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Hi Dimo and welcome to the forum. I assume you are in Southwest Texas? Quite a collection you have already and lucky with the bug problem- we are plagued with red mite here because of all the wild birds.

Our Blue Laced Wyandottes are getting old (5 years now) so we decided to let a local breeder have eggs to get a stock of our bloodline and save us breeding because space is limited. Our line is much larger than the breed standard. The breed standard is over 4Kg for a cock, but most lines run...

Now that Spring has arrived we are spending late afternoons in the chicken enclosure watching and listening to them. Our TNN cock Jean-Claude and our Wyandotte cock Zebedee have the clearest outlook to the surroundings. Their alarm calls are universally recognised and send all the hens running...

I've always thought that cankers in the mouth were a fungal growth, but apparently that isn't the case at all. They are the result of a parasite attack, the organism causing it is Trichomonas Gallinae. It is therefore contagious, but fortunately it has poor resistance to an external environment...

May be worth sharing this recent experience. We don't use feed additives at all believing that the pellets contain all they need. But this isn't necessarily the case in an older bird that may need a boost of something. I have read that a chicken eating excess grit or soil is suffering from a...

We've ordered some of these because we have a major sparrow problem and the run isn't big enough for a Grandpa's treadle feeder. They are very cheap at £5 each plus £3.50 postage -but it is only one component in the feeder assembly -you have to get the rest together yourself. Anyone have any...

Hello ChickMomma and welcome to the forum. Breed standards around the world have differences, so it can be rather difficult to identify them. The second photo looks something like a Cream Legbar crossed with Faverolles and I think it's her that laid the blue egg. The hen on the left in the first...

We have three Buff Orpington sisters, now nearly 5 years old. Each one has in turn has had a digestive impaction characterised by a full crop in the morning but not eating and very little poo. The first was Verity. Her problem appeared to be caused by a cherry stone jammed against worms in the...

Hi Janukey and welcome to the forum. Unusual thing to be hatching at this time of year, but if you have the space that you can keep them warm then it's not really a problem. Good result if you got 5 from 6 eggs. What incubator were you using and did you run it 'dry' to start?

The www.accidentalsmallholder.net is probably what you are looking for Dave. Loads of info and a forum as well which covers every aspect. This forum is still the best place by far to get chicken advice though.

Welcome to the forum Dave. Registering as a smallholding is a rather confusing term. What you will actually be doing is registering each category of your animals with DEFRA and Animal Health. In our case we had sheep and more than 50 chickens, so we had a Holding (CHP?) number allocated for the...

Hello Kel3 and welcome to the forum. Afraid I know almost nothing about ducks -hand reared a couple of stray Mallard chicks and that's it.

We've just been over to a local breeder and bought three Marans at around 25 weeks old. €20 each we thought was a good price. Three different colours, although there are far more Nationally with over 1000 registered breeders, being noir (black), bleu (blue) and coucou (cuckoo). Now the first...

We have a problem here, the coldest place in the house is about 22 degrees (unheated) whereas in the UK we stored our eggs in the cellar at 12 degrees. We run a complicated system. Non-hatching eggs are not a problem, but potential hatching eggs are kept for 7 days before being eaten. At these...

We have a problem at the moment. Our pet cock Bottom is far too old and is probably infertile at 6 ½ years -although he is still keen! His son Basil, who is 4 ½, is suffering with mobility. He is too big to catch and tread the hens with any reliability. If he does try too hard there will be risk...

We don't bother hatching with eggs older than 7 days because then we start to get failures KittyKat. But a lot depends on storage and handling and I have heard claims of hatches from eggs much older than that. Another factor is going to be cleanliness if you are manual turning, because of the...

I was told they need at least 24 hours to settle Kittykat. So that contradicts your information. But they sit in the incubator for a while to warm up, so maybe you should switch off the auto turning for the first day.

Welcome to the forum KittyKat. As said, setting eggs this time of year in the UK will cost hell of a lot in electricity during the rearing stage. Something to be done as a last resort, even down here. We will be loading an incubator in a few weeks hopefully, as a last resort, because we are down...

We have a TNN 'baby' at 22 months. She is laying only wind eggs at the moment. We've had about 8 so far. Each one has what looks like a piece of flesh at the centre, but one had a tiny egg yolk, about the size of a pinhead, in it. I am wondering if her ovary is 'falling apart' and if she will...

I have long suspected we have Mycoplasma within our flocks, but apart from the odd sniffle it has never surfaced until now perhaps. Reading on the subject confirms what I have thought -keeping your flock healthy and stress free seems to prevent it from surfacing. That means good diet, regular...