New chicken owner seeking advise 😅
Our take
| | Hello! Looking for some extra feedback and advice. I’m sorry this is a long one. We recently rescued two “stray” chickens. They were in a bleak situation at our rental property. We did our due diligence and asked all the neighbors and nobody claimed them or came for them the whole month. They roosted on a tiny branch every night in our front yard and never left. After about a month caring for and keeping an eye on them there, we made the decision to bring them to our home with huge fenced in back yard, ordered a nice coop, proper food and all the things they would need. They’re definitely young, and had never been in a coop or eaten normal food, we know that now. Took about 6 nights of me manually putting them into the coop (they tried roosting on the bottom slat of our sons playground) for them to go in it on their own which they are now doing every evening 🥹🙌🏼 We live in an area where a lot of people have chickens so I did have a few resources to ask most of my first time chicken owner questions. But a few remain as we are all still adjusting to each other lol The first morning after we brought them home, one of the chickens laid behind our koi pond (despite having nesting material and nest boxes inside their new coop) This was fine as I’m sure she felt safe and secure back behind that covered area. I added nest material back there, but had a friend tell me to continue to put eggs in the nest boxes every night so they would hopefully switch over to that. She never did… Every morning she lays behind the koi pond. The first FIVE days she laid two eggs every morning. I was concerned about this at first, but chalked it up to accelerated ovulation in a new layer after doing some research. She did a few days only laying one, and now occasionally still lays two a day. I know they are not nest sharing as the second chicken never goes behind the koi pond. The second chicken has yet to lay, aside from one soft shell white egg inside the roosting area… I assume it was hers. Since I don’t KNOW their exact age, I don’t know what to expect with “first time layers”. Any feedback here is helpful. They are also not super interested in their food??? I leave the feeder stocked in the coop, but they run to me every time I come out so I just throw their mealworm/sunflower treat out but honestly they don’t seem interested in that either even though they used to love it. They pick a few things out then leave majority of it now. Been giving random fruit and appropriate left overs but they pick at it and then look at me like I’m crazy. Am I doing something wrong?? 🫠🤣 Thank you for reading this novel and for any helpful feedback you can offer this first time chicken owner!! Picture of our girlies for tax. AND the one weird egg in last photo. Their names are Spicy (I’ll leave it to the imagination as to why😂), and Henrietta. Spicy is the layer, Henrietta laid the weird egg that one time. [link] [comments] |
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