Hi. My Rouen drake Sam became a widower last week. He is doing ok but is quiet. We would like to get him two females. We found a farm that will sell us Pekins, which we have owned before. But the farm also sells adult Saxony ducks. They are also a heavy breed like Sam. My question is what...
I have a pair of Barred Rock hens who are about 1.5 years old. They are a flock of two, separated from my 3.5 year old hens b/c they were constantly picked on. Well, one hen is constantly picking out the feathers of the other one. She has a big patch missing on her back, at the base of her...
My alpha hen Dora has been periodically sitting in the nest box, but when I go to check later there are no eggs in the box. It doesn't appear that she is eating them at all. Otherwise she acts normally and is eating and drinking and pooping fine. Anything to be concerned about?
I noticed she was acting funny yesterday and took her off to our wonderful avian vet. They x-rayed her and found an egg in her 3x normal size. Today she had a C-section and came through the surgery with flying colors. Four hours later she collapsed and died. She was the sweetest of all my...
My black sex linked hen Delia (she will be 3 in April) was diagnosed today with egg yolk peritonitis, poor thing. She stopped eating yesterday and I noticed she was sitting off by herself. Last year she had an impacted egg shell (which she expressed) and a resulting infection, so I thought...
I went into the run to spend some time with my girls a couple of days ago and had my 2.5 year old RIR in my lap and noticed she was shivering. It wasn't horribly cold that day, around 50. She is definitely the low girl on the totem pole and has had feathers pulled. Plus she has had crop...
I tried putting a light on a timer for my girls last winter. I had the lights come on about two hours before sunrise. Well, I went out one afternoon and it was about two hours before dusk and all the girls had gone to bed. It was bright sunlight out! I lured them back out into the run with...
Occasionally I get mice in our duck run and I use a small Hav-A-Heart Trap to catch them and release them down the road. I live out in the woods so I'm not dumping them on anyone else. We still can't figure out where the little guys are coming in. I've inspected every inch of that run, and I...
My Rouen duck Ella is about 1.5 years old and had been laying good, solid eggs every day since about October of last year. In the last 2-3 months she gone from laying good eggs, to laying a few soft eggs a week, to laying nothing but soft eggs every day. I've given her free choice oyster...
I live in the woods of NC and there are many predators here, not to mention my neighbors' dogs who come to visit. My chickens and ducks are confined to their coop/run (it's very large) when I'm not home. There is a large fence around the coop/run to keep the neighbor dogs out, and when I'm...
Congrats! We just had a happy integration of two 6 month old Barred Rock babies in with our 6 two-year old hens. They were kept in separate runs separated by wire during the day, and separate coops with separate ramps and doors at night. Recently we opened the door between the runs and they...
I have a 50 gallon livestock trough dug into the ground and I clean it out every day with a water pump. Takes very little time! When it gets nasty I also use a bit of bleach to sanitize things a bit and make sure I rinse it out well before filling it back up again. It continually amazes me...
I agree - please don't release these domestic ducks into the wild. Despite what you think is going on at that pond, domestic ducks cannot take care of themselves in the wild. If they are 5 months old they should be showing drake feathers - my Pekins showed theirs at 4 months precisely. They...
So cute! Wish my ducks liked my chickens. I have a mated Rouen pair and every time they are all out in the yard together Sam the drake chases the chickens around. Last week two of the chickens took exception to this and cuffed him around a bit. It doesn't stop him, though.
Jewelry for chickens sounds like a recipe for disaster! I have 8 chickens and I tell them apart by slight differences in their coloring/feathering, by comb size and color. For example, I have two Buff Orpingtons where one is slightly lighter than the other. One of my Barred Rock babies has a...
I have 6 hens that are now two years old and they were all raised together. We spent a lot of time with them and they are very sweet and friendly. In April I got two more babies (both female) who are a little over 5 months old, who are also very sweet. The babies have been outside next to the...