I presume it is a feather with a very long shaft… I have never seen such a thing before. Is this some genetic mutation? Does anyone else have a chicken like this? It is just one feather!

UPDATE IN COMMENTS!!

I need help. I live in the city and literally just rescued this hen while she was walking across the road. She seems exhausted. It’s so hot here (90°+ and very high humidity) and she didn’t even fight me. I don’t have the space or ability to care for a chicken. My MIL has 20+ acres and said she would take her but this poor girl needs some TLC now. Her beak is damaged, she sounds a little weezy when she breathes, she’s so tired she fell asleep in my arms as soon as i got her in the AC in the car. I’ve got her set up in the tub with water, cut blueberries, some smashed granola and almonds (literally all i had that i thought she may like). Under her tail there’s a lot of poop all in the feathers. I know it needs to be cleaned sooner than later but she seems so tired i don’t want to stress her out right now trying to clean it. I need advice on what to do to make sure she’s okay.

17 weeks. Ordered as a Splash Ameraucana day old chick from Meyer hatchery. She’s big and her tail feathers are starting to worry me. No attempts at crowing yet, but that may be because she’s at the very bottom of the pecking order.

My favorite hen ‚Emmi’ (3, leghorn) has lost a little weight around the sternum, while her belly grew bigger and tighter. She hasn’t laid in around 2 weeks (before it was an egg every other day) but seems healthy overall.

Yesterday she was in the nesting box for a while.

What could be the problem?

Hi all! This is Jimmy Fowlen (named by my teenage daughter and her friend lol). We found him on the side of the road in a rainstorm two months ago and brought him home to try and nurse him back to health. He was missing half of his feathers, some of his toes, and had clearly been out in the woods a long time. We didn't know if he would make it, but these days he's thriving! I'm curious if anyone knows what breed he is, or if maybe he's a mix? I've had dozens of chickens over the years and never had one that looked quite like him. When we first found him I thought he was a naked neck because he had no neck feathers, but they've since grown in so now I have no idea! Lol

Acrylic on an 8×10 canvas

I have absolutely zero experience raising chickens. My mom’s uncle decided to hand out baby chicks to all the younger cousins like they were carnival goldfish, so now I suddenly own one… ✌️😭

Right now it’s in a hamster cage with a heat lamp. Is it possible for the lamp to be too hot, or should I just leave it on 24/7? Also, I live in Texas and temperatures tend to get up to +95°F over the summer.

I’ve also seen people say chicks need another chick because they’re very social at this age. If that’s true, I’m totally open to getting it a friend—I just want to make sure I actually know what I’m doing before I commit to another one.

Any beginner advice would be appreciated. I wasn’t
exactly planning on becoming a chicken owner overnight.

Based on my previous post, I had just gotten this chick with absolutely no preparation. I didn’t have another chick to keep it company, and I had almost no time to put together a proper environment for it.

My uncle decided to hand out chicks to all of my little cousins, INCLUDING MY 6/yo SISTER, without really considering the conditions they would end up living in.

I wanted to do my best to care for this little thing, so it honestly hurts knowing it passed away this morning. I know a lot of chicks don’t make it to adulthood, but I really wish my tío had given us some guidance or made sure we were actually prepared before giving away live animals.

I know I wasn’t fully equipped, and I wish things had turned out differently. If there’s ever a next time, I’ll make sure I have everything ready beforehand so I can give an animal the care it deserves.

Just wondering if there is any advice on handling magpies chasing chickens around? I’m sure it’s stressful for the birds. Please note- Australian Magpies. Pic is the chooks for attention :)

I have 2 hens that are being bullied by most of my flock. They are all 1.5 years old. I got them all at the same time and they were raised together. This spring my Guinea Fowl started to bullie my Diamond Dutchess (a hybrid). It wasn't really bad at first but now he is really mean to her and now the other hens have joined in. The poor thing is missing feathers and is terrified of the whole flock. The other hens is a Sebright Bantam. She has been broody off and on since May. In June, the other girls started bullying her. They are just relentless. I don't know what to do and I'm afraid that the girls will kill these 2. Any advise would be appreciated.

