Search results for query: *

Oh no, I’m so sorry. 😢

Your family may think you’re crazy, but this forum is full of e̶n̶a̶b̶l̶e̶r̶s̶ supporters! 😂

If the rest of your flock is still going outside in the winter, the broody buster cage can be outside too. (If they don’t, then nevermind. :p)

I don’t have any advice for you, just lots & lots of sympathy. We just lost a hen to similar-sounding symptoms. I hope yours pulls through! 🤞

Hello from Seattle! When we finally have in-person socializing back to normal again, I look forward to meeting some local chicken folk. :)

We’ll be ordering some hatching eggs from a local breeder again in the spring, but we will wait for a hen to go broody first. At which point we’ll madly rush to order whatever the local breeder has available at the time! :)

We couldn’t find anyone to take him in the few days since he started crowing regularly, no. It’s illegal to have roosters where we are, so we aren’t willing to spend days/weeks vetting & coordinating with internet strangers. And no one in our personal network is A) allowed to have roosters, or...

Alas, no takers for our rooster, so stewpot it is. It's sad timing because, unrelatedly, we just lost our Australorp, but such is life sometimes.

Trying to find a silver lining here… We had a flock of 8 chickens, the maximum legally allowed in Seattle. With the 'Lorp this morning and our cockerel later today :hit removed from the flock, at least we'll have room to get more chicks in the spring…

If the flock is allowed to go outside at all, isn't it essentially impossible to have "biosecurity" because wild birds, squirrels, mice, etc can all pass along disease to your flock? :hmm

My sympathies that you've gone through something similar. :( If we didn't hope to get some test results from the state lab, we'd do a home necropsy too, to look for obvious visible things like that. (We never did feel any hard lumps or distended abdomen, but who knows.) Thank you. She was...

Sad update: the Australorp died early this morning. She never did develop any signs or symptoms beyond extreme lethargy. We will try to send the body to get a necropsy test done — but apparently creating an account with the state lab involves a manual approval step, so it may or may not happen...

Hi there! I just came across your thread here, and I'm really enjoy it! We're in Seattle as well, so it's nice to see others in the PNW. :) We just raised our first set of 4 Cornish Crosses this year. The oldest/biggest one weighed in at 16 lbs dressed!! We are, in fact, going to eat that bird...

Seconding the "technique" of actually severing the head, not just slicing the jugular. You can be 100% certain they are dead when the head is removed, y'know? We prefer a simple axe to do the deed.

Here's an update from my husband, who let the chickens out this morning. On the negative side: still quiet (when we don't interact with her) and "not right" comb "shrunken" scraggly feathers (although it is molting time…) hiding in the nesting box again not interested in food (at least while...

I read more about coffee grounds and chickens, and it sounds like the primary concern is caffeine. But my coffee grounds are actually decaf! So that’s a relief... Also, caffeine would be out of her system long ago; as I said, it’s been a week now. Which is both good and bad news, obviously…...

My husband checked her crop tonight when he locked up the coop. He says she hadn't eaten much but it definitely wasn't hard or impacted in any way. (And he regularly does feel the chicken’s crops, so he knows what “normal” feels like for them. I trust his observations.) So that seems like a dead...

Thanks for the reply! There are certainly little puddles in the yard here and there — we live in Seattle and it’s fall, so that’s impossible to avoid. Not big stagnant ponds or anything like that, though. There are (a small amount of) coffee grounds in a compost pile they can scratch around...

Thank you for explaining what you looked at to decide! It’s helpful for the rest of us to learn. :)

We have an Australorp hen who’s never given us any trouble since we got her as a pullet in the spring. But starting last week, she started hiding in the same corner all day, not interacting with the rest of the flock (and they seem to ignore her too), not leaving the coop on her own in the...