't getting bullied away from the food and falling behind in weight gain. I put a divider in their brooder, and it made them extremely unhappy, to the point that they were distressed...
So, the heat index is going to be over 100 today with high humidity. I froze a milk jug overnight to put in their coop, and I'm planning to wet down the ground in the run. What else can I do to help out the chicks? They're 5.5 weeks. My husband is picking up a misting system tonight, but that...
Update on Penn, who we think has that double fray (fr) gene. At 5 weeks, her feathers are coming in and she looks less of a mess now. I haven't noticed as much feather breakage either, though she's missing some primaries that broke earlier. Her comb hasn't gotten any bigger or at all pink. Kinda...
So, our chicks sort of vary in age. Most of them are 5 weeks, but three of them are probably 8 weeks. We're wondering when we can move them outside. They're getting SUPER rambunctious in their brooder.
Oklahoma temps are about mid-90s during the day and 70ish at night. Our run has some shade...
The temps dropped here yesterday, and we took the opportunity to take our flock outside while we built them another brooder. We linked up two wire pens inside their run so we'd have an easier time catching them. We've got 3 Welsummers (two pullets and a cockerel) who are probably 7 or 8 weeks...
Watch for the comb and black chest feathers. Chelsea (now Chuck or, as we call him, "Chuckles") started getting a big comb and wattles and his chest is turning black. Our Wellie pullets have stayed salmon in the chest.
I'm not saying she's a frizzle or a frazzle or whatever. But I don't think she has mites. Her feathers grew in like that from day 1. No one else has feathers like that, nor do we have any signs of an infestation after 4 weeks of them brooding together. She's not itchy. She doesn't pick at them...
Don't think so, and neither does my husband (he's a veterinarian, so he would recognize mites). She's just always had feathers that flip out, even when she only had about 2 of them, and weird little diminutive wings. I think she's just got a genetic defect.
She has both cheek puffs and blue legs. She looks like the others, mostly, except for the goofy feathers. It's hard to tell what the comb looks like, because it's small. If you click on the pictures, they get much larger.
I'm hoping someone can help. We have a 4 and a half week-old EE chick who has sort of... never been like the others. Her (or his?) feathers are weird and kind of stick out; she's always been small and round; her wings are kind of awkward and short. She's not the greatest genetic specimen...
We picked up three Welsummer chicks awhile back from a breeder in Oklahoma. We asked for pullets, but we're starting to question ourselves about one of them. Here are photos of them on the day we got them, and here is a photo of the chick in question, who's about 6 weeks old. (The chick in...
I should also mention that we had no luck getting her to eat when we took her out until we brought a buddy out with her. She liked to eat with a friend. Go figure. Social chickens.
I have a chick that was tiny, with tiny wings, with feathers that poked out, too. As a bitty chick, she was smaller and rounder than all the rest, like a tennis ball, so we named her Penn. My husband thinks she was cramped in her egg and she developed funny as a result.
We put a LOT of work...
*bump*
I have the same question. We took ours out today and they overheated too. How do we get them from being air-conditioned chickens to being outdoorsy chickens?