Hi everyone! I need some advice. This past weekend one of the two remaining members of my OG flock passed away very suddenly, and I am now left with one 11 y/o hen, Crabby, who has lost vision in one of her eyes due to glaucoma.
I lost two other girls to old age this year, and when there were...
Omg some liked this post from years ago :hugs
I still love my EEs so much! Since I posted this I added two more EEs and lost two as well.
Noreen died a few years back, but here’s “Doreen.”
We’ve been calling her Crabby for years now. She has the tendency to crow during the warmer months...
Hello!
So my old lady Easter Egger (she turns 8 this spring) has laid two eggs so far this week (in the dead cold of the so-called polar vortex no less). Should I be worried? I have read that laying at an older age can cause health issues for hens. I keep trying to tell her she’s retired but...
Anyone have experience dealing with gray foxes?
I heard a pair barking to each other in my yard last night and saw one slinking along our stone wall when I went out to investigate.
My coop is predator-proof, but my run is only mostly predator-proof. It’s chain-link fence with a chicken wire...
Hey everyone, just out of curiousity I was wondering if pigeons liked roosting together or if they prefer to sleep alone?
I raise chickens (I’ve always loved pigeons though) and they usually sleep snuggled together at night. But it seems that in most pigeon lofts the perches are designed for...
Hi everyone!! Thanks again for your kind words and support.
So an update: Julia seems... fine? The bumps in her vent are still there and have neither shrunk nor grown, nor changed in any other way for that matter. The redness did go away for a while, though it looked red again when I closed up...
Wow thank you everyone for your kind and sweet posts... it really does help :hugs Honestly it’s just nice knowing there are other people as dedicated to their chickens as me. One of the things I hate the most about losing a chicken (or any non cat or dog pet) is having to justify what you’re...
Update:
So I bathed Julia this morning and I discovered more “blisters” just inside the upper lip of the vent. I got one pic that’s unfortunately out of focus but you’ll get the idea. Again I didn’t notice an odor until I was drying her off, at which point there was a faint “wet dog” smell...
Thank you everyone for your responses!! I really appreciate it.
@KikisGirls I didn’t notice any particular odor actually. And yes a combo of de and poop, but none of the poop in the area was wet.
And then one detail I didn’t mention, when I inserted my finger the I guess “cavernous” part...
Yes she definitely has some dried poop around the vent, as the picture clearly shows. The white on the skin though is residual DE/permethrin. Could that irritate the vent to this degree?
Hello all, I’m having trouble diagnosing my old lady hen Julia, who’s having an issue with her vent. She’s an eight year old Rhode Island Red. She has been on the skinnier side since the beginning of the summer but behaves normally in every sense. She doesn’t lay much anymore and hasn’t laid in...
WELL I cleaned up their faces and separated one of them for the night, then switched her out for the other this morning. They both seem to be eating, though they're reluctant to drink. Each has one swollen eye though the foam has gone. The Barred Rock also seems to have some sort of phlegm-y...
This afternoon I noticed one of my EEs (about three years old) had all kinds of stuff caked in her beard, then I noticed her face was covered with blood and she had large amounts of foam in her eyes (see pic). She was perched on the roost, presumably to get away from the rest of the flock. This...
In my flock of 9 in Massachusetts winters I've never really experienced birds showing that they're cold, so to speak. I've been noticing lately though that they are shivering and huddling together in their outdoor run. The winter this year has been warm, normally we experience regular temps at...
My neighbors got these new dogs that occasionally get loose and cause trouble for our flock. We used to be able to free range our birds, but now they're confined to the run for most days.
I'm wondering if it would make sense to build a chicken tractor to keep them in for a few hours each day...
Every one of my EEs have dramatically different personalities from one another, which is annoying because when you go to buy one of these birds you have no idea what you're going to get... but I suppose that makes it a little fun too! I have some that are flighty and nervous and others that are...