Recent content by MRquail

Thanks! I only toss out a handful in the morning for all 4 hens but I'll cut it out, and hopefully along with the calcium the problem will work itself out!

I am wondering if the one chicken who had the issues is actually quite young and is just starting to lay. I only have 4 hens, and I know my two RIR lay the cream colored eggs and my orpington lays the slightly darker brown eggs (I get two cream eggs and one darker brown egg every day). Then...

It is a basic layer feed, they get scratch grains mixed with meal worms every morning when I let them out to free range, and once a week when I do my weekly baking I feed them back the eggs shells but didn't supplement with oyster shells daily until today, so hopefully that will fix the thin shells!

These are the eggs I collected today including the oblong egg, tiny egg, and regular sized egg.

For some background info, I got laying hens from a local farm. They had chickens ranging from several months to 3 years old and I am unsure of the ages for my chickens. I've had them for about a month, and one of the chickens had some issues (leg mites and vent gleet, all treated and now cleared...

I just got 4 laying hens from a family member today. A few of them are a little on the older side. I am wondering if there are any treatments I should do just as a precautionary measure such as deworming, adding in a mite treatment to their dust bath, giving them additional vitamins and...

That first article was extremely helpful, thank you! I saw several things on that list that could be causing low hatch rates that I didn't even think about or realize would cause an issue. Definitely going to reread it and see if I can spot anything that might be causing low hatch rates with my...

Sorry for the delayed answers! I've been busy introducing the older chicks to the original flock. Unfortunately we lost that chick. I hand fed him water with Save-a-chick and food. I also left food sprinkled around the brooder so I knew he could reach that as well. I believe at some point...

Thank you! After that batch of eggs I switched to a dry hatch method and had two chicks hatch successfully and three more pipped and working their way out!

I had one chick hatch yesterday and everything thing seemed normal. It was wobbly on it's feet just like any other chick. However, this morning I noticed it was acting kind of strange. It shakes it's head and has a slight tremor in it's wings and can't stay on it's feet. It kind of flails...

Thanks! After posting I went back about 2 hours later and it had gotten out by itself and was running around the incubator. It's legs did look a little funny in there but after it fluffed up and I moved it to the brooder box it was running around and they looked okay. It seems to be getting...

Hi! My first snowflake bobwhite quail chick started hatching about 4 days ago. After three days and no progress, I began to slowly help the chick out, helping it to unzip out of the egg. After a few hours it had kicked the cap off but hasn't come out of the other half of the shell yet. It's...

Good to know. I had read several sources online saying 50-55% for the first 21 days and then 65-70 during lockdown, I should have checked here sooner . I already lowered the humidity so hopefully that will help and I'll have to purchase a few hydrometers to figure out outside humidity and an...

I did open two of them and they did seem pretty wet inside. This is my first time hatching so I'm not really sure if it was more than a normal amount of moisture. One chick did seem to be almost mushy, like it's bones weren't completely hardened or something. Does high humidity cause this as well?

Thank you that explains a lot! I did disinfect right before placing them in there but on day 4 the incubator was knocked into and we had one egg crack and start leaking. That explains both the bacteria growing and the saddle shapped air sac in the other egg.That one pipped this morning and...