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My most recent brush with Ameraucanas was in the form of nine 'olive-eggers' I purchased at three months of age and which were created by either crossing an easter egger rooster on orpington hens or the orpington rooster on Ameraucana hens (pretty good quality too--I saw them). Once grown, it...

You will get many more links if you search for this breed using the German phrase 'huehner koenigsberger' (chickens koenigsberger). The sites will likewise be in German, but it's easy enough to run the text through a translator and the pictures, of course, are universal!

I'm very glad that this story turned out well for all creatures, human and avian alike, and kind of expected your crafty raven would avoid the chicken coop altogether once he associated it with possible capture and being at the mercy of one of his--in his mind--deadly enemies. Very very smart...

Day-um...is this thread still running? Was interesting to read all the posts, though. Thanks, everyone. I still can't help wondering how some posters would've replied had the thread been called 'Is it humane to drown a mouse because it ate your chickens' feed?" instead of being about a cat...

Speaking of picking up departed raccoons...my 'News Of The Weird' book includes a story about a whack-a-doodle who likewise retrieved a raccoon who'd recently joined the ranks of the road fauna. But not to skin it, oh no, he wanted to have, er, a close personal relationship with it. He was...

We have barred owls and I've seen them sitting out by the road on the wires in the middle of the day, watching for mice rooting around in the ditches. Usually they don't stay long, at least not once the crows discover them! Despite their size, not really dangerous to adult standard chickens and...

I'm always glad to see potential chicken killers hugging the highway. But not as glad as the local crows and ravens. Hey, corvids have to eat too... By the way, I HIGHLY RECOMMEND that anyone who's got any interest whatsoever in road animals get themselves a copy of Flattened Fauna, the classic...

Not a pleasant way to go, that's for sure, but it's cheap and sure and quicker than you'd think...takes about twenty seconds on average. Yes, I've watched. You also can't use human experience to gauge what a different species feels. Humans KNOW what's coming when they get trapped underwater or...

They'd better be okay. My chief rooster's already leaping up nearly three feet to pull down all he can reach of this year's grape bounty for his girls. They're nowhere near ripe, but they're already eating them anyway. I'll second the interest in elderberries. Safe, but might make their poop...

There's nothing wrong with corn per se. I consider it the animal feed equivalent of pasta, except far less processed, and have fed it in both the cracked and whole forms to a variety of fowl--chickens, guineas, ducks, geese, turkeys and pheasants--since 1985 without any apparent nutrition-based...

About those toe hold traps... I recently read a fairly new book about the attempts to conserve many of Africa's predators, and the biologist who wrote the book was using toe hold type traps to catch jackals as part of a study he was doing on the animals. Obviously you can't be injuring captives...

So you got your rotten raccoon? In a bigger trap? I probably just missed it, but couldn't offhand find the reason why your problem 'won't be bothering anyone anymore'. I'm only asking because I'm always eager to pick up some tips when it comes to catching those smarty-pants raccoons who've...

Not the guineas. Sadly, it looks as though your poor ducks were briefly gripped, squeezed and shaken to death. The wound pictured looks like a fang rip to me. Angry guineas go for the head and peck HARD. Your ducks would be half-scalped if it had been them. (Not to mention that your guineas are...

How old are your guineas? Still just little keets , I hope. If they are, do spoil and fuss over them a bit while you can. They don't much care for handling, but offering a bit of mashed hard-boiled egg or the sort of very small-seeded mixes sold for pet finches on your held-out hand and letting...

On the plus side, foxes will kill mink! (If they can.) My dogs and I ran into a parent fox carrying home some food for its pups once very early one morning down by the beach. The fox instantly dropped its prey and started running for its life, and fortunately my sight hound was lagging behind...

The term also makes for a groan-worthy literary pun, such as the book at my local library named 'The Pullet Surprise'.

My experience is that a raccoon can tear through 1/2" plywood if it's the least bit damaged and would have an even easier time of it if it were chipboard. A double wall of quality 1/2" plywood topped with 3/4" plywood for the roof should stop anything. (Except a bear, mind...) 12-gauge 1" by...

I would like to think that nobody, but nobody would be stupid enough to shoot a bunch of foxes for their pelts when it's the 'wrong time' of the year and the folks who wrote those regulations in the excerpt just above likely assume the same thing, so... The whole point of trapping at the 'proper...

Glad to hear this story will have a good outcome. Typical battery-type white-egg-layer (commercial Leghorn), alas... They usually get kept in cages here and the brown-egg-layers typically get kept in huge floor flocks, several hundred strong, which of course is too many for any sort of pecking...

Depends on your prevailing climate and how well insulated your coop is. My gang is in a well-enough insulated building that, even though unheated, the water inside during the winter doesn't begin to freeze until the outside temp gets to about -13C/9F. In the summer, it starts to get cooler...