Thanks sunflour, I had thought it was unusual too! I hope you're right and she's just a runt. Her feathers don't seem to be growing in as quickly as the others either. I could be completely wrong about it being pasty butt, as I've never experienced it before since we let our hens raise all our...
One of our hens surprised us with 14 chicks a couple of weeks ago. They are now over 2 weeks old and most of them are doing great. We are keeping them with their mama inside the coop in a large dog kennel, with water and chick starter. The kennel bottom has sand in it. This is how we've always...
Hi there,
About 4 days ago my Muscovy hatched out 6 baby ducks, 3 Khaki Campbells and 3 Cayuga crosses. She was not nesting in our coop, so we made sure to put feed (unmedicated duckling feed with niacin) and water nearby. She ignored it and so did they, and she took them out walking around...
Thank you both! And Amiga I will go and look those up right away. :) I came up with an idea for a brooder where I can have a light on it a little easier than what I've been doing, so I'm working on that as we speak. I was thinking of using sand at the bottom (which is what I did for chickens)...
I have five ducklings that would now be four days old, I think. They're way sturdier, bigger, and independent than four-day-old chickens so I am wondering if the person I bought them from misled me about their age.
One thing I have noticed is they don't seem to need heat. I had them with a...
So far one of my broodies has four babies, and I think I can hear a fifth tapping away inside. A sixth I picked up briefly and felt something shift, so there's a chick in there, but no tapping. So don't know if the hen will hold out long enough for that one. (If not, I'll try sticking it under...
Oh SonnyGirl, I didn't even think about that! I thought the peeping would be a good thing, but it does make sense that it would sound different. So I don't know. They were all fine though. They're happy as clams inside and my girls are thrilled to have house ducks. My husband, not so much, but...
Didn't work. :( I went out to check on them and the ducklings were in one corner shivering and she was in the opposite one. So they are inside now and I put the eggs she was sitting on back under her. The eggs are starting to make noise already (I hadn't noticed when I first moved them), so I...
If someone has a minute to answer a few questions, I would be so grateful. I will post some pictures tomorrow. feel free to post links to past threads. I tried to search but am on an iPad and it wasn't working that well for me. I realize this is long, so I bolded my actual questions.
We just...
We just got some baby ducks today. They were supposed to go under a broody hen but she wouldn't take to them so they are being raised in the house now. (My poor husband!) My four year old named them. There is a yellow one who is her favourite and she named her/him Ming-Ming. The other four don't...
Will they imprint to people and a hen at the same time though? I am nervous. They are under the hen now but she was pecking quite a bit at them. As long a they are under her she seemed okay, but occasionally if one came out she would peck quite aggressively at it. At one point she jumped up off...
Thank you! Okay, I'll try tonight once it's dark. I think I might get up really early in the morning to check on them too. They're not even 24 hours old so I think they'll still be okay in that regards. I'd love for them to imprint to us as well, but don't know if that's possible if we put them...
Hi there,
We just got some ducklings today and are hoping to put them under one of our broodies. We have three broody hens right now, and the one I was thinking I'd put them under has raised chicks before and was a good mama. The other two have never gone broody before. I know it's better to do...
We threw around tons of ideas for building a coop, from a mobile coop that we could move around the property, to a brand new structure in various places. Eventually, it became obvious that the old greenhouse on our land was not in a very good place for a greenhouse (not enough sun), but that the...
I have three two-week-old chicks outside with their mama in the coop. Up to now, I have been keeping them mostly in a large dog kennel in the coop, though the last few days I've been bringing them out to another part of our yard that is fenced that the bigger hens can't get into. I let them run...