Hey.... Lets keep Chickens..!

HeatherintheHills

I'm glad to hear that Stoogie is doing ok ljonski, and that Squeeky's foot in on the mend Shortie. Iona, how is Digger? And Giger, how are the chicks and is your cleavage still cheeping? Symon, those little squatters are gorgeous

I missed out on the chicks, wasn't fast enough and they all went Ah well, maybe next time.

Still working on the chicken !!!!!!. Got the photos off my mobile and onto the puter, then saw how poor the quality of the photos was
There must be an easier way of transferring them than emailing them to myself one at a time. I'm hopeless

Shortie

Thanks HeatherintheHills, she's still limping quite badly and it's swollen. I've had a few looks since that day and she can now curl the toes again but one of them is sticking out - I'm more and more adament I've trodden on her toe now and broken something

She's been hiding a fair bit round the back of the run but then it's a constantly shady spot there and it's been blooming hot. Round the back of the run has little 'traffic' so she is left alone mostly, bless her. I can see straight through the run so I can see if she's okay etc, and she come out in the morning and drinking and eats. She comes for scraps too but hangs to the back as she gets 'bowled over' by the other piggies in the rushing stampede so I can't say I blame her really. I'm making sure she gets some though, either by throwing scraps in reach or feeding her by hand.

If it wasn't for the apparent discomfort in her foot affecting her 'socialising' I'd say she's otherwise perfectly healthy. She thankfully isn't being picked on either - I've been on the look out for that

If there's anything I'm not doing right, please everyone throw me some hints! If this were a human we'd have painkillers and bandages / casts but I have no idea with my chooks how I can help :undecided

Syman

Think there are five chicks in the nest.
All seem to be doing ok.

HeatherintheHills

Sorry Shortie, it sounds to me as if you are doing everything you can for her. Time will be the healer as long as she is eating and drinking.

metherer

This has got to be one of the longest running threads ever. :T


So, I last commented on page 12, back in 2008. Back then we had two allotments, one for hens. We moved in 2010, no allotments any more, and it has taken us until now to get back in the saddle, so to speak.

He bought four hens on Saturday, warrens, and they are happily scratching around in the home built ark. He says he won't be naming them, but I have named one of them Cassidy. She's got scaly leg, so keeps hopping along...:cool:

Quite enjoying seeing them really.

Shortie

HeatherintheHills wrote: »

Sorry Shortie, it sounds to me as if you are doing everything you can for her. Time will be the healer as long as she is eating and drinking.

Thanks HeatherintheHills, just good to know if there is anything I should be doing to help her but if that's all I can do then it's good. Thankfully she doesn't mind being handled much and is quite happy to be picked up and fed the treats, unlike one of my hens that being picked on quite a lot - that one's eating but if I pick her up to make sure she gets some she just looks waiting to be put back down, even faced with a handful of dried worms :eek: She's happy eating from hands at ground level, just not up in the air, lol

HeatherintheHills

Where has Giger gone? Maybe she can't post because she has her hands full of chicks. I'm so jealous :rotfl:

Welcome back Metherer. What are you using to treat Cassidy's leg?

Shortie, is the swelling going down?

Has anyone on here converted a full sized plastic shed for use as a hen house? I'm thinking of trying it.

Gigervamp

Sorry for the delay, Heather's correct, I've been kept busy with chicks!

We now have 10. We have 3 in the brooder, including the one I was looking after. There was another one, but it had been attacked by one of the broodies and sadly didn't survive, poor thing.

There are the 4 with Petal and the pekin, and 3 silver sebright eggs hatched, who are with Toots. Belle was sitting on those eggs, but the girls kept swapping nesting boxes and Toots decided that these chicks were hers! :rotfl:

As hubby has uploaded a few videos since I last posted, here's the link to his YouTube channel. He tries to upload a video of the chicks every day to show their growth.

Seeing those pics that Syman has posted has made me realise how much more self sufficient chicken chicks are as opposed to wild bird chicks. Even with no mum to show him, at 4 days old, the chick I was looking after started to do what we call the chicken scratch dance (scratch, scratch, left, scratch, scratch, right, head down and peck!) and he's taken to dustbathing in the bowl of chick crumbs. :rotfl:

Welcome back Metherer. We've had problems with scaley leg. We smother the legs in Sudocream. Apparently it smothers the mites.

Hope everyone elses poorly girls are doing ok.

Beetlemama

ok chicken folk, I need help. First time chicken-grandmother-kinda-thing.

Ethel's first egg hatched on Sunday and she and another hen attacked it, pecked both sides of it's head. I took it away briefly thinking it would die, I was just going to hold it quietly so it's first and last memories weren't of having it's brain pecked out, but after an hour it was still alive. We decided to try her again, and I stuck it back under Ethel hoping for the best, well, it was alive yesterday but it was pretty weak still and falling over, I wondered if this was just because it was so young or if they had damaged it, but this morning when I shooed her out to eat and drink, it's standing up peeping away- not particularly robust, but alive and better than yesterday.

My question here is, she hasn't brought it out to drink at all, I know it says they don't need to eat for 48 hours, but they need to drink.

I've put water in next to the nest so it may find it, I drip fed it some off my fingers too, it took that, but from what I've read, should she be giving up on the other eggs hatching and looking after the baby or ignoring the baby while she waits for the other eggs - so what if they take three or four more days? the baby's going to die without her taking it to eat and drink isn't it?

I guess we thought she'd just get on with it, and in a way I know she is, she's doing what she feels is required, but now the stupid humans have become involved - and we don't tolerate babies of any sort dieing - should I be doing something for this little chick? should I take it away and try to care for it myself? seems that I pretty much need a heat lamp, nest and food and water, I can do that, but it looks a bit feeble for a two day old chick compared to the videos on the internet, she may be ignoring it because it's not perfect, but then again, maybe she's just not sure whether to keep sitting on the two eggs or rear the baby.

btw, it's not even really her baby, it's Edith's baby, but Ethel was the one that went broody so Edith laid her eggs in the side of the nest and let Ethel get on with sitting on them. Phantom's gone broody too, she's sitting in the nest next door on no eggs. This morning when I went down, the baby was actually under Phantom.

Sorry for the essay - anyone help? what would you do?

spirit

HeatherintheHills wrote: »

Where has Giger gone? Maybe she can't post because she has her hands full of chicks. I'm so jealous :rotfl:


Has anyone on here converted a full sized plastic shed for use as a hen house? I'm thinking of trying it.

I didn't think it was her hands that were full of chicks :rotfl:

I have a Cube, but there are a few laners who've converted plastic sheds successfully on the dtl website.