Abigail M Johnson

We have yet to make our chicken and duck coops predator proof. Racoons are the least of our worries. But as long as a dog is chained up for the night and through the morning hours, nothing happens. That is the only thing that has kept everything away. We tie 4 dogs up and they are able to earn their keep that way. Sorry you lost your rooster and hens! That is always a bad feeling.

Thanks a lot! Great ideas, will try!

Ways to treat and prevent bumble foot, which is recurring on same chicken?

In my experience, roosters tend to stay nice (to us people) for longer if they have been raised by us from an egg onward. So roosters that were given to us as adults for various reasons, they were more likely to turn mean earlier on. The last rooster that we were forced to enjoy in a gravy was 2 years old. He was extremely nice up til the sneak attack on me from behind. I now have a renewed sense of healthy fear. I do not turn my back on any of our roosters (there are 3, each over a flock). I also observe that an individual rooster will sometimes start to show aggression toward my husband first, sometimes just little signs. I pay attention, because it seems that once a rooster begins this, he will eventually become aggressive in general even if he is still being super nice to the rest of the family presently. They always start with my husband. He spends less time in the pens. Maybe that is why, I'm not sure. I hope you are able to be at peace with whatever happens to your guy.

If this happens often, it could be a defective shell gland. I was just recently reading about this and other odd egg issues. If it only happens occasionally, it could be caused by disturbances or stress during the calcification process. And yes, it can also be because of excess calcium in the chicken's diet. I would think that if not all the hens are having this on their eggs, the excess calcium thing may not be the cause? I was wondering about this myself. I am definitely not an egg-spert.

I was really excited to try fermenting my chicken feed a couple years ago. It is very humid and hot here and it molded. I make bread, have made sourdough bread for years, I make homemade vinegar, I make fermented things...have a decent feel for and understanding of those processes. But the fermented feed thing just wouldn't work for me! I ended up wasting feed and I also never felt like they ate less feed or anything. I'm sure I was doing something wrong and was bummed about it. I ended up just growing a lot of things for them so I could supplement a lot. I hope you figure out what is growing on yours!

Just don't turn your back on him! Dang roosters!

This is very interesting. My husband and I have recently started to eat our extra or mean roosters after raising them for years. We have never used a cone in this process. So what is the purpose of the cone? Is it to just keep the chicken from thrashing around?

Yeah, I have had many roosters attack me and my older daughter, who is now 9 and has been raised around them. Pepper was the only one who has ever donw THIS...drawn blood to the point of deep wounds nearly requiring stitches. I always do what was described if one comes at me even sideways...run him down and attack him back. It usually works for a little while. In this case though, as others pointed out, I couldn't take the chance on keeping him. That really is sound advice though in general. I agree!

Schatzi Hall wrote:My rooster, Soupy, started to attack me, but then he got attacked by a fox and saved the hens. I brought him in the house and kept him alive, though that wasn’t easy. I had to stitch up his wounds. He finally made it back to the coop, but then mites and a very cold winter. He lost lots of feathers. He’s alive and crowing again and we are now best friends. I call him Super, now. Bad boy to great boy rooster! He’s tough!

That sounds awesome! I wiah we could have kept Pepper, but he is in an ice bath right now and will be in a marinade in fridge shortly. He was a good bird, except for my leg that time.