A chick flew out of my brooder and I couldn’t find it. No chirps, no trail, no nothing. I had given up yesterday and just accepted that the chick had probably died by now, and then just now it pops out from behind my china cabinet peeping! I’m so surprised it’s still alive, I’m very grateful it is. Just shocked and relieved. I am still so surprised, I really thought it was a goner, and I have cats that don’t attack my birds, but you never know. It’s hungry and thirsty, but alive!!

I have heard from some news outlets that there is a Suoer El Nino forming, which will raise temperatures down here in Australia. This has concerned me and raised my anxieties on keeping my birds safe and cool. I love my birds to death, and i know that I should keep them in shade and with water at all times. However, I'm scared it wont be enough to help, what els can I do and/or what would lessen my anxiety? Thank you!!

Bantam rooster can’t stand and keeps wobbling and can’t stand and it appeared over night and i have another rooster that seems to have corriza or something similar and i don’t know what to do

Can anyone offer suggestions on what might be wrong with my chick? She is 5 weeks old, as far as I can tell a pullet buff Orpington. She lives inside with 11 other 4-5 week old siblings. Today I got up and found her hunched over dozing off. She has no appetite, wouldn’t even look at chick food, soaked in warm water or dry and despite picking up several pieces wouldn’t eat cut up grape . Her crop was small, a very small amount of food inside, felt like a deflated balloon. I had to leave him for some hours and returned two hours ago. She was walking around with the rest when I got back, but if she went into a room with them and they left she didn’t follow. Her crop was empty when I got home, and I saw her have a wet mostly white bowel movement. My mom made her a scrambled egg which she ate some of, the smallest pieces she could and got some food inside her belly. And for the past ~hr she’s been asleep on my lap. Sleeping is all she seems to want to do. Her beak doesn’t smell though I gave her a little apple cider vinegar this morning and when I returned home.
Any information is appreciated. Thank you in advance.

Hello!

Newish to chickens here. I have a Golden Wyandotte he/she is about 13 wks old. They are supposed to be a hen according to tractor supply but I have questions . It seems to have quite to waddles and pin feathers on the neck. Plus I’ve noticed quite a bit of aggression for a young “hen” . They have dragged a few to the ground after biting them and plucked the back of my poor polishes fro almost bald. I’m thinking rooster but curious to know what you all think.

I have chickens with my sister and I just give eggs to friends and family. I have one rooster, he's a silver laced wyandotte and he is very sweet. He is the friendliest of my chickens. My chickens have a very large run, majority of it is covered, the part that is not has a 12 ft tall fence because it was originally a garden meant to keep out deer, but we connected it to the chicken run so they would have more space. We reinforced it when we switched to chickens, but in the winter the roof is uncovered because snow will pile up on the options we have tried thus far.

Well 3 days ago, I went to check on them in the morning and my rooster was gone. I searched the entire pen throughly and he was nowhere to be found. I also searched all of the surrounding brush, trees, and grass. I have no clue how he escaped, but I figured he must have somehow gotten over the 12 ft fence, or a hawk or something snatched him up, and he was gone. All the hens were acting totally normal, and there were no feathers anywhere. We were certain he was dead because it is below freezing at night now, and it had been pouring a mix of rain and snow for 2 days after he was lost. I live in a rural area so there are no neighbors houses to wander to unless he goes a long way.

I work a hybrid job, so sometimes when I am home I will let my chickens out onto the lawn to forage for a few hours and I will watch them. I did that today as normal, for the first time since the storm. Like 3 hours into their foraging time, I looked up to check on them from my laptop, and my rooster was just among them again like he never left. Wtf?? He's a little dirty but that's all. No injuries, getting along with the girls just like before. We have lost birds to predators before in the past and it was so cold and wet so I am just blown away that he survived lmao. No idea where he was hiding.

Yello,

I have a question about chicken breeds that I haven't been able to find the answer to anywhere else. It is about chicken breed ethics, which I know very little about and I presume to be similar to dog breed ethics. What makes me think this way is the fact that broiler chickens exist (oh the horror).

I'm still in the early research stage and want to know if modern game chickens, particularly the bantams, are ethical. I have not heard of the traits that they have been bred for impacting anything but egg-laying, but they do not look like the typical chicken.

I'm particularly interested in them because they remind me of the birds of prey I work with with their long, featherless legs. My logic here is that if feathery boots = easy frostbite in a climate like the UK, keeping chickens with no feathery boots would be better. Is that remotely true?

teehee thank you for your time

Chickens ☺️

So im pretty sure I have 6-8 roosters. I obviously do not need that many and nobody around us wants them. What do I do?! Were first time chicken owners. A few are not in this pic.

New pullet. She is 2.5 lbs and the egg is pale aqua and 50 grams. Looking at her I was like that is a game hen. She acts like one too. I thought just a game bird mixed with ayam cemani or something else fibro, but then that aqua egg surprised me. Old owner said they got these birds from Tractor supply but I didn't know they sold game mixes. The other pullet looks like a blue Ameraucana but with feathered legs and is not laying yet.

I am so curious about this tough little girl! She had a nice big game hen tail but now only has these couple feathers. She was obviously grabbed by a dog or raccoon now that I have looked her over. I previously thought she was just having her last pullet molt but now it is obvious she has been there and done that when she actually figured out how to get into my run by flying on to the roof and going down into the poultry yard. She had gone in twice in a few days while I had my chickens out and turned my back. Jungle noises were coming from our nests because she went straight in and checked them out.

This girl and her partner in crime have been trying to get into my flock for quite a while (like a month). They have both been fending for themselves for a while because they are escape artists and couldn't be contained by their previous owners. I bought them and took them in for several obvious reasons. Pathogens and unfortunately lice were already shared weeks ago as these girls can fit through my regular fence and would try so hard to push through the poultry gate to be with my chickens. Mauve actually would pick blades of grass from her side and hold them in her beak for my hens to take!

