Recent content by AinaWGSD

The daylilies by my front walk are starting to bloom this week! These are true ditch lilies, I literally dug them up out of a ditch on the side of a road. And my purple milkweed is in full bloom right now. My irises are just finished blooming for the spring, but the cosmos are just starting to...

I think they are olive Eggers. They are definitely  not marans. They have pea combs and muffs, from ameraucana ancestry, and feathered legs, most likely from marans ancestry.

Well, the press on nails didn't even last a full week, but they did not damage my natural nails as promised. I'm waiting until we get the run finished to try again (hammering hardware cloth is hell on my hands). In the meantime I got tired of my plain nails and threw on some flowers with a matte...

Sleepy babies!

Agreed, it really depends on what type of coop you're building. We've never bothered to level the ground, but we've always had elevated coops. With our latest coop we built it inside the garage so we didn't have to level it either. We've never bothered to level the run, if there's a low area we...

Artemis, my little character

Artemis is so stinking cute! I love her.And Marcille is still keeping me guessing about her color. I'm nearly certain she's dark blue but then I doubt myself.

Thanks! It's a relief to hear they are not parasites. I thought I had heard of little red wood mites before but couldn't remember for sure.

There is not. Personally I feed treats. But my position is that if people only offered what is available for commercial feed and did not purposefully offer treats it would not result in a bird of that condition. Nothing i have posted contradicts that. That body condition is not caused by not...

Not any scientific peer reviewed evidence, no. But do you have any evidence that feeding a bird nothing but a commercial diet while not overcrowding and putting stress on the reproductive system by keeping them under lights to maximize egg production will have the same results? Your argument...

Ah, but that is not really what the original post says. The original post states that feeding a balanced commercial diet with no treats will deliver a hen with a body condition like a spent battery hen. None of the people here who recommend feeding only a balanced diet with no treats are going...

It absolutely does not. Having a complete and balanced diet is not what is causing that condition. If battery hens got treats they would  still look like that. They would look like that no matter what they ate. The condition of that hen is not due solely to diet. This is an accurate statement...

OK, but this is akin to posting a picture of an overbred puppy mill bitch and claiming that's the result of feeding only a complete and balanced kibble and no treats. Firstly, battery hens' conditions are as much a product of environment and flock management, independent of diet. Secondly...

Cockerel. I wouldn't expect a comb that red on a pullet unless she was laying already. I can't make out the saddle or neck feathers enough to tell if they're pointy, but the feathering looks very male to me.

Found these tiny red mites on some lumber that had been sitting in my driveway. Are they a potential danger for my chickens?