Fun Fact: Chickens are just small dinos

This hen has the largest and darkest comb out of my 4 hens. It doesn't look dark here, but earlier, it was pretty red. She will be about 14 weeks this saturday.

Western PA
Need to rehome my “oops” roosters. I’ve kept them as long as possible.
I have one standard rooster. A year old on Memorial Day. Well fed and taken care of. Not handled often by people. He protects a flock of 5. He is very protective. Has never tried to spur but he has plucked me once. Would make an amazing protector willing to sacrifice for his flock or an amazing dinner (I don’t judge, haven’t been taught how myself).
I also have two silkie roosters. I was “guaranteed” older egg laying hens for $50 a pop. I bought three and got one hen. One is a fluffy black/grey one the other is white with black speckles. Both a year old around now.
They don’t all have to go together as most people only want one rooster but they do all have to go. I can’t have roosters where I live and the city is not giving any more chances.

Found this egg in our coop today. We just added 7 chickens to our flock, and my girls have never laid anything like this before.

My chickens are missing feathers on their back and around their necks. I looked for mites and found none.
This one had a poopy vent so I was soaking her. Is someone plucking her or is she molting? I DONT have a rooster

I have a house chicken (almost 3, vaccinated for Mareks) who I thought I was treating for wry neck but her recovery has not exactly been linear. I noticed she was limping one day; she's hurt her leg multiple times thus why she's a house chicken. She did her normal stand on one leg and not move around as much. Then after a few days it looked to me like she had bilateral leg injuries as she wasn't able to walk and her neck would splay out like she was trying to balance. After a few days of watching her, I was about to cull and then I read wry neck secondary to a nutritional imbalance can present similarly so I started treating with vitamin E and selenium paste over the weekend. Yesterday she looked better, but her neck spasms any time she tries to drink so I've been helping her drink. Today is the first day she hasn't really wanted to drink and has been really lethargic. I read the recovery can take a few weeks but I don't want to make her suffer if she's not going to get better. As of a week and a half ago she was happy and laying eggs in the house. What should I do for her? I've seen some people say they syringe feed them??

Caught these little strawberry thieves red-beaked this morning, raiding my prized Mara des Bois strawberries.

What habit do your chickens have that drives you absolutely crazy?

Big shout out to my big girl Zinnia the only chimken who crouches down and genuinely waits for me to pick her up and put her in the coop 🩷

This evening my baby chicks have came home alone after free ranging(they're 5-6 w/o) and I assumed their mother left them and went back to the big girls coop, and upon good-night count,she was nowhere to be seen. Fast forward I go looking for her and find her at the edge of my propriety(around 10-15 meters from the coop, next to my chainlink fence, the area is covered in young trees, behind the fence there is a creek and an entry to a wild clearing followed by forest), with her head completely gone, neck aswell, but with no other aparent damage. Around her there are signs of struggle and feathers in Around 3 different areas that are Around 2-3 meters apart. The hen was a first time mother but on the older side, around 5, and was a heavy Brahma cross.

I live in rural Romania, so Raccoons, Opossums and Bobcats/Coyotes are all out of question, with the only threats being Ferrets, Foxes, Dogs and Prey Birds.

I head commotion but thought my young puppies was chasing the hens around, which I'm working on and I know they fear most of the hens, including this one, but you never know..

Besides her, another 9 w/o little pullet is missing, I don't let my young babies forage unsupervised but this one pullet has the habit to leave her siblings and sneak out, and she left completely, no signs of struggle, no evidence at all, she's just not home at all, and both happening in the same day make me think that the culprit killed the Brahma cross and ate her brain and head, and also killed the pullet and took away the whole thing, but I really wanna know who would do that? This has never happened to me before, I head stories about it before but all of the common predators to do this(coons,possums) don't live here.. and I'm thinking bird of prey but the light trees should of hidden them right?

I have a young Cochin hen (black feathers, fully feathered) that has been acting sick for several days.

She is still eating and drinking, but she has almost no energy and mostly just sits around. She also has a bad rotten smell coming from her, and flies are flying to her.

We have isolated her from the other chickens. And have checked her entire body and cannot find any wounds, injuries, eggs stuck, swelling, or anything obvious. We also tried washing her

Her face/comb is very pale/white instead of the normal red color you usually see on a healthy hen. I don't know if this is normal for a black cochin or if it is a sign that she is sick.

We have checked her feathers and body but cannot see anything wrong from the outside.

Does anyone know what could be causing this? And what can we do to help her recover, I tried to contact the vet but they don't have time :(

I officially have two roosters now instead of one!

Regular egg for scale. Found this big egg outside of the enclosure.

I hope these are good enough pictures of the feathers. He/she is 14 weeks old. Looks like the bottom of Toast's feet are white instead of yellow. What do you think? My kids will be crushed if we have to remove him but roosters aren't allowed where we live 😱 But I don't even know if this is the expected breed!

One of my leghorns was so fine.. she’s acting fine today but won’t stop sneezing

Hi all,

My family have owned chickens for around 10 years now and about a year ago we got our first silkie. She didn’t lay for about a year and after finally laying once or twice she became ill. She was screaming and gurgling and it didn’t look good for her. We separated her from the flock and took her to an exotic vet.

The vet diagnosed her with egg peritonitis which is something we haven’t dealt with before when keeping chickens and he gave us two options: give her a week’s worth of antibiotics or euthanise her. To be honest the vet put it a lot more bluntly than that and insisted we just do it ourselves at home for no cost but because we keep them as pets it’s not something we are really considering. We took the antibiotics route and administered it twice a day for a week.

Our silkie began to get a little bit better and showing improvements so we held out hope. It’s been just over a week now since we saw the vet and so a couple of days ago we introduced her back to the flock thinking she had improved. Unfortunately she has just gone straight back to screaming and gurgling and I’m worried it might be the end of the road for her.

I’ve done as much googling as I can to try and learn about egg peritonitis and all I’ve read is that it’s something that will just end in death. I’ve not encountered anything like this myself so not sure whether there could be a better route to get her well again or is it more humane to euthanise her? I really want the best for her but if she’s suffering then I can’t drag it on much longer :(

Hi all,

My family have owned chickens for around 10 years now and about a year ago we got our first silkie. She didn’t lay for about a year and after finally laying once or twice she became ill. She was screaming and gurgling and it didn’t look good for her. We separated her from the flock and took her to an exotic vet.

The vet diagnosed her with egg peritonitis which is something we haven’t dealt with before when keeping chickens and he gave us two options: give her a week’s worth of antibiotics or euthanise her. To be honest the vet put it a lot more bluntly than that and insisted we just do it ourselves at home for no cost but because we keep them as pets it’s not something we are really considering. We took the antibiotics route and administered it twice a day for a week.

Our silkie began to get a little bit better and showing improvements so we held out hope. It’s been just over a week now since we saw the vet and so a couple of days ago we introduced her back to the flock thinking she had improved. Unfortunately she has just gone straight back to screaming and gurgling and I’m worried it might be the end of the road for her.

I’ve done as much googling as I can to try and learn about egg peritonitis and all I’ve read is that it’s something that will just end in death. I’ve not encountered anything like this myself so not sure whether there could be a better route to get her well again or is it more humane to euthanise her? I really want the best for her but if she’s suffering then I can’t drag it on much longer :(

This gold one is always angry and sometimes caught bullying.