Texas

[Fire Ant Farm]

Delurking to share - My three cream legbar girls (now 3 months old) had their first ant feast!!! I swap out the waterers in their run every day when I let them out (adding ice), and some had spilled onto the ground the day before, attracting a little ant mound underneath, complete with larvae. I made my "food is here/treat" noise and they totally tore into it. It was fun to watch, some of the ants would run up their legs and they would run off for a little bit like they didn't know what was going on, but then they would come right back and keep eating (I guess they were too yummy to resist - not sure if they were the horror imported fire ants or just the other, milder types, possible the latter). They DECIMATED that little patch of ground, just in case one or two were left over. A massacre.

I'm TOTALLY going to systematically tote them around to my ant hills on my property, especially in my raised beds...

- Ant Farm (the name says it all...)

Edit to add a photo of Lissa, chillin' out with her feet in a pan of ice water. The watererer in question (where the ants were) can be seen on the right. They are getting so big!

 

[Susans228]

Welcome, from down the road in Keller!

hi Mavabird do you happen to know where I can buy some young laying hens in the area?

 

[cheepcheep riri]

No.  If I had a wild boar rutting around my area, he would enjoy a nice side slapping of 10mm rounds.  The biggest problem is hawks.  I have found some plans for a moving scarecrow that look interesting though.

Well we're raising 4 for meat and I think one of our chicks got in their own to eat their corn, this is what happened...

We found her 3 days after she went missing. The next day I decide to pull the skin up (to preserve the skull) and sew it. This was the end result.

We found her May 6th, she is still alive and new skin has grown over for all of her head except for the scab that is covering the skull that's smaller than a dime. It's really quite funny. Since she was our prettiest chick, her name was Esther. Well as you can tell she's not as pretty and I'm not quite sure if feathers are going to grow through scar tissue, but if she's alive that's all that matters, right?

 

[cheepcheep riri]

Do you think it was our pigs? I can't imagine something just tearing skin off the head and leaving it there, unless it was kept back. That's why I think it was our pigs. Any idea what else it could've done it?

 

[bnjrob]

Do you think it was our pigs? I can't imagine something just tearing skin off the head and leaving it there, unless it was kept back. That's why I think it was our pigs. Any idea what else it could've done it?

Feral hogs will eat meat - don't think they did that to the chicken though. That looks like a friendly fire incident - the other chickens likely did that to her and that is why she went missing - to get away from them. May have started with an innocent peck that drew blood, but the blood causes more pecking and they can kill their flock mates with the pecking.

 

[Mavabird]

hi Mavabird do you happen to know where I can buy some young laying hens in the area?

Being new to the world of chickens, I don't know offhand but will ask around. We bought our baby chicks from McDonnell's feed store in May; they may know of some laying hens for sale. I do have a beautiful young Easter Egger cockerel who needs a new home though.

 

[cheepcheep riri]

Feral hogs will eat meat - don't think they did that to the chicken though.  That looks like a friendly fire incident - the other chickens likely did that to her and that is why she went missing - to get away from them.  May have started with an innocent peck that drew blood, but the blood causes more pecking and they can kill their flock mates with the pecking. 

It's almost as though somebody to pliers and spreader her skin apart.And there was no fire either or hot things.

 

[cheepcheep riri]

This is her today. No scab!!

 

[jtn42248]

That looks like pecking injury to me. We have more than our share of feral hogs here in West Texas and, while they will eat meat, I have never had them go after any of my birds. They have done a pretty good job of plowing my back yard at night rooting for grubs. But, between my dogs and a couple of rifles we manage to keep them at bay. One hunter at a lease up the road from us got a hog that was over six feet when hung up and weighed in at around 1500 pounds.

 

[RustedOak]

Wow... Bless her heart. Glad you found and rescued her. Keep a close eye on her for signs of infection!