Weirdest Things Your Chickens Have Done

[Sylvester017]

I totally get that. I'm also at my max and DH has threatened divorce if I get any more chickens. I keep saying Stanley needs a couple more ladies and Gladys needs some 'big girl' company, as she's the only standard sized bird I have left. There's a re-homing day coming up soon but no dice....so far

We have a 7-yr-old Dominique hen leftover standard hen in a flock of 5 younger Silkies. Doms are good temperament hens so we keep her with the littles. She's alpha hen simply because she's older and bigger than the Silkies and she let's them know it but not injuring them. She chased off a cat the other day. She wants no intruders in HER domain!

 

[Will You Rescue Me]

So my rescues are hilarious! And I’m crying it’s so funny!

I was sitting by the pen watching as each of the hens from biggest to smallest formed a line and walked into the big nesting box playing follow the leader… seconds later my roo looks up realizes he’s been forgotten and goes to follow after, he gets one leg into the box and the hens get fussy, he propmptly takes that leg back out, turns in an unnatural way as if he were on a lazy Susan, and waddles cautiously back to where he was to look off into the distance as if he was having an existential crisis. I’m pretty sure I freaked out my poor neighbours when I startled cacckling! I feel you dude! I feel you! You just let them girls have their little girl time in there with their feather wands and hen related whoodoo! lol I was dying at the instantaneous regret and trauma my dude went through. Poor guy needs some friends!

Oh! And it gets so much better too!!!

So I go to grab them all tonight to put them in their indoor coop to protect from predators… I get my second egg and like the one yesterday, all the hens are sitting in the back of their nest box, then my roo is there keeping the near featherless girl warm by sitting on her like she were a chick. Then there is the lone egg again that them girls want nothing to do with… I like to grab my hens first to get hem safe knowing aside from the flood lights and motion detectors that if anything tries for them while I’m transporting them from the day coop to the night one, that my roo will be loud and let me know to come running with the dogs to grab tomorrows dinner if anything wants to test my levels of protectiveness for my animals. I get all the hens, my boy is not happy, super gentle when he’s mad and starts pecking you, you’d think you were just poking yourself with the eraser on your pencil, no marks, no pinch, no pain, no scratches, just a muttering roo that wants you to know he doesn’t appreciate being left behind. So I go to get him last… turns out my dude’s decided that if I’m gonna take away his flock then he’s just gonna go ahead and make his own. Went back for him just to find him trying to hatch the lone egg! I’m dying he’s the sweetest boy1 he’s also an amazing protector for the mini flock. When the girls are sleeping he’s front and centre guarding the entrance. When my one girl is cold as her feathers were near bared while at her previous home, he goes and sits on her to keep her warm. I’d naturally intervene if there was an issue but she will nestle up right in behind him until he steps back and covers her fully so it’s clearly a wanted behaviour. But the first time he’d done it and I was missing a hen I thought he ate her! lol was not expecting him to be sheltering her! What an amazing boy. He’s so quiet too, he will crow, but he’s so calm and after about noonish he’s done for the day if nothing is a miss.

 

[PoppasGrill]

We have Silkies who can be overnight egg layers plus they use the nestboxes to roost in at night. Silkies are pile-up sleepers so we can never close up our nestboxes. But we don't mind.
View attachment 3910666View attachment 3910667

Apologies, we only have one silkie Roo , he doesn’t roost either. He doesn’t go in the nest boxes but perched on the board beside it

 

[2 chiks n a roo]

Do you have a photo you can post? We bought a chick perch we used in the brooder but the chicks outgrew it fast and we're trying to figure a new one for them. Meanwhile out of the coop they use chair rungs or TV tray support rungs or bottom shelves to roost/sit on.

A video short captured one of our Silkies balancing/sitting on a folding chair bottom. The little chick perch is close by the water cooler & a feed bowl.

That's cute...

I've added the some pics below with the perch I made for my girls. It's 1 inch square, even my 2 old girls preferred this kind of perch than round. They walk along the top before finding their spot.

 

[2 chiks n a roo]

No roosters!: my seven hens will not go to the roosting poles at night, all of them crowd into one of the fairly large nesting boxes. This is causing problems now that they have started laying(they’re 4 nos old). Anyone have this problem and what can be done to get them on the poles!?

Another option you could try is a ground perch. I used this on chicks once they come out of the brooder.
All that's needed is a piece of wood. I've used 2"*1.5"and about 8" long. A nail and a 50 cm long 1" thick piece of elderberry branch. It works for all ages, it helps them perch while they can still touch the ground. I've got 2 27 wk olds that don't like a perch, they will sit on this though.
Hoping it can give you some ideas to help.
It's easier to hammer the nail all the way through the branch then into the block of wood

 

[Sylvester017]

That's cute...

I've added the some pics below with the perch I made for my girls. It's 1 inch square, even my 2 old girls preferred this kind of perch than round. They walk along the top before finding their spot.

Your last picture (BYC post #144 above) of your two fluffy hen butts on the perch should be posted on Fluffy Butt Acres thread
It's so cute.

https://www.backyardchickens.com/th...of-our-flock.1286630/page-19845#post-27925740

 

[cluckcluckduck089]

The large fowl ones tend to be dominant and aggressive. However, I hear nothing about the bantam version other than them being the sweetest things ever. Which I have to agree, because I have Ruby (a Rhode Island Red Bantam hen) and I love her.

We’ve had some super sweet full size Rhode Island reds. They have always been so sweet and adventurous

 

[Sylvester017]

That's cute...

I've added the some pics below with the perch I made for my girls. It's 1 inch square, even my 2 old girls preferred this kind of perch than round. They walk along the top before finding their spot.

I love how people solve issues to meet their flocks' needs! Every flock, environment, mix of chicken breeds has different issues. Our weirdest or most troubling issue is that when our Dominique hens developed Bumblefoot no other breed in our flock ever did!

The vet suggested the usual to make sure the yard had no sharp objects to injure chicken feet and for us to wrap burlap or something to cushion the roosting perch in the coop. We wrapped stretchy cushy wide Ace bandage around the entire length of the perch but the two Dom hens still developed Bumblefoot by the next year again! No other hen did!

Then we found the Dom girls did this a lot that the other hens didn't ~ they would sit on the narrow cedar board frame of their sandbox to perch or else sit on the cement paver stone borders around our two raised garden beds! That alone would irritate chicken feet!

SANDBOX CEDAR BORDER

GARDEN BED PAVER STONE BORDER

 

[SwampPrincessChick]

We’ve had some super sweet full size Rhode Island reds. They have always been so sweet and adventurous

Each chicken has their own individual personality, so yes large fowl Rhode Island Reds can be sweet (like yours are), but more of them are aggressive/standoff-ish/dominant than the friendly ones. I tend to get the opposite personality of what breeds are supposed to be like, such as my Cochins and Orpingtons always hating human attention, LOL.

 

[texsuze]

Bertha, my Little Brown Hen EE would approach pesky squirrels in a Mexican stand-off if they came into the barn to eat chook treats. With head bent and down, wings slightly up she'd circle them with a mean look in her eye. The squirrels were nervous!

And Penny, my BA, charged a squirrel a few weeks ago when I told her to "GET 'EM"! Love all my girls, past and present!