Good spring to all! I have enjoyed gleaning information from your website for quite some time and have found it extremely helpful to my wife and I. We live in a fairly rural area and decided a little over a year ago that we wanted some hens for laying. I built a coop, we bought three chicks and have sucessfully managed to keep them alive for a year now. We have received more relaxation and enjoyment from them than we ever considered a possibility. We have many hawks in this area and cannot feel comfortable letting them roam the area so we found that letting them out for 15 to 20 minutes before they want to roost works well for us. We rarely see hawks out that late and they are very punctual it going to roost. I think we all look forward to our nightly "chicken runs". To date we have been very lucky. We have had no sickness or problems beyond on of the chicks was nearly pecked to death by the other two. We separated it until it healed and reintroduced it to the main coop with no further problems. I choose to go ahead and register because I have a question that I cannot seem to find a direct answer to. We have been feeding all kinds of scrap garden greens to the chickens and they seem to really like them. I see where there a people who say that things like garlic can enter the taste of the eggs but what I can't seems to find is the answer to the question...Is there anything that they should NEVER eat? I'm obviously not talking about rat poison or the like, but any natural item that is bad for them. Are they an animal that instinctively knows not to eat something? I know they really like the green leaves that are culled from various lettuces and cabbages. I don't want to hurt them through my ignorance. Thank you for all of the information you have posted on your site. It certainly has been invaluable to us in this indeavor. By the way...Barred Plymoth Rocks and two to three large/jumbo eggs every day.
Dave
Dave
