- Jul 10, 2014
- 8
- 0
- 7
Hi there, I am not new to chickens, I'm just new to raising them. My parents had chickens when I was young and I mostly helped with gathering eggs. Dad took care of everything. Dad has been gone since 1976. We (husband and I) decided to raise chickens last year. We started out with 6 silver laced wyandottes, not mature enough to determine the sex. There were 2 roosters in this group, we sold one at the market. Then in June 2013 we added 12 more baby chicks that we raised until they were able to join the flock. They are a mix but mostly black manorka (sp) and silver lace wyandotte. One of the girls is colored and patterned like a yellow lace wyandotte. Things went well, we searched the internet to find advice on various topics and found the backyard chicken site. I have been reading threads for a year but never joined until now. There have been issues to deal with this past year. More roosters to go to the market---we can't kill them ourselves yet, hopefully it will come. Our flock now consists of 1 silver laced wyandotte rooster, 5 slw hens, 4 black minorka hens, 1 orange wyandotte mixed hen. A couple of months ago , one of the hens became broody. We couldn't take her attention from it , so we allowed her to sit on 6 eggs. On the fourth of July, 5 baby chicks were born. Most look to be slwyandottes. Our biggest issue that we face right now is bare back hens. We have 1 hen that is in terrible condition , her back feathers are missing, some busted with only a tiny bit left. Her back is swollen and it looks painful. The chickens are free range and only go into the coop to lay eggs and roost at night. The problem is I can't figure out who is doing this. I have watched the rooster mate with many of the hens and although he seems a bit rough grabbing ahold of the back of the neck, I have not witnessed him pulling out the hen's back feathers. I don't really have a good place to quarantine the missing feather hens. I often see the one in terrible shape walking neck n neck with the rooster, eating and scratching and pecking the ground together. There are 3 hens that do not have any feathers missing. The rest do to some degree. I feed the chickens a 16% protein mix food from the co-op, they stand under the bird feeder and catch sunflower seeds and other seeds that the birds drop, we also throw that out for them. I just started giving them dried mealworms which they love. Also give them vegetable leftovers. My rooster loves cherry tomatoes. I read some of the threads by other owners that had feather pecking problems. And also printed off the list of things to feed and not feed. I chose the name squawky sue because I have one hen that is a loud mouth, she is so funny. She squawks after she lays an egg and requires the rooster to drop what he is doing and run back to the coop (which can be a long way depending on where they are.) to escort her to the group. She also has a squawking meltdown if I am feeding treats when she is on the other side of the yard. My middle name is Sue, hence the squawky sue.
and Welcome To BYC!
