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A few days ago, I found a small abnormal egg in a nesting box. It was a bit less than an inch in diameter and soft-shelled. (The "shell" was a thin membrane.) Inside, there was some albumin (but no yolk), surounding a grayish object about the size and shape of an almond or slightly bigger. Cut...

An Easter Sunday topic: Fake eggs in nesting boxes help encourage the hens to lay there, but a minor problem is telling them apart from the real ones when you check for eggs. You can get wooden eggs in sort of a dark olive drab color, but they tend to be hard to see against the nesting material...

I'm planning a a new chicken house and want to have aplace inside for food and water. For security from predators, my plan is to have a soild floor (wood frame and plywood), but in the one corner with food and water dispensers, some kind of grating that will allow spills to drain out. This would...

I'm thinking of ordering some cup waterers, Have tried the kind with the little yellow trigger inside and the birds don't use them. I recently looked on Amazon and saw that they have a slightly different kind, without the “trigger”, where water flow is activated by there being less weight of...

Hi all, hoping to tap into all the wisdom here. What would good measurements be for a "ladder" type set of roosting bars? How far apart should they be in the horizontal dimension? The vertical dimension? How high should the lowest one be? If a roosting bar is parallel to the wall, how far...

Hi Tudybot, Could you design a 4 foot by 8 foot chicken house or coop with inside nesting boxes. a feeding and watering area, and enough roosts for a many hens as it can accomdate?

Hi all, I sometimes plant cover crops like field peas on garden areas. A problem is that my free-range hens like to scratch in freshly tiled areas and quickly find out where to find edible seeds. I'm looking for some kind of temporary fencing that will keep the birds out for a few weeks. the...

Who has experience and/or thoughts on stacking nesting boxes? does it work out well? Any problems? How high off the coop floor works best? Do they have trouble reaching the upper tier of nests? Do you provide a ramp of some kind for that? I'm aware of the conventional wisdon that nests...

Here is a survey I put together to get everyone's opinions about Coop design in one place. Of course, my ulterior motive is to get answers for my own coop design. (I am thinking in terms off a relatively small coop, one for maybe 6-12 hens.) Questions: Coop overall 1. Floor area per hen? 2...

I got some hatchery chicks 8 days ago. One started out underweight and does not seem to be gaining weight at a good rate. On day one, (purchased from feed store), the others were all in the range of 35-40 grams, this one was 29 grams. More than that, during the first 24 hours, all the others...

Advice sought! I have a Wyandotte hen that has successfully raised four previous sets of hatchery chicks. Each time, I got the hen broody a while in advance with fake eggs, (in a separate enclosure for the chicks with an oversized nesting box), but put the chicks in a "mama heating pad" type...

I'm planning on building a coop for a flock of (what will be) probably between 5 and 10 hens. In the winter, overnight low temperatures here (Vermont) are somtimes below zero Fahrenheit, and can occasionally get as low as minus 20 F. I've seen the advice to err on the side of making coop...

This is a continuation of the thread here.. I'm planning a coop for up to about 10-12 hens, at this point have narrowed my ideas down to this list of features I want: • Walk in, for ease of cleaning, adjusting ventilation, catching chickens, etc.; • Built-in feeders and waterers • Probably 4'x...

Lots of the coop designs I've seen lately have external nesting boxes, and I really wonder why. I'm all for being able to check for eggs from outside, and I have a door for that on my current tractor -- a vertical door with the hinge on the bottom, so when I open it, I am opening up the back...

Hi all, I've currently got 5 hens, am planning to build a new shelter for them, and to accommodate a possible (modest) increase in number. I'm open to suggestions on design and layout from those more experienced than I. For a large flock, the traditional walk-in type coop makes sense, but for...

Here is how to make the simple waterers I have been using for my small (5 birds) flock of chickens through Vermont winters. No electricity needed! For insulated waterers, I start with two plastic containers like these. One will fit inside the other. The inner one originally held about 11 oz...

Hi all, The attached ad appeared in my local newspaper today (1 April, 2019). Poppy

Monique "Momo" the hen is sailing around the world, accompanied by her faithful human, Guirec Soudée. Guirec is from France, Monique is from the Canary Islands. See: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FgYV8Lvxw7s

Last May I got some new chicks, including one that was supposed to be a Buckeye. Now that she is a grown hen, I'm wondering whether she might actually be a Rhode Island Red or a New Hamphire Red. The main thing is, this hen has a large single comb, and Buckeyes are supposed to have a small pea...

Hi all, I reently started a thread at the "Coop and Run" forum about the small movable greenhouse I built. Go there for pictures and details about how to build and use a moveable greenhouse. See...