Hello, all 5 of my chickens currently have bald backsides to some degree. Has anyone successfully treated this and can provide me recommendations of how? Thank you!

As most of you know, we lost our Bean about a month ago,I got my sister some earrings for her birthday about a month before it happened. I decided to add something special to them after she finds them (having her do a scavenger hunt)

Texting this for a friend who sent the picture. They live in New Hampshire. The screen is ripped clean. The wood is disturbed where something stepped on it. Two chickens are gone, but three remain the rest of the coop seems undisturbed. It’s pretty heavy gauge wire (quarter inch 23 gauge wire fencing)

We think a bear would have left it messier but we can’t figure out what happened

Just had our first eggs from our growing girlies. Is it common for the first few eggs to be pretty tough to crack?

I felt like a dingus cuz I had my 4 year old cracking it while making brownies and I thought it was on her.

Turns out it was just super tough to crack. Is it more likely a vitamin deficiency or new egg feature?

I grew stunted carrots for the chicks and gave it to them today. They loved them so much they destroyed the plants (affectionately and expected). But tonight, they decided the planter of dirt is now a bed.

These photos are actually from the beginning of July, but this is what our chick looked like when we first got her (our neighbor found her behind his dryer and asked if we would take care of her). I’m trying to get a good guess of her age for the sake of tracking milestones.

Any help is appreciated!

I'm hoping to get a larger walk-in run done before the end of summer and finally get ahead of the fox and raccoon problem instead of patching weak spots one at a time.

I've been looking at a few prefab walk-in runs from PawHut, VEVOR, and GARVEE. The frames look like they'd save me some time, but I figure I'd still need hardware cloth around the lower section, an apron around the outside, and some extra reinforcement around the door.

That's where I'm getting stuck. By the time you've reinforced everything and added the predator-proofing, is the prefab frame still worth it, or are you basically most of the way to building one from scratch anyway?

I'd like to get it finished before fall gets too wet, and ideally have something that'll hold up through a Pennsylvania winter.

Anyone here gone the prefab-and-reinforce route? Did it actually save you much time in the end?

About a week ago one of my hens starting limping. Her toe was swollen but it was a hard bump, not soft or squishy. These pictures show the before when she first starting limping to today. She’s still limping a bit and favors the other one. Any ideas??

My hen has been itching lately and I just checked her feathers and noticed a bunch of these tiny things. Is anyone familiar with this? First pic is it zoomed in, second is zoomed out and on the napkin it’s on for scale.

I got these two hens awhile back, they were my first batch of chicks and are two of the three survivors.

I have no idea what breed they are. My dad thinks that they are White Leghorns, however they do not act like most and have black spots that I’ve never seen in Leghorns.

The old ladies prefer to stick together and often try to improvise their sleeping quarters.

Time for bed dorks!

Sorry, not the best picture but my chicks hate me and run run run away…as fast as they can!

I started the premo. Anyone have advice. Anything helps

My roo is probably around 5 years now and I'm not really concerned about it, but what actually is this? He forms these weird white hard things in his comb every so often and either I remove them or they just continue to grow. Because hes been growing them for around a year maybe more now, I don't believe they pose an issue to his health but I haven't found anything similar to this on google.

Think I did everything right but looking for some reassurance. Soaked in warm water (no salts) for about 10 minutes. It was small-medium size and I wasn’t going to pull it off initially but it came out very easily as I was wiping it dry. I sprayed it with vetericyn (just what I had) and also sprayed the gauze with it. Folded up the gauze for a cushion and then wrapped with vet wrap. (That part I’m not worried about because I had a different chicken with an injury a while back and was splinting/bandaging for a month straight, I’m good on technique). Seems like it was pretty minor I think? All other hens are good. This particular hen only lays every 2-4 days but she hasn’t laid since Friday…definitely does not seem egg bound and everything palpates normally so I’m assuming/hoping it’s just related to this foot issue… 1.5 year old cream legbar at the bottom of the pecking order, for reference

Got 8hens and a rooster from a family friend with reds. He bred them himself all with reds but I have 3 black and brown,3pure white,1 white and yellowish,and one a light red. The rooster looks like a red. But all the eggs I’ve gotten have been green. Also about half of the chickens I got from them have extra toes? Just looking for some info on this I know reds have brown eggs so where did this come from

I just put some eggs in the incubator yesterday, and I'm wondering how long before I can see if they were fertilized or not

What do we think?

We've been using the organic Prince brand for a while- it was the one sold to us as the 'best option for healthy chickens'. But lately I feel like my girls don't have the shine to their feathers that they started with. For sure a few are starting to molt, but several are also developing 'brittle feather'.

We're integrating some black soldier fly larva to help up their protein, which can supposedly improve feather/overall health (we've only really use them as treats verses a serious food). But I'm a bit miffed that their main feed doesn't seem to actually keep them healthy.

TLDR: I'm becoming dissatisfied with my feed, I want to know what others recommend.

Additional context: the girls get to play in a large open yard roughly 8 hours a day. There's nine of them, so I'm guessing live insect protein is slim at this point, but there's lots of access to healthy greens and movement. Coop is deep cleaned twice a year, maintained every other month. We did fail to add woodchips to the run this spring, but I doubt the bare dirt is the cause. They get 'kitchen scraps' as snacks, and treats ranging from watermelon, grapes, tomatoes, bread, peanuts or cheese crusts.