Hello! New chicken owner :)

Hi! I'm new, both to the site and owning chickens. I live in a house with three others, and one day we thought 'hey! Let's get chickens!' so that's what we did, haha. I've been around chickens before, my boyfriend's parents have several and I've seen them a lot growing up, but this is the first time I've actively raised them.

We have five. I have to double check with my roommate how old they are, but I'd say around 3 months. As far as we know, they're all female, though there is one that we're questioning. Mine is for sure a female, as it's a sex-linked gold, her name is Chai. We also have one Ameraucana, Wolfie, two Rhode Island Reds, Ingrit and IC, and one Plymouth Rock, Mumbly. Wolfie, the Ameraucana, is the one we're not sure whether it's a boy or girl. She's not any bigger than the others, but her tail feathers stick up straight and looks very different than the others. Chai, the sex linked, is the biggest so far.

One main reason I've joined this forum is that I knew that eventually we would need help, this being our first time with chickens. We got them when they were tiny, only about a week old, and we felt very lucky that all have survived and grown so well. Now, however, we've reached a problem. I'm searching through the injuries forum to see if I can find something similar, but one of our Reds, IC, has a scab and isn't behaving normally. I just noticed today that she didn't follow the group around the yard, and instead stayed huddled in one spot. I picked her up and looked her over, and that's when I noticed the scab near her tail. It also looks as though she's being pecked by the other chickens. The other Red does as well, though she doesn't have any wounds and is acting normally. I put IC in the box under the heat lamp until I've figured out what to do.

Other than that, I know I'll eventually have questions about their egg laying, but that's still a little ways away. Also, I'm still laboriously trying to get the cat to stop terrorizing them! He just sits and stares at them and they hate it!

Anyway, pictures will come soon Glad I could find a good chicken forum!

Oh, and I'm in Southern Oregon, and darn has it been cold lately, haha.

 

Never heard of blu-kote, I'll definitely give it a try! Pictures will probably be put up tomorrow It gets dark so darn fast these days!