Illinois...

[Faraday40]

Oh wait I forgot to mention!!! Day before yesterday we finally go our first leghorn egg and yesterday we got a second!

@Faraday40

Slackers may have spared themselves. We'll see.

They've been in a chicken tractor again for more than a week before laying. We wanted to know if they were hiding them.

Interestingly all of my lavender Orpingtons that are also in the tractor with our lavender cockeral haven't layed a single egg either.

Pulling my hair out here guys I need your eggs to collect and give to the school to hatch!! Just lay me a couple!

DH2B is working ground as they plant peas today. Yummy! I can't wait for them to be ready!

Finally!!!

Orps take a very long time to lay, but a Leghorn?! Hopefully she'll continue to lay daily like here sis Tillie. Man, do we love that crazy hen! Tillie's going to another classroom tomorrow. She loves the attention and the kids thinks she's the hen from the book, Tillie Lays An Egg. It's like they're meeting "Lassie" or some other celebrity animal. She's so calm & friendly for a Leghorn. Not to mention has never missed a single day since Sept 2018!

Like the book, our Tillie does prefer to select unusual places to lay her eggs - mostly the screened patio, bookshelves, or garage. Locking her up and clipping a wing has reduced her little adventures.

 

[chickendreams24]

Yeah but our leghorns we're tractored from last year maybe July or August through until December and we never got an egg from them in all that time.

They're screwy birds lol. I just wish I knew which was laying.

At least they're much calmer than our brown leghorns we're a couple years ago. I'm so glad we got rid of them. Beautiful and absolutely batty.

We have a blue slate considering going broody and a couple broody chickens crazy birds they need to stop this nonsense because it's catching. I've been talking to the blue slate and telling her she can't go broody because we need more babies from her. LOL

Amazingly even though she sounded like a ticked rattle snake hissing she didn't show any aggression when I reached under her. That was nerve-wracking but cool.

My broken toe is on the mend it still hurts but not as bad.

In other news our great Dane freaked herself out on the stairs last night and froze halfway up after one of her feet slipped off the step. Just one step. She panicked so much that I hand to run up the stairs behind her and body block so she didn't fall. While DH2B tried to pull her up the stairs. I eventually reached out and put the foot that slipped back up on the step and she went on.

 

[BReeder!]

Forgot all about this until now for some reason, but one of our hens killed a mouse in the yard the other day. Anybody else ever had this happen? I haven't noticed a mouse problem recently at all, but one hen was in a corner of the yard and I saw her flinging something with her beak. DW and I walked over to check it out and found a mouse that I believe was rattled to death by the hen's flinging and shaking. We took the mouse away of course. I never witnessed this behavior though. Anybody else ever witness such behavior? I search the internet and found plenty of videos showing similar scenes.

 

[cavemanrich]

Chickens will finish off anything small they can. Lizards, small snakes go down like spaghetti. Of course you know what some vicious ones will do to baby chicks.... Just left in the area long enough after chick no mo.... and then there is no trace.

 

[chickendreams24]

Oh yeah my chickens will kill any mice they can get ahold of. Toads too. They'll eat them whole if the bird is big enough.

I worry sometimes about the toads but I can't stop them from finding them. They also absolutely love worms. Some of my chickens don't like worms though.

Chicken are omnivores of course so it makes total sense and anyone that thinks chickens should be vegetarians is in the dark and deluding themself.

We have several local farms that say their chickens are vegetarian free range egg layers. I can guarantee those chickens don't know they're "vegetarians" and would eat any bug/worm/mice that crossed their paths.

My chickens were intimidated by the rats when we had them except the bantam broody hen we had, Dovey. She took on and chased away a rat much larger than herself to protect her eggs.

When they catch a mouse they will run around with it and often tear it apart playing keep away as they all want a piece.

We don't often see mice but being rural there are field mice around.

