I am so sorry to hear about chickens being killed by neighborhood dogs! What a tragedy for your kids and family! I would be devastated if anything like that happened to me. My condolences.
Congrats Rockn on your expected hatch!
8+ months not laying an egg and hubby says she would be in the crockpot.
My girls are doing great, we are at about 13 weeks now. 4 RIR's and we can barely tell them apart. Well, I can but hubs is having a really hard time. No bands are sold around here, so I used different color sharpie's to mark their legs. Funniest thing is when hub picked them all up I mixed up 2 of them, so who I thought was Leticia was really Dottie!! Oh, I got a ration for that as I was all, I know who is who even if you can't!! Oopsie!! It was pretty funny!
My son is here for the Christmas break (he's 35), but he helped us expand the run. We started with a pre-fab coop/run for 3-4 chickens but clearly it was not going to be big enough since my girls only get out when I get home from work or on the weekends. We expanded a full 3 ft x 8 ft with an extra door and decided to keep that run portion the existing previous garden dirt. Our run in the prefab is construction sand. Oh my gosh, they love their new expansion. We barely finished it last night before they went to bed so they didn't have a chance to explore it. This morning when we opened the roost door, they went into the new area before even zooming to the feed trough. And this afternoon when I got home there were two laying in the dirt taking a nap and two giant divots where they had dirt bathed during the day! They are so happy!
I wonder about grit. I talked a couple months or so ago about whether they need commercial grit and someone answered that they were a sucker, bought it and it is basically sand you can dig out of your nearby wash. My coop and small run are bed with construction sand, super course and the type you lay for putting down flagstone. I have a huge pile on my back lot left over from a patio project. I have never had crop problems with my young flock. I feed fermented and it seems that they peck at the sand in the coop. Plus whenever they get a treat (rare) apples or squash, it also gets covered in the coop sand so they eat it. When they are out and forage through my grass, weeds, rocks and dirt (desert landscape) I have come to the conclusion that they get enough sand, rocks, dirt to digest the crop. I got slammed on another thread that I didn't offer commercial grit as chickens NEED it, grit is their teeth! I understand the concept but what are all your thoughts about my chicks finding and getting all the grit they need from their bedding and the yard vs. buying commercial and having it readily available?
I ordered 6 Lav Orpington eggs and when the box arrived, it was crushed on one side.
I let them rest to come to room temp and got them in the bator. I have been candling them daily to see if they are growing. My light source is not the best, but what I found was that three were not viable. Opened them up around day 7 and nothing. The other three seemed like they were growing, but my light source was not great. Was pretty sure I could see the eye on one of them. Just candled again at day 9 with a brighter light and all three have embryos that are moving! I will wait until day 14 to candle again to make sure they are still growing. This is my first hatch and I am soooooo excited!
Cross your fingers for me that may babys make it to full term.
) "non GMO chicken feed, Arizona. I came up with the following and I am psyched! 
Big Sky? They are wonderful. They also have food quality kernel grains as well as milled. Next time I plan on ordering kernel grains, now that I have a mill.
