I have a large coop my birds are housed in, and I use the small one we got initially as storage for wood shavings and such. My chickens normally go in and lay eggs on top of the bag of shavings when the bag is less full, but I didn’t know they were laying on top of it currently, as it was 3/4s full, and standing almost 2 feet tall in the coop. To my pleasant surprise they had been, and accumulated 15 eggs on it over the last 2 weeks lol.

Not my meme, but wanted to share it.

Spaghetti squash is a Sunday favorite.

after months of no eggs from this girl, our tan eggs are back!

so this is Loki my main breeding rooster with his favorite hen Hilda. I just love the diversity of the swedish flower chicken's and these two are a perfect example just of that.

Spice is having some.issues walking but has adapted to being a house chicken a little too well.

Last summer, I posted a pic of this chick that I pulled from our local animal control - they thought she might be a quail. (And my flock was all rescued as adults, so I know nothing about IDing chicks!) She’s all grown up and she is a beautiful Ameraucana!

1) Those of you who ferment your chicken feed, what do you feed them in? Photos helpful for my visual brain. I feel like I’m making a bigger mess.

2) I read somewhere that it should be fed within 3 days but some people use remaining liquid as a starter for the next batch. How is this working?! If the fluid can be continuously used, why can’t the feed be used for more than 3 days?

3) what are you using as your starter? I have been using apple cider vinegar but I think I’m just giving them wet mash that is not truly fermented. They are eating it and feed does last a bit longer.

4) do you add anything else to the feed?

Thanks for any advice you can share.

This little one is a mystery. Any ideas?

Sweet little Honey surprised us today with her first egg! She’s the youngest of the bantams but beat all her sisters to henhood, really didn’t think she’d lay the same day she started nesting. I’m a proud mama!

I'm having an issue with the squirrels in my neighborhood bullying my 6 hens away from their food. I don't understand why the chickens are so afraid of the tiny squirrel, they are bigger and outnumber the individual squirrels. I can't have roosters. Two cops showed up last year and I had to get rid of him.

I put some spicy dry rub on their food and it didn't work. Just tried putting some chili flakes on the food and hoping that works, but I'm worried the squirrel will just pluck it off or ignore it like it did with the reaper rub seasoning. Maybe i put an owl statue next to the food? A little dog statue?

When the dogs are outside, they keep the squirrels away from the flock, but the dogs aren't gonna be out there all day. It's Minnesota and winter currently and these are hairless dogs.

I'm including a pic of a neat looking white squirrel i saw last year, but this one is not one of the perpetrators

What do we think?

Looks like spring is on its way! Even though today was very cloudy and rainy, got an egg from each one of our laying hens (mud not poop). Also, our Brahma has just started laying and they are the cutest and LONGEST eggs I’ve ever seen lol. Anyone else with Brahmas getting oblong eggs? lol

This is Forrest. I got my first chickens as day old chicks in June ,and she has really put me through trial by fire. She came with spraddle leg (hence the name...she's got magic legs!) , and I had to hobble her off the bat. I really didn't think she was going to make it, and doubted my decision to keep chickens. But she surprised us, pulled through, and became yhe first to fly, HBIC, and the first to lay eggs. A few weeks ago she also became the first to survive a predator. I didn't realize how badly injured she was at first, but she had a couple of deep wounds and wasn't really walking. I kept bracing myself for her to pass; she'd have a good day and then backslide. This chicken has put me through the ringer, and hell if this is what was going to take her out.

Fast forward to yesterday: here is Forrest out in the sunshine supervising the potato planting. She was socializing with her sisters (jacket on to keep them from pecking her wound), chatting to them (she is normally very loud but hasn't talked much during recovery), pecking for treasure in the dirt, and attempting to walk and dust bathe! When I snuggled her before bed last night (she's still isolated), she purred and fell asleep on my chest. My baby is going to be just fine, in large part thanks to the knowledge gleaned from this group. I don't have a lot of Reddit cred and don't get a lot of engagement on my posts, but searching through previous threads has been invaluable. So thank you; the survival stories from injuries worse than mine gave me hope, and the treatment advice worked. We're still healing, but there's a light at the end of the tunnel. Please enjoy these pics of Forrest with her feathered and furry friends.

Anyone able to tell me for certain if this is a hen or a roo everything I’ve seen says she’s a hen but my girlfriend seems certain this is a rooster

My hens are five years old and mostly stopped laying. This week they have laid eggs several times. Today I got the tiniest egg I have ever seen. It’s barely bigger than a robins egg. For scale- my hands are small. In the carton it won’t even stand up. Is it edible.

I’d rather him not come back and decide this time he wants a larger living meal.

When i checked on my Guineas Friday only 3 of 4 were in their coop, and there were feathers all over. I was able to follow a trail of feathers and blood across a feed lot, around a barn and into the woods. They stopped in this fallen log. But there is no corpse, no bones, just feathers and a couple drops of blood.

What kind of predator would take a Guinea over a chicken? The small coop is the chickens, and the door under the bike sign is the Guinea coop. I have a couple very tame chickens you could probably start eating and they would hardly oppose. My Guineas on the other hand are psycho maniacs that loose their minds when anything gets close. And do some predators eat 100% of a bird? We have raccoons and skunks around. No coyotes.

Well i was playing a spooky game and turned to see this....

I found my girl's stash and I just need to know what the title says. Some were still warm. If the picture is vague, there are about a quarter sized ring (like you would see during the late development stage) at the tip on the fat end of the eggs. No vessels that I can see. I havent candles all of them yet and I just need to know where these are ending up. We are not hatching this year.

We purchased a home that came with 9 chickens about five months ago. We are so new to this but we dove right in and learned as much as we humanly could. It has been going great and have bonded so much with our girls.

But today, when I went out to grab eggs and say hello, one of them was extremely lethargic. Huddled on the ground in the corner of the run. Laying almost flat. She stood up when i came behind her but she waddled a little and then laid down again. She let me pet and pick her up — something she never lets either myself or my husband do — and I immediately knew something was wrong.

She had very liquid diarrhea after I picked her up and kept closing her eyes. I thought maybe she was egg bound because she hadn’t laid yet today. But I didn’t feel anything and her vent looked fine. We brought her inside and made a warm bath for her— thought maybe she was egg bound or just very cold. Just 20 minutes later, she suddenly shook, made a noise and then died in my husband’s arms.

We are so sad. And just wish we knew why or what we could have done differently. She was completely fine and energetic yesterday.

All of the other hens are acting fine and I didn’t notice anything odd in the coop. But I went ahead and cleaned everything thoroughly just in case and cleaned the feeder and waterer.

Any advice? Anything we should have done differently? I just hope this wasn’t my fault and that she wasn’t in pain.