Dang Troy, if I could get a stamp or two to stick I'd send you a couple. Maybe we could get a Aldeer UPS route from Fl?

UPS would lose em.....

"UPS, yes my packages haven't arrived, been two weeks. Yeah, TWO chickens, ya know, feathers, chickenchitt, and such, hard to miss...."

Just a few experiences of my own regarding chickens and a few questions as well:

My parents were down to getting 2-3 eggs a day. A friend of ours told them about the heat lamps and also wrapping the coop with visqueen. Within a matter of days, the egg factory came alive again. Simply amazing!

As far as feed: it's laying crumbles and as many fruit/vegetable scraps that we can get to them.

Soft eggs or chickens eating their eggs: we feed them oyster shells or their own shells crumbled up so that it's not teaching them to eat their own shells.

My questions are:

1. Does anyone have a snake deterrent for the spring time? We can usually count on finding an egg thief in an egg box a few times each spring or summer.
2. As far as worming does anyone have an absolute preference? We've used pig swig, a granular substance that while feeding to the hens, the eggs are supposedly no good. I cannot say that we've ever had a problem with worms, but have always done it as a precautionary practice.

Grab the snake by the tail and pop his head against a post.

Oh they are harmless snakes who simply like eating eggs. I was hoping for more of a way to repel them. JK. We’ve “exterminated” every one so far. Ha. Was just thinking there might be a suggestion to reduce these encounters. Maybe a fake owl?

I picked up 6 barred rock straight run chicks yesterday to add to my flock. Do any of y'all have any of these birds ?

I've had barred rocks for years, good chickens, easy keepers.

That's what I wanted to hear! How long have you had them?

since 09, I have a mixed flock of about 20 birds of all kinds

Looks like we're going to be joining in on the backyard chicken community. Going to try to make a chicken tractor that we can move around the backyard every couple of days.

Just be sure to try and make it coon and dog poof.

Does anyone have experience with the treatment for vent gleet? The wife thinks one of our hens might have it.

do you mean when they have crap collecting around their vent ?

Started my backyard chicken flock three years ago. I keep about 14 at all times. Mostly RIR and Golden Comet laying hens. One Barred Rock rooster just for noise. He's a cool dude and laid back. Not the least bit aggressive.

Pretty much yeah. Never had any issues but this seems excessive. Can't see how it would be gleet reading about causes because she takes really good care of them. Just not sure what else it could be...

I have 4 rir nd 3 tetra browns . I've gotten 26 eggs in the last 4 days with 7 hens. Im glad to hear the barred rocks make good roosters.I got 6 of them and I was hoping for a good rooster. the rir roosters I had where mean as a snake !

when we've had similar problems in the past we hose em off good and rub coconut oil around their vent as needed.

Scattered moth balls around the pen for snakes

I checked on her this morning. She's going down quick. Gotta be something else, but for the life of me, no idea what.

Is she egg bound?

I've had chickens for a number of years now and sometimes the little buggers just die....I've had two or three just kill over...never did figure out what happened.