My name is Erin and I live in Charleston area in South Carolina....you know, where the mosquito is our state bird!
My husband and I have 2 toddlers and we live kinda out in the country. We are very new to "chicken life" and OMG have we learned alot....Please forgive me, I cant speak "chicken" yet, but learning (feel free to educate me). About 18 months ago we acquired 3 sex link hens. We think they were/are about 3 years old. Great egg layers, everything was great...About 8 months ago we took in a 1 month old RIR rooster that was about to be homeless...(being LEO's we couldn't turn him away). Wow, he's beautiful and takes good care of the hens...even the broody.
Ok, well....introducing the rooster opened up a whole new chapter that my husband and I needed to educate ourselves on.....(what a cute little campfire dance he does before he mounts her).....So then we began thinking about letting the broody hen sit on a clutch (about 8 eggs)....WOW, OMG that was stressful.!!!!! Might NEVER do that again! Long story short, only 2 made it to chick status.
To add more stress, we returned home from vacation and found 2 hens killed and a bloody, tramatized rooster. We set a trap....just after sundown the dogs began unusually barking....low and behold, there was a huge, nasty, possum in the trap!!!!! Sadly (
) it won't be back! So now we have broody, 2 pullets, and one hell of a mean rooster!!!!
On to my current problem.....we don't know if the 2 pullets are hens or roosters....they were born November 6th, 2013 and are creepy big, gorgeous colors/feathers, but....not crowing yet, not laying yet, spurs not getting bigger. Our hen has now stopped laying!
Help!
My husband and I have 2 toddlers and we live kinda out in the country. We are very new to "chicken life" and OMG have we learned alot....Please forgive me, I cant speak "chicken" yet, but learning (feel free to educate me). About 18 months ago we acquired 3 sex link hens. We think they were/are about 3 years old. Great egg layers, everything was great...About 8 months ago we took in a 1 month old RIR rooster that was about to be homeless...(being LEO's we couldn't turn him away). Wow, he's beautiful and takes good care of the hens...even the broody.
Ok, well....introducing the rooster opened up a whole new chapter that my husband and I needed to educate ourselves on.....(what a cute little campfire dance he does before he mounts her).....So then we began thinking about letting the broody hen sit on a clutch (about 8 eggs)....WOW, OMG that was stressful.!!!!! Might NEVER do that again! Long story short, only 2 made it to chick status.
To add more stress, we returned home from vacation and found 2 hens killed and a bloody, tramatized rooster. We set a trap....just after sundown the dogs began unusually barking....low and behold, there was a huge, nasty, possum in the trap!!!!! Sadly (
On to my current problem.....we don't know if the 2 pullets are hens or roosters....they were born November 6th, 2013 and are creepy big, gorgeous colors/feathers, but....not crowing yet, not laying yet, spurs not getting bigger. Our hen has now stopped laying!
Help!
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and Welcome To BYC! Sorry about your losses to that possum. X3 on post pictures of your birds, roosters should hopefully be growing male feathering by now. Is your hen acting OK? They do stop laying for various reasons, molting is a common on, they will generally molt once a year, usually in the fall for older birds but they can do it at any time, also if they go broody, under stress like an attack etc.
