As the title says, one of my ladies has vent gleet. Even though we have the appropriate antifungal cream for her vent, we want to give her a nice warm bath as last time she was ill, she loooved it! The problem is, we have run out of Epsom salts and town is a long way away. What could I use instead of Epsom salt in a soothing bath for her?

12 hens and all have been laying like crazy then all stop, 2 americanas were the last to pay tax. Two flocks 4 weeks apart. They do have mites but damn...they were laying when mites were climbing all over the eggs! Few have molted as well. In NY so can I blame the weather? Duel purpose birds so you know what I'm thinking...

Btw yes she’s fine, she isn’t sick. She just does funny things like this all the time. I think there might be something wrong with her neurologically but she tends to spin in circles sometimes (not because of a limp, she just likes to do it) doesn’t really know how to jump, and also has a lot of trouble when it comes to eating seeds off the ground (which is why when the other hens get treats, we give her a little bowl so she doesn’t lose them) part of me wonders if she may be a bit blind or have some kind of eye problem, but she’s not completely blind because she looks at us all the time

Whatever it is, she’s had her whole life, but it hasn’t negatively impacted her, she’s our special little hen!

Oh yeah Her name is Skittle btw

Hello everyone…. I have a serious pecking issue going on with my chickens. There’s 6 hens that we got all together, well the wife wanted to get 2 more (silkies) that are prob a month younger than the other 6 hens but substantially smaller. One of the golden comets and Rhode Island reds are really going at the new white silkie to the point where they’re removing feathers from her. I had them in a dog crate in the run for 3 weeks and would put them in the coop at night. I slowly started letting them around each other during the day for longer durations and a couple weeks let them completely transition. After about almost 2 weeks of being fine I went out there and noticed that they had a hay day with her before the run door came open and now are bullying her. Just looking for some advice/techniques or if I should just get rid of her. Thanks!

I just spent $300+ treating a hen who I noticed was limping. She had bumblefoot. She has antibiotics and pain relief after having it surgically extracted.

I thought I'd check everyone else's feet limping or not, and at least 3 others have small bumbles that just look like impacted dirt.

I've obviously been systematically epsom salt soaking them but past that I don't know what to do. I'm in panic mode. I can't spend another $300+ each for treatment.

I have 12 days before I have a trip, it's all prepaid I cannot cancel or I am out the money.

I have no idea what to do, the person who is watching them for the week long trip won't be able to treat them so I have to resolve it before I go.

I have all the supplies, I'm not even sure if some of them are bad enough to be treated... I just don't know what to do.

I have four Buff Orpington adolescent chicks (two boys, two girls) that fell into my sizeable back yard in Brooklyn, NYC, and we decided to raise them (with the roosters having to be re-homed soon do to the law and our ratio of boys to girls)

Since they've been moved outside when they were old enough, I have continued to find dead birds in my yard. Typically they are smaller birds, but today (which I believe was the 6th) it was a morning dove.

The combination of large shiny windows and bird feed seems to be the cause, since I really don't think my chickens are attacking other birds. I see other birds out with them from time to time.

Breaks my heart, but not sure if there is anything I can do.

I have 5 hens that are about 15 weeks old. One of my buff orpingtons has had this thing on her beak for probably almost 3 weeks now. It started out looking like a pecking injury, then it appeared to scab, now it is a bulbous looking lump. Someone in another group suggested a potential staph infection and said to "pick out" the black part, similar to a bumblefoot infection. However, after I picked it, it just bled and bled, it appeared it was just a tissue mass that had scabbed. I cleaned it as best I could and applied neosporin. She has been acting completely normal, eating, drinking, pooping, all normal chicken things. None of my other hens have any bumps on them. I'm at a loss and wondering what this is and how to address it?

I’ve had chickens for about four years so I’m used to them moulting a bit in autumn but I feel like my poor girl is losing feathers at an astounding rate. They’re everywhere. Is there anything I can do to support her? We added two new chickens to the coop 2 weeks ago who are very much at the bottom of the pecking order (small, young pekins) whereas Kashmir here is at the top, but there is so many feathers I’m getting a bit freaked out. She’s eating and drinking normally just looks like she’s been plucked! She’s a gentle, reserved Wyandotte and is top by being biggest I assume.

