- Mar 15, 2011
- 78
- 1
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I've been here mostly in the 'emergency' part of the forum.
We just lost my first hen who happened to be our favorite, Daisy. Has totally broken my heart of course as she was such a sweetie. We think she had some kind of underlying issue that was untreatable. Tried for 2-1/2 weeks to save her, but that's another story.
Before she passed away, we had 3 hens, the other 2 were gotten together, and as a new chicken owner we THOUGHT we had done our homework before starting out but NOT NEARLY had we done enough. Long story short, we introduced Daisy into the flock w/o quarantine (1st mistake) who happened to be just fine from that standpoint. Dodged that bullet!!
HOWEVER....we were not totally familiar w/the way pecking order goes and Daisy being the mildest/meekest bird was pecked until blood was drawn by the other 2 birds. We rescued her and had kept her in a separate pen... I know, another mistake....learned that one the hard way. But we would let them out to free range togehter and except for an occasional pecking on Daisy, she basically knew how to get away.
Now back to present...Daisy is gone and we have our 2 girls that we got together who are as of now vigorous and healthy (despite one being attacked by a dog 3 weeks ago because I left them out for a short period while I was gone, never had a problem before and found 2 strange dogs on our property. Fortunately she only lost a few feathers...learned from that and dodged another bullet LOL. She has not laid another egg since the day she was attacked but hopefully will again soon)...
So this brings us to wanting to get a maximum of 2-3 MORE hens for a total of 4-5, no more. I've already read the section about adding new birds to your flock...Will definitely follow those recommendations.
My question is...I would rather not get tiny chicks because of the care they need. Do you think pullets would be okay to get in my situation or would chicks be better?
Thanks for listening.
We just lost my first hen who happened to be our favorite, Daisy. Has totally broken my heart of course as she was such a sweetie. We think she had some kind of underlying issue that was untreatable. Tried for 2-1/2 weeks to save her, but that's another story.
Before she passed away, we had 3 hens, the other 2 were gotten together, and as a new chicken owner we THOUGHT we had done our homework before starting out but NOT NEARLY had we done enough. Long story short, we introduced Daisy into the flock w/o quarantine (1st mistake) who happened to be just fine from that standpoint. Dodged that bullet!!
HOWEVER....we were not totally familiar w/the way pecking order goes and Daisy being the mildest/meekest bird was pecked until blood was drawn by the other 2 birds. We rescued her and had kept her in a separate pen... I know, another mistake....learned that one the hard way. But we would let them out to free range togehter and except for an occasional pecking on Daisy, she basically knew how to get away.
Now back to present...Daisy is gone and we have our 2 girls that we got together who are as of now vigorous and healthy (despite one being attacked by a dog 3 weeks ago because I left them out for a short period while I was gone, never had a problem before and found 2 strange dogs on our property. Fortunately she only lost a few feathers...learned from that and dodged another bullet LOL. She has not laid another egg since the day she was attacked but hopefully will again soon)...
So this brings us to wanting to get a maximum of 2-3 MORE hens for a total of 4-5, no more. I've already read the section about adding new birds to your flock...Will definitely follow those recommendations.
My question is...I would rather not get tiny chicks because of the care they need. Do you think pullets would be okay to get in my situation or would chicks be better?
Thanks for listening.
