Checking-In On Peeps - Post Here To Say Hello!

[ronott1]

Hey y'all! It has been a really long time since I've logged in, and I just saw the notif from nifty-chicken about this channel.

I recently got new trees, and my girls are loving the shade! They're all doing well, and my youngest has finally started laying, although all her shells are weak and most of her eggs break. She also laid a softie, and I'm not sure what's wrong- she gets a ton of calcium and none of my other girls have issues laying. I wonder if it's stress?

She fell into the pond the other day and was not happy View attachment 3871670

My crevecoeur is still the sweetest girl ever, but she keeps digging up my garden... (along with her sidekick, cleo, of course)

My eldest, Henny Penny, is 4 and still as gorgeous as ever
View attachment 3871675

And still as energetic as ever. I guess BRs never do run out of energy I need new training ideas- so far she can fly up onto my arm and shake my hand, and I don't know what new tricks to teach her.


I missed this community. I hope everyone else + their chickens have been doing okay! Have a great day everyone

Thanks for checking in!

Your flock looks very happy.

 

[Mojo1967]

We have such a vibrant community here at BYC... tons of active friendly members. Of course, life gets busy, so I was thinking it would be fun to start a thread welcoming some of our peeps we haven't heard from in a while.

If that's you, come say hello and let us know what you've been up to.

(if that's not you, feel free to invite peeps you haven't seen in a while and say hi to those that post here)

Sorry, this is so late. I usually forget to log in. Very busy with work, taking care of special needs daughter, 55 chickens, 40 quail, 3 labs and a pot belly pig. I will try to remember to log in when I go on the page.

 

[coloradolynn]

I've been soooo busy here. I'm trying to get my small (1/2 acre) homestead up and running on a small fixed income. I feel it is so important BECAUSE I'm on a fixed income. The cost of food just keeps going up. My chickens are doing great, those that are left

I had a predator attack a few weeks ago and lost two chickens. Two other chickens were injured but they've recovered. I've been a little lax in checking on things but this was a wake-up call. I'm pretty sure this was an aerial attack. I bought cameras but hadn't set them up. That task just moved up the list. I have everything pretty secure but it would help to know how it happened.

 

[ronott1]

I've been soooo busy here. I'm trying to get my small (1/2 acre) homestead up and running on a small fixed income. I feel it is so important BECAUSE I'm on a fixed income. The cost of food just keeps going up. My chickens are doing great, those that are left

I had a predator attack a few weeks ago and lost two chickens. Two other chickens were injured but they've recovered. I've been a little lax in checking on things but this was a wake-up call. I'm pretty sure this was an aerial attack. I bought cameras but hadn't set them up. That task just moved up the list. I have everything pretty secure but it would help to know how it happened.

It is good to see you!

I imagine there are a lot of hawks where you live.

 

[ronott1]

Sorry, this is so late. I usually forget to log in. Very busy with work, taking care of special needs daughter, 55 chickens, 40 quail, 3 labs and a pot belly pig. I will try to remember to log in when I go on the page.

I hear you! Time goes by so fast it seems like i am always logging back onto BYC!

 

[Pet Chickens & Ducks]

I haven't posted in awhile. I recently lost my lone duck. I've lost some chickens over the years to various disorders and/or age but have added a few new members. I'll add a few pictures of my newbies.
I've searched and have read many comments over the years that have been extremely helpful. This is a wonderful group to be a part of.
If anyone wants to guess sex of the following 4, please share your thoughts. LOL They are 7 weeks old.

 

[Lacy Duckwing]

I haven't posted in awhile. I recently lost my lone duck. I've lost some chickens to various disorders and/or age but have added a few new members. I'll add a few pictures of my newbies. I search and read many comments that are extremely helpful. This is a wonderful group to be a part of. T

Welcome back to BackYard Chickens and thanks for the update. Sorry about your losses. What breed is your newbies? They must be fun!

 

[Sablehaven]

Absolutely up to my ears in chickens and rabbits here! Most exciting things that have happened lately...

Well the mystery hen in my profile picture who has an entire genetic thread dedicated to her has started crowing and trying to feed the other hens. Fun times, she gets along with my rooster at least.

One of my least favorite chickens, my extremely feral olive egger disappeared for a while and came back with a gaggle of six chicks, and promptly tried to claw my eyes out for bring her water. At the same time, my sweetheart mottled java, Cerridwen, was very stubbornly brooding an empty nest. The chicks were removed from the olive egger, without losing my eyes, and given to Cerridwen, who accepted them right away and has already taught them that I am the magical source of all good things in life <3

No pictures of any kind, because I am apparently too busy to take pictures of anything...

 

[Lacy Duckwing]

Absolutely up to my ears in chickens and rabbits here! Most exciting things that have happened lately...

Well the mystery hen in my profile picture who has an entire genetic thread dedicated to her has started crowing and trying to feed the other hens. Fun times, she gets along with my rooster at least.

One of my least favorite chickens, my extremely feral olive egger disappeared for a while and came back with a gaggle of six chicks, and promptly tried to claw my eyes out for bring her water. At the same time, my sweetheart mottled java, Cerridwen, was very stubbornly brooding an empty nest. The chicks were removed from the olive egger, without losing my eyes, and given to Cerridwen, who accepted them right away and has already taught them that I am the magical source of all good things in life <3

No pictures of any kind, because I am apparently too busy to take pictures of anything...

Welcome back to BackYard Chickens! It's sounds like you've had quite the excitement going on there. Congratulations on the new chickies!

 

[strattao]

So, it's been a while since I posted. We regularly talk about how the chicken coop was easily the best project we've done.

Our coop has held up really well and has been virtually zero maintenance other than the "burden" of having to collect eggs every day.

We built our coop during the pandemic and started with 10 hens. 8 of them are still with us and are still regularly laying eggs! They've started slowing down and some of them only lay every other day, but still, we've been very pleased with them.

This year we wanted to get more baby chicks, but couldn't quite figure out how to introduce them to the rest of the flock, so I repurposed this dog run so they stay safe while they grow up and get used to each other. Or so I thought...
We got 10 new baby chicks in the early spring and once they were fully feathered set them out in this fortified dog run. However, I didn't fortify it enough. As you can see in the pictures, I put up hardware cloth and plastic panels to keep as a wind block. I added a perimeter skirt around 90% of the perimeter assuming that the chicks would only be in there a short while and didn't think it was very likely that some animal would try to burrow in that one uncovered spot.

Well, I was wrong. In the middle of the night a fox got in on almost the first night and obliterated all the little chicks. Or so I thought...
For days my wife and daughter were devastated. But by some miracle, one chick had escaped and survived (the all black one, my daughter's favorite)! We found her two days later walking around in the back yard with clearly a broken wing and who knows what else. We took her to the vet and now our miracle chick is doing quite well.

We ordered another 10 baby chicks, I fortified the attached run 100% and we've had no other issues. We're just waiting for them to finish with their baby chick feed and will be introducing them in to the main coop soon.

Having backyard chickens has been an absolute blast. We love it and now that we have a good pipeline for introducing additional chicks we'll probably have them forever!