Recent content by GiddyUpGo

Thank you, I'll try that and post an update.

Thank you, her vent looks pretty normal. Up until this morning all the poop in the cage looked pretty normal, too. I gave her some Nutri-Drench last night and put it in their water. This morning there was a poop in their cage that was pretty loose and sort of an orangish brown. Not completely...

Thank you, the heating pad is on and warm, but maybe not warm enough? I've felt it and I guess I'm not sure just how warm it's supposed to be. The other chick seems fine with the temperature in their cage, and it's also generally pretty warm in that room.

Thank you, I'm going to pick some of that up today. Yes, she does look like that pretty much all the time, but she also has a full crop, so I don't get it. I didn't think a sick chick would still have a hearty appetite. Hopefully the Nutri-Drench will sort her out.

We got eight chicks just over two weeks ago. A week after that, we got a pair of maran chicks. One is a cuckoo maran and the other is a blue copper maran. They are much smaller than the other chicks so we're keeping them indoors for a couple of weeks until they catch up to the rowdy and spazzy...

I'm in California, Sierra Nevada Foothills. We get black bears here, also mountain lions and bobcats, but I never had any trouble with them.

Given that we've had exactly one in four years, I was thinking giving them new things to draw them in might not be a great idea ... maybe if we had a perimeter fence but I'm attaching this one to the coop itself.

Good to know, I'm going shed shopping! One more question for the group in general ... do you think a prefab shed would work? I don't know if I trust the metal ones, but maybe a resin or wood one?

I thought about that, too ... I don't really have an enclosed coop for them and wasn't sure if attaching a shed would be a good idea or not. I originally did not add one because we have very hot summers and I wasn't sure keeping them shut in a shed in August would be a great idea. But this...

I lost plenty of chickens to foxes and coyotes (during the day!) when I free-ranged, so I'm not sure having them loose at night is a great idea, either. There probably wouldn't be any massacres, but I'd probably lose a lot more of them in the long run.

Mine's right next to the garage, maybe 10 feet away. It was a bold bear.

Okay in my head the bear was a lot bigger than this, I guess that's what dramatic experiences do to your brain, lol. It really doesn't look that huge in this picture anymore (I've actually avoided looking at it since this all happened). Anyway, there it is with my doomed chickens clearly visible...

I think I'll add a floodlight to my coop. The bear almost certainly came from the opposite side where my neighbor's house is, so I bet I could rig a light so it won't bother the neighbors. Thanks again!

Wow, so many great ideas, thank you! I'm trying all of these. The bear was huge ... I have cameras out there and got a picture of it. I mean this bear was already so fat, it really did not need to eat 8 chickens. I'm not sure how old it was. A neighbor told me there was a mom with two cubs in...

No dogs, unfortunately. I think dogs would be great but my husband is very anti-dog for reasons that only he understands. I am thinking a floodlight with a motion sensor wouldn't be a terrible idea, though I'm not sure how you stop it getting set off by the chickens ... and I did once have a...