Farmall Cub

W6NZ wrote:Thanks Ron, what great looking chics, good size too, what's the breed?.

Thanks ....... They are "Rhode Island Reds" .

I agree with the brown eggs. The hens and roosters, which provided the eggs for these chicks, were bought last april as chicks

Anybody with New Jersy Giants?

Richard

Rich. Do you have them? White or black? Jersey Giants are a huge breed of chicken .......... They also lay brown eggs ........

I have a small group of chickens with lots of space, good feed, oyster shells and clean water and still there was picking. It finally dawned on me that some birds were not actually picked. Standing quietly in their coop on a slow day is when I saw the unpicked birds plucking and eating the feathers from the rest. So in my instance it was a dominance thing. Since I have two coops I moved the bothersome ones in with tougher old hens and everyone has recovered. But with chickens sometimes you just can't tell why they pick.

Ah yes Rhode Island Red, what a chicken, we always had them if possible.
My parents, just after the war, regularly raised hundreds of day-old chicks that arrived by train, to provide eggs for the black-market, selling to london restaurants.
Shell and grit were always on tap all the time and a tin of Stockhol Tar was kept on a beam in the shed to dab on necks that got pecked, seemed to work.
I believe the problem is a mixture of dietry insufficience, boredom and heirarchy.
Most books I have read say to watch out for feeding egshells backto the birds as it encourages the hens to eat their own eggs. The only way to stop that is for the offender to go into the oven.
I do seem to remember something about roasting the shells first though????
Pat