My other chickens are less than thrilled now that these girls are inside the border of the poultry yard. The newbies are in an extra large dog crate inside my inescapable run. I let them out into my inescapable run when I let the big kids out into the poultry yard. These 2 wont be allowed "out to play" for a while given that Mauve just can't believe there is no way out. She checks every inch top to bottom and paces. Poor baby.

20 weeks old, no crowing at all, also no eggs from what I can tell. I swear she looks like a textbook rooster but my mom has a chicken expert friend who says she’s a hen.

She’s a sapphire splash.

We got our chicks from back in May, they are about 20 weeks old now and one of our girls just started laying. The eggs are very light blue colored. I suspect the eggs are coming from one of our grey girls but I can’t be sure. Any help on what the breeds are?

He got accepted by the hens and seems nice

Hi everyone,
I have several chickens that are around 5 months old, and all of them have been sneezing and have runny noses.
They are all still eating and drinking normally and don’t seem particularly tired or lethargic. However, one of them has very strange, noisy breathing, which worries me.
As the weather has been getting colder, I made sure they slept in the enclosed part of their coop because they usually preferred sleeping in the area that is more exposed to the outdoors.
I’m worried they might have a respiratory infection, and I’m also concerned about avian flu.
Has anyone experienced similar symptoms with their chickens? What could be causing this, and what would you recommend I do?
Thank you for any advice!

5 mins before lights out and these two girls decided I was the perch.

I know her patterning looks like a quail, but she’s 100% chicken-sized. She wanders loose on my colleagues property & accepts food from her. My colleague is a wildlife rehabber and has noticed this baby has bumblefoot so she’s set out to catch and treat her. We’d like to know what kind of chicken she is, and if in fact she IS a she.

Also, name suggestions are welcome!

Living in the Florida panhandle we just had a hurricane a few days ago. In the midst of the worst of it, I saw these poor girls running panicked through the neighborhood, dodging falling trees and huge limbs, sideways blowing rain etc.

Having a fenced in yard and a nice unused coop, I knew I had to rescue them. My grandson and I were able to safely catch them all and secure them in the coop. A friend in the neighborhood is next door neighbors with the person that owned the chickens. My friend said the neighbor was a horrible pet owner, and she had no coop, no protection, or anything for the girls. They basically ran that part of the neighborhood unchecked. And code enforcement had written her up a few weeks ago due to her shitty care of her animals. The neighbor also said she wasn't going to chase them down to get them back after the storm either. Well guess what, she ain't getting them back. They're safe now, and will be cared for, loved and protected for the rest of their lives.

I posted a picture of Meatball a week or so ago, confirming she was a hen. A few people mentioned her face was swollen. So I've been monitoring her in her quarantine run (she has not been integrated.) She was doing well, but it does seem to be progressing.

Symptoms:

Discharge from nose/eyes.

Swollen face/eye area.

Bubbles in eyes.

She is pretty smelly. (yeasty almost - she was getting ACV in her water, because I thought she may have had sour crop and that got better, but she's still stinky compared to my OG girls.)

No coughing/sneezing/rales.

During the day she does well, but when she's in her coop for the evening ,in the morning it's kind of rough. She'd been looking better for a few days, but when I went to let her out this morning she had a milky colored bubble in the corner of her eye.

I called to schedule an appointment with my vet, but their first opening is 10/29 or I have to pay an emergency visit of a minimum of $150 emergency fee + the visit, meds, test - etc.... and I don't mean to be that person, but she was a free bird I took, because the woman was downsizing her flock due to pregnancy (Or so I'd been told) I really can't afford an emergency vet appointment of over $200 right now.

How should I treat her before she gets worse?

Please be nice. I'm not an expert in chicken tending. I've only been doing this since march and am trying my best with the knowledge I have. I've been monitoring her closely, and today with the milk bubble has been the worst of it.

With H5N1 still turning up, I wanted an easy way to know when it’s confirmed near me without digging through agency PDFs. So I made birdflu fyi, a free map of confirmed avian-influenza outbreaks in wild birds, poultry, wild mammals, livestock and people. No ads, no sign-up.

Drop a pin on your place, pick a radius (km or miles), and you’ll get a browser notification when a new outbreak is confirmed inside it. Data comes straight from official sources (USDA APHIS, EFSA, Australia’s DAFF, FAO, WHO) and refreshes daily.

Please treat it as awareness only. It shows confirmed detections, not control zones or the all-clear, and it doesn’t change your biosecurity or reporting duties. If you suspect bird flu in your birds, call your vet or ag authority first.

It’s a non-commercial side project, and I’d love feedback from other people like me who keep birds.

[edit: Thanks for the replies, seems to be birdpox. She's in our glasshouse now, nice and warm.]

One of 5 chickens was a bit lethargic yesterday, but today she's isn't looking well at all. She looks like she turned 85 overnight. Normally she's a lot less pale as well. She just sits en closes her eyes most of the time. She doesn't want to eat, but she started drinking as soon as she reached the water thinghy.

She has some tiny bloody rashes on her face, and one black wart or maybe a scab on her right cheek. Could it be fowlpox? Het nostrils are open, so I don't think it's some kind of sinus infection.

Anyone have a clue what's wrong with her?

ps. The pictures aren't gross or offensive, I just follow rule 2 to the letter.

Hey guys, does anyone know what breed is this chicken ?

Thanks !!

We've got young cows, pregnant goats, and many chickens that will eat everything in sight except the mice

We're looking for a quick-acting and effective solution to our mouse problem that's safe for our animals

We're open to just about any solution except for barn cats!

I “adopted” these guys and am not sure what they are.