What did you do with your flock today?

[PrettyBirdRocky]

Strung up some veggies for the girls. I usually use hooks(plant hanger hooks) but ran out lol

 

[RebelEgger]

I collected eggs, scooped their poop board, gave them an apple for a treat, cleaned their waterers and put up some new perches for them in their run!

 

[RebelEgger]

I checked the store for produce scraps today and picked up a big box of greens. Slightly wilted bunches of curly kale and collards and trimmings from Chinese cabbage heads. All stuff the girls love!

I chopped up some of the Chinese cabbage leaves and tied a few bunches of kale and collards together with a big rubber band so it was easier for them to rip off bites.

I never thought to ask at the grocery store for produce scraps! I’m going to do this tomorrow! And I know th produce manager so…

 

[Smokerbill]

I never thought to ask at the grocery store for produce scraps! I’m going to do this tomorrow! And I know th produce manager so…

Good luck! At the store I go to it's first come, first served for their waste produce that they set outside. I start checking only when my supply is running low, so other people get a chance to get some free feed.

I drove down there this morning and checked, saw one box and walked over to look. There was only a pair of winter squash and a cucumber, which I grabbed. I cut up the acorn squash and tossed it to the girls. They're not too fond of the squash flesh, but the seeds are a different matter.

And yeah, you have a great setup for your chickens. Nice pics!

 

[kurby22]

I collected eggs, scooped their poop board, gave them an apple for a treat, cleaned their waterers and put up some new perches for them in their run! View attachment 3733650View attachment 3733653View attachment 3733654View attachment 3733651View attachment 3733652

Your coop is amazing!! #goals!!!

 

[Smokerbill]

I let my chickens out at 2:30 so they have a few hours to forage before bedtime. I walked down to the edge of the woods with them and made some noise so any predators would know I was around. Don't know if it helps protect the chickens, but it makes me feel better. LOL

Edited to add:
Evidently my chickens don't care much for being out in cool, rainy weather. After being outside for an hour they were all hanging around close to the coop, so I went outside and they followed me right up the run's door. I opened it, threw in a little scratch, and they ran right inside.

Now their muddy feet will be dry and warm.

 

[fuzzi]

Today was a bit of a rollercoaster…I went out to let the new puppy play and try going potty and decided to give out some treats since the sun was shining. As I went to each run I discovered that my one bobtail girl that I’ve been fighting with to quit brooding, is not well and has lost a bunch of weight :-( Then I noticed Willy, Aria’s favorite Bobtail rooster is limping and won’t use one foot. Then I found a huge cache of eggs that my kids had not collected even though they claim to be checking each day The “nest” was right next to the door so I know they didn’t even look at all. Then I sat down with my breeding cage birds and realized the boy I was looking at was the wrong boy. I had sold my favorite young dAnver cockerel, Fennel, by accident. So that was the straw…and I just started sobbing. We lost Alfredo too, our one black Watermaal rooster on Sunday…found him head first in his feeder like he’d fallen dead right off the roost bar. And yesterday we also learned my husbands cousin lost her battle with cancer and passed away. It’s been a rough few days emotionally and the dam finally broke. So I sat there and felt sorry for awhile…vented to a chicken friend for a bit, and then started dealing with all the issues. Just to add to the fun, when I checked everything at bedtime, I found a door wasn’t closed because it was blocked by wet muddy shavings, another one wasn’t closed because a bird was blocking the door, Parmesan was just out sitting on a fence top instead of inside her coop, Oliver was wandering around the yard, and the Watermaal coop door won’t close all the way and leaves a rat sized gap at the bottom. BLAH.

So I chopped up organic greens, scrambled some eggs with mashed up egg shells, poultry cell and flax seeds and fed the broody girl, I cleaned out the clogged doors and put away naughty chickens, and then contacted the person I sold Fennel to and she agreed to swap him this weekend for the one she was supposed to get.

Then I sat down and a friend texted me in a panic because she’s chicken sitting for her neighbor and came out to THREE bobcats feasting on a couple of the chickens, some injured ones laying in the yard, and a bunch more missing or in the trees So I spent the next hour helping her treat the injured ones via phone. These bobcats look super healthy too! Zoom in and you can see a couple of them.

View attachment 3732496

I’m feeling emotional and drained and sad tonight…chickening is hard sometimes.

I'm so glad you'll be able to get your favorite back.

I do understand a bit of how you felt. This past weekend I lost my head boy, Joel. He started falling over, then went into a seizure and died. I cried. He was just a month shy of a year old.

 

[fuzzi]

Always looking for more fun "run clutter" things to entertain the girls, especially when the weather's been so very wet & gloomy lately and they've been sheltering under the tarp-covered area and under the coop a lot. We finally had a break in the relentless rainstorms and the girls were out & about in the open run.

Fortunately the cheap plastic "shower mirror" I'd ordered for them arrived this morning and I wired it to the fence at chicken height, then stood back to watch the show.

The 8 girls all came swarming over to check out the new weird thing, but most lost interest pretty fast as they couldn't get close enough for a good look. Flock Queen Pauline the Buff and her beta/enforcer Jill the Delaware were hogging the mirror, staring at and pecking their reflections as if warding off new interlopers, giving the reflections "stinkeye" and looking annoyed that the newbies didn't run off. Pauline started peering around the mirror as if looking for the rest of "that hussy Buff Orp" she was pecking at, but only seeing the empty yard beyond the fence. Jill eventually left her to it, having decided there was no threat she needed to deal with, but Pauline obsessed over the stubborn newcomer several more minutes before giving it up to go preen herself on a stump in a rare beam of sunshine.

It'll be fun to watch when the others get a chance to meet their reflections! Chickens are way better than TV any day...

I did that with my first brood.

 

[fuzzi]

This afternoon I was in my kitchen preparing some cooked chicken for the flock when my phone rang. By the time I finished the important call it was getting dark outside. I headed for the coop anyway, with the treats just in case the chickens hadn't roosted yet.

No birds were in sight as I approached, they all were already up on the roost. However, as I stopped in front of the door there was a little twittering, then a flapping explosion of feathered piranhas hurtled my way.

The flock devoured the bits of meat as I retrieved one egg, put crushed eggshells in the calcium cup, and topped off the waterers.

Martha came up to me, pecked my skirt and made a querying noise.

"Sorry, that's all."

The Dominiques then headed back to the roost followed shortly by the Sussex.

Just that little interaction made my day.

 

[ChicksnMore]

Just got one chicken back outside and now it's Ferdy's turn to be in!
He fell off one of our raised beds onto paving slabs and has sprained his left leg quite badly.
At first, I honestly thought he might have broken it as when he first got up, he was squealing, hopping and not allowing his foot to touch the floor.
I scooped him up and examined him in the kitchen, where he was able to stand levelly and take a few steps. I couldn't feel any obvious breaks. I kept him in for observatio, gave him a bit of pain relief and iced it to reduce swelling. He ended up being in all day and overnight. We had a bit of a tantrum at bedtime when I left him downstairs with the cats but - as usual - he behaved impeccably.
He seems much improved this morning and is limping less. I'm going to keep him in again today as he's a bit of a lunatic outdoors, always jumping off and on things too high for a little chicken.
I've resigned myself to working with him on my shoulder all day, instead of just for a few hours tonight.

Poor guy! Sounds like you'll have him right as rain in no time . I bet he's going to enjoy his extra parrot time!