 

[chickendreams24]

Thankfully I've never had any birds that were aggressive to chicks except a broody hen that was setting on eggs and a new chick walked up to the wrong Mommy. That was a bad day.

I have heard of a a rooster that would purposefully kill or even eat day old broody chicks. That would be a one way ticket in our flock. I can't imagine keeping a bird like that.

Also thankfully we don't have many snakes around here. Not that I am bothered by snakes but I wouldn't want them to be killed.

 

[Molpet]

Forgot all about this until now for some reason, but one of our hens killed a mouse in the yard the other day. Anybody else ever had this happen? I haven't noticed a mouse problem recently at all, but one hen was in a corner of the yard and I saw her flinging something with her beak. DW and I walked over to check it out and found a mouse that I believe was rattled to death by the hen's flinging and shaking. We took the mouse away of course. I never witnessed this behavior though. Anybody else ever witness such behavior? I search the internet and found plenty of videos showing similar scenes.

I bring them mice I catch in the house or I did until I bought 6 live ones I found in a birds house. Most of them got away from the hens.
They slurp up baby snakes like spaghetti I prefer to keep the snakes for rodent control
They will eat baby robins and such that fall out of the nest too... rip them apart in keep away before I can rescue them

I had the broody turkey hen kill a week or so old cockerel after her poults hatch. A bit overprotective me thinks. He kept getting 'lost' in the coop when mom was outside. Every day I would shag him out the coop door. He was annoying, running back and forth calling, 4" from the door half the time. Other than that usually everyone is very careful around babies, well unless they get in the food dish out of turn.

 

[Faraday40]

I've never "seen" mine eat mice, but that doesn't mean they don't. I did see them eat a baby squirrel once. There was a bad storm at night & many trees lost branches. I found 2 bald squirrels on the driveway in the morning.... one was squirming. My guess is the whole nest dislodged. I needed to let the dogs out, so I threw away the dead rodent. We have many squirrels around so I was hopeful its mother was near and would eventually return. Using gloves I moved the live rodent just a couple feet to the other side of the fence - away from the dogs.

The chickens thought I was handing them a treat through the fence. Snatch, run, tug, etc until there was no more squirrel.

There was another time I saw the same chaos and a hen was running around with something dangling from its beak. I jumped in on the chase & retrieved the item - which happened to be a possum's arm.

 

[Molpet]

Yeah but our leghorns we're tractored from last year maybe July or August through until December and we never got an egg from them in all that time.

They're screwy birds lol. I just wish I knew which was laying.

At least they're much calmer than our brown leghorns we're a couple years ago. I'm so glad we got rid of them. Beautiful and absolutely batty.

We have a blue slate considering going broody and a couple broody chickens crazy birds they need to stop this nonsense because it's catching. I've been talking to the blue slate and telling her she can't go broody because we need more babies from her. LOL

Amazingly even though she sounded like a ticked rattle snake hissing she didn't show any aggression when I reached under her. That was nerve-wracking but cool.

My broken toe is on the mend it still hurts but not as bad.

In other news our great Dane freaked herself out on the stairs last night and froze halfway up after one of her feet slipped off the step. Just one step. She panicked so much that I hand to run up the stairs behind her and body block so she didn't fall. While DH2B tried to pull her up the stairs. I eventually reached out and put the foot that slipped back up on the step and she went on.

my turkeys are not tame, so they strike like a snake.
I have 3/7 that are broody and 1 chicken
glad the toe is better
big dogs and stairs don't mix when they get older... mine refuses over 4 steps and he goes up on an angle

 

[BReeder!]

my turkeys are not tame, so they strike like a snake.
I have 3/7 that are broody and 1 chicken
glad the toe is better
big dogs and stairs don't mix when they get older... mine refuses over 4 steps and he goes up on an angle

Untamed turkeys... I feel like this is something I need to worry about with 10 turkey eggs going into lockdown on Friday and a toddler who loves to go into the chicken coop and run.