The left one is a hen and the right is a rooster. They are mixed breed. I am excited to see how the rooster turns out once he's fully grown. Interesting coloring though.

I am trying to buy some older hens, about 6-9 months. I have a small flock and want to expand it with hens of the same age(ish). Any recommendations? Online? Or is local the only option?

I don’t have an image as of now, but I was cleaning up my White Rock cockerel the other day for the local chicken show where I’m at, and I noticed a bald line that didn’t have feathers down his chest to between his legs. It’s straight and doesn’t look like any injuries, but I’d like to know if this is normal?

PS, it’s a bantam, if that makes a difference. I’m relatively new to chickens.

Hi all! I’m getting a new-to-me coop that has a hen gear nest box. I’d like to set it up so that the perch on the nest box opens automatically each morning. The hen gear solution for this, the autoroost, requires a power outlet or a solar panel, neither of which are ideal for our setup. The best nest box, on the other hand, offers the perch popper, which is battery powered. Has anyone tried to adapt a perch popper to work with a hen gear nest box?

Autoroost: https://hengear.com/products/automatic-nest-box-system?srsltid=AfmBOopFKoZ0-cNDqllUes00cymhVo7sfBp5gxnGPJIYg0Vl18fGQ2Ll

Perch popper: https://bestnestbox.com/products/the-original-perchpopper-automatic-nest-box-opener

Hi everyone,

Gonna try to make it short: we bought an old house with a huge field last year. Their was an old coop, we cleaned it and adopted 3 chickens that were disposed of by the industry. The old coop was too old and full of holes and a fox found them.

So I built a new coop a month ago and just as I finished the neighbours moved out and gave us their 5 chickens. I know they were laying eggs and they continued doing so for 3/4 days but it's been two weeks of no eggs anymore.

Is there anything wrong with the coop? Some classic mistakes I've done on how to take care of them? The first chickens we had last year were laying fine for a month until the fox found them. I feed them grains, kitchen scrap, give them fresh water and I open the door every morning for a huge 20 000m2 garden so... I'd say they have enough space even if the coop is a bit small (we wanted 3 chickens initially not 5).

Second time we had any chickens, I don't get what I do wrong...

We collect our eggs and put them in a bowl on the counter to cook. I just candled some for fun and two look suspicious, like something is growing. Could they potentially hatch? 😦

I’ve got a small flock of layer hens (wyandottes and bantams), and a nearby farm is selling their 2 year old RIR birds for $5/bird, I’m interested in buying a few of them to get a few more eggs and so I can have some extra birds for meat. I want to just butcher on the day I’m planning to eat them but most of the information out there about home butchering is geared towards processing groups of meat birds all at once. Does anyone have a good recommendation for information on a setup that makes sense for just culling and processing one bird every few weeks? Is it worth it to get a whole setup with a cone and everything or do most people just snap the neck and then do the rest? I was taught how to do this when I lived in a different country but it’s been a while and I want to make sure I can do it quick and clean to minimize distress for the birds (and me). Also what do you do with the guts? Feed them back to the chickens or will this make them sick? I don’t want to leave them out in the woods or in my trash can because I don’t want to attract wild animals.

For all the pokemon fans out there, I named one of my 16 hens I raised this year Togepi. This week, funny enough, Togepi was the first of this years hens to lay 😂 I found it amusing and wanted to share

Hi 👋

We live in a rural area and we are tired of foxes and raccoons snatching our precious chickens. We managed to catch one raccoon and dropped it off on the other side of a busy freeway, but we still have sneaky foxes. We’re tired of losses. We have them free roamed and they’re so happy. I hate to see them contained but changes need to be done to end this ongoing pattern. I want to get them a very large metal coop like shown above. Does anyone know if this is a sturdy coop or any suggestion of one? Thank you.

And question on maintenance for enclosed coop is do you guys put sand for easy poop clean up?

Any suggestion/advice is appreciated. Thank you ❤️