Recent content by CrystalAnon

You can see Polko in my profile pic. 🥰

Thank you for the feedback! I only have 8 hens & 1 rooster. My goals are to have fresh eggs regularly, keep them healthy & happy, as well as get some chicks to refresh the flock, when that becomes necessary. (My entire flock turned 1yr old in February) Polko is not great at mating, I do admit...

Thank you for your reply! I can see the feather tips right on the skin, but they just don’t seem to grow out. I guess we’ll have to wait for their first molt? 🤷🏼‍♀️ The skin gets kinda chapped, and possibly a bit sunburned, but the mating doesn’t seem to break the skin. The saddles I bought fit...

Are you saying trim the rooster claws? It’s strange… I have 4 chickens that have the missing feathers at the base of their tail & 4 that don’t have any missing feathers. He mates with all of them. I put a mating saddle on one of my hens for a month during this winter. Her feathers never grew...

Great info & ideas! If I had a larger growing space… well I have plenty of space but our soil is not naturally great for gardening, and we have tons of tree roots (and where there’s not roots, crab grass), so it’s difficult to actually start a garden in the ground here. We had to build raised...

I would really love for her to be the mamma in our little flock (8 hens). She doesn’t take any hoo-ha from anyone, including Polko. She’d be a great, protective mamma, me thinks. 🥰

I have the strangest rooster behavior going on right now. My man Polko (turned 1yr old in February, Moss Egger roo), he’s been placing his butt up against a wall, or in a corner & making these silly, but sweet screeching & clucking sounds. He’s doing it mostly around our matriarch hen (BCM). And...

I would always get organic pasture raised eggs when we didn’t have our own chickens. A random organic/pasture raised egg from Grocery Outlet in CA had the deepest orange egg yolks! Simply called “heirloom farms” (I think)… something with heirloom & they were all different shades of color (even...

I have been feeding my chickens dried calendula petals for over two months. I haven’t noticed a difference in yolk color, but I’d be curious if anything comes from it for you! Could be that fresh petals vs dried petals make the difference.

I’m in the third month of experimenting with calendula (marigold) petals in my chicken scratch. I have not noticed a difference in yolk color. I was happy to do it because calendula petals have so many other health benefits. Plus we got the organic ones, so we can even make tea for ourselves...

I feed my flock a corn-free feed in the summer, just because we live in Florida and corn is high in carbs. It can make them hotter in the summer than without it. I’ve never noticed white yolks without the corn.

I was worried about the same thing today. I have a rooster that will be 1 year old on February 21st. I had never seen his comb with purple tips before. He’s only ever had bright beautiful red comb & waddle. So it was out of the ordinary for him. Glad to hear it’s not unusual. But I still feel...

I saw you treat the flock for 3 days. 1/4 tsp ACS per gallon of water in only plastic waterers. (No metal) I’m curious about this as well. I’ve heard from different posts that it’s mostly an issue if you’re allergic to what you’re treating your chickens with, because it will pass through into...

I know this is an older post, but for others needing this info… I’ve had canker in a hen that really stunk. I suspect the canker was effecting her crop, because she would burp when I would give her the metronidazole with water & massage her crop. It totally stunk. It was like there was a canker...

I ended up mixing fenbendozole & metronidazole toward the end of her treatment period (last 2 out of 9 days), because she was getting better, then not so well after I was giving her just the two metronidazole products for a few days. So I figured I’d go back to what seemed to help, along with...