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I have four hens in a backyard setup - they sleep in an Eglu Go at night and share a big wire mesh run that I built for them during the day. One of my hens has always been neurotic. In spite of early hand-training, when I pick her up she shrieks like I am about to pull out her innards. She is...

Has anyone else observed this strange behavior? One of my girls is a fraidy-cat and shrieks and runs whenever I need to pick her up. Fair enough, but when she does this the other birds attack her! They never do this otherwise. Before I was able to remove my frightened bird from the run, my...

One of my favourite chicken activities is to keep some scratch or peanuts in my closed palm, sit in a chair in the backyard, and dose out the treats when my hens sit still in my lap as I stroke their backs. The girls get pretty excited when they realize this activity is taking place and they all...

My four chickens (my first) are now about 7 months old and all are laying. I have a covered cat litter box in their run where they have all learned to lay their eggs. Three of them go in their and sit around until their egg is laid - usually takes half an hour. The fourth chicken, however, who...

I have four hens in my flock: 1 PR, 1 EE, 1 Welsummer and 1 RIR. Three of them are quite content to just roam around and chow down on feed, grit, water, grass inside their chicken tractor. The fourth one can often be spotted pacing along the run perimeter for hours at a time. I have tended to...

Like many here, I imagine, I got my first chicks this spring and they are just now hitting 21 weeks. One of the four laid her first egg today! What I am wondering is, given that they are just now starting to lay, would it make sense to use artificial light to prevent them from going into molt...

Often when I let the birds out of their run in the evenings on their way to the coop, three of them leave and flutter away and one of them is then drawn to the part of the run closest to the retreating chickens but OPPOSITE from the door. It is some pretty difficult spatial problem solving...

I've seen some anecdotes on the boards about chicken vision at night, colors they can see, etc. I don't think it's been posted here, so thought I would share this recent work on chicken vision. In brief, the authors report that chickens have better color vision than we do, and probably don't...

I got home a little late this evening with the chickens still in their detached run. I opened the door to escort them back to their coop, but they would not budge from that run! So I flipped the run on its side and pointed a flashlight at their coop. Thing I noticed was, the hens would hardly...

Just wondering how typical it is here for people here train their chicks, and what proportion of them. Do you train your chicks, and if so, what do you get them to do? I have four six-week old chicks that have been keeping me busy for a couple of hours every night on various lessons (for...

I've raised my first four chicks to the age of 3.5 weeks. I was afraid I was never going to use up the 50lb bag of chick starter mash by the time they were old enough for layer ration, but their appetites have EXPLODED! They are still tiny but are already going through almost quart of feed every...

Hello, BYC, and thanks for the great forum! As a scientist (no, not a bird scientist), I wondered whether any of you also noticed the following pooping phenomenon: Every day I let my four chicks out in front of their brooder for an hour to chase some yogurt and be handled. Now, it seems that...

Thank you BYC - you have helped me raise my first four beautiful chicks to the ripe old age of 1.5 weeks! I am the proud daddy of an Easter Egger, a Welsummer, a Barred Rock and a RIR They were delivered by USPS from mypetchicken.com, which promises 90% sexing success. Now, while it is...