Recent content by eggspletive!

Thank you for this very helpful information!

I've got five 3-month old hens and am noticing a lot of feathers on the ground and in the henhouse. Maybe a couple dozen, maybe a little more. I spend a lot of time observing them every day and I never see them pecking at each other. I can tell from the feathers that they're from all the birds...

My chicks were mailed yesterday and were not on today's truck, so presumably they'll be here tomorrow. It's a shipment of 8 chicks from Meyer, so they'll have a heat pack, but will it still be working by then? Is it normal to take two days to get here? Should I be bracing myself for dead chicks?

Our coop is inside a run that is totally secure on all six sides. Do I have to close the chicken door to the coop at night if it's not that cold out? Or must I close it to eliminate drafts? The coop is 3 x 5.

Adorable! But I am curious--it looks like the air holes in the box were covered by a label or something--?

Yes, she's limping, and doesn't want to walk on it. I had them out in the run today and gave them some grapes (this was before I saw that it was broken) and she was running around on it, but then she started to limp and then just settle onto the ground, and when she stood up, I saw that the toe...

I have a hen with a broken toe--the outside toe on her right foot. I have no idea how it happened. I've searched for prior posts both here and on the internet in general and there seem to be two schools of thought: 1) tape it up, and 2) leave it alone, because taping it will encourage pecking...

1) What type of bird , age and weight. Welsummer pullet, about 3-1/2 months old, and seems too small for her age, but I don't know her weight. I just got her today. 2) What is the behavior, exactly. - Can stand and take a few steps, but is very reluctant to walk. - I've had her in a dog crate...

Well they were a Welsummer, an Araucana, and a Buff Orp, but we lost the Welsummer and haven't gotten a replacement yet. However this behavior has been consistent the whole time we've had them.

My chickens will not use their roost, and instead huddle together in the wood shavings in the corner of their coop right in front of the window, presumably the coldest, draftiest part of the coop. I cleaned out the coop today and discovered that that while the rest of the shavings were nice and...

I'm sorry about your Wyandotte, Holly. This girl had been kind of languishing, too. The morning before last my husband brought her into the kitchen because he thought she was miserable in the cold, and I held her in my lap for about 20 minutes until she warmed up. She was eating and drinking...

I'm sitting here with my beautiful Welsummer hen on my lap. My husband just found her seemingly frozen to death this morning. It was 1 degree out last night, but the coop is insulated, ventilated, and has a heat lamp in it, and he found her halfway under the heat lamp, so maybe there was...

We are going to be gone for ten days over Thanksgiving and have arranged for a friend who also has chickens to take care of ours. We are both new to the chicken game, though, so I've got some questions about what to tell her. I want to make it as easy on her as possible without harming the...

After reading about heat lamp fires here, I'm really getting anxious to turn mine off. I've got three chicks, 7 weeks old, in a 3 x 5 coop. It's getting into the low 30s at night now. Will they be okay if we stop using it?

Well, when I got home this afternoon they were all "downstairs," and then when I was visiting with them, one of them walked up the ramp and then flew back down again, so I thought they had figured it out. But then tonight I waited until well after dusk, thinking surely they'll go up by...