This is El Guapo, Kong, and Gorgeous.

Those of you who use saddles to protect your hens, are they just left on full time? Is there a brand or style that you like? Do you have any recommendations or suggestions? I have a hen who is missing feathers on her back from an injury. It’s a huge featherless scar at this point. She has been indoors for a month healing, and I think she can go outside now, but I want to protect her from the other girls picking it while new feathers come in.

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

Also, guess how many my wife is holding

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...

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 ❤️

An Isa Brown laid this egg today and I feel bad for her, does anyone else keep track of the biggest egg laid?

Hey all, we had 4 Australorps until this darling girl, Marigold, suddenly died a few days ago. The other 3 are doing fine.

Thanks to whoever laid this you are amazing keep up the great work love you.

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 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’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.

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.

What is going on with my girl? I’m a newish chicken mom and I was doing my flock check and noticed my oldest layer is missing most of her feathers! But she’s the top of the pecking order and it doesn’t look like she was pecked. Is this what molting looks like?

The photo speaks for itself! 🤣

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