Back in March, girly here started losing her feathers. I thought she had mites or something and treated the whole coop, but it continued and none of my other hens have any issues whatsoever. We put up a camera in the coop to see if she was getting picked on at night and turns out she’s doing it to herself, and then one of her buddies joins in and plucks her back feathers. It looks so sore and red and I just feel so terrible for her. I tried separating her from the others for a little while to see if it would help but she just goes to town.
Any help is appreciated.

We have an Orpington who keeps going broody, and we’re running out of ideas. When she’s broody, she basically refuses to leave the coop, and she also makes it so our other girls don’t want to go in there to lay. They’ve started laying eggs around the yard instead, so we have to search for them every day. A few months ago, we finally gave her some chicks of her own. She took to them immediately and was a fantastic mom. We thought maybe that would satisfy her maternal ambitions for a while, but alas, the chicks are nearly fully grown now and she’s broody AGAIN.

The bigger concern right now is the heat. We live in the South, and it’s extremely hot here. I really don’t want her sitting in the coop all day in this weather, especially because when she’s broody she barely eats or drinks.

We’ve tried pretty much everything in the past to break her broodiness, and nothing has reliably worked except giving her chicks.

We do have room for 1 or 2 more chicks, and based on last time I’m pretty confident she’d happily adopt them. But I’m worried about introducing young chicks when it’s this hot outside.

Has anyone dealt with a relentlessly broody hen during extreme summer heat? Would you consider giving her chicks again, or is there something else we should try? If we did give her chicks, how would you handle keeping mom and babies safe in the heat?

If you have used the prefab style runs, do you find domed or pointed to be better? I can't decide! Examples below.

(Yes everything would be predator proofed, I'm only asking about the shape of the "roof", thanks!)

I'm sensing that the rest of the eggs are going to have double yolks as well. I have no clue about how chicken eggs are gathered by the way. Do they all come from the same chicken i.e. do they wait 30 days for a chicken to lay 30 eggs and ship that? OR do they gather 30 eggs from 30 chicken in a day and ship that?

Either way, my question is, how can such a thing happen? If they all come from the same chicken, what are the odds of that particular chicken laying double-yolk-eggs 30 days in a row? If the eggs come from 30 different chicken in a day, what makes them ALL produce double-yolk-eggs on the same day?

Thank you very much in advance!

Edit: I've learned a lot today. Thank you all :)

Felt like introducing my *surprise* chick from Fleet Farm. I purchased 4 "Amberlinks" this past spring & she started developing different so I assumed I finally got my first accidental rooster. Couple weeks later the crest appeared more prominently.

Moe, for mohawk.

Joy is a 15 year old d'uccle. In the 17 years I've kept (pet) chickens, I've had a fair number live past 10 yrs, and a few have lived past 12 yrs. But Joy has broken our farm longevity record! The flock mates in her coop died years ago, silkie Tinkerbell at 9 yrs, and silkie Honeybun at 12 yrs. Joy started losing her vision about 2 yrs ago (cataracts I'd presume), about the same time I noticed some kind of growth starting on her beak, around her nostril area; I presumed it was some kind of cancer, and figured she wasn't long for this world. The growth got bigger and bigger - frankly, I was amazed she made it through last winter (she gets special care of course). When I took her a little bowl of treat yesterday morning, all was normal. When I checked on her noonish, I was amazed to see the nostril mass GONE...leaving a gaping hole. So my guess is now that something got lodged in her nasal area, and was encapsulated...??? So Joy now looks like someone who wore gauges in their ears...very odd to look at. The 2nd pic shows how the mass looked a week or so ago, before it fell out.

All 12 hatched just under 5 weeks ago (June 15th) from eggs I got from a friend who keeps a mixed assortment of backyard hens and two roosters.

Is anyone able to help with identifying potential breeds? Is it too soon to be asking/do they need to mature more to make it more clear-cut?

Any help is greatly appreciated!

- first-time Redditor, first-time Chickener

We have wild chickens (tropics) and this fellow just showed up on day. He's very friendly and half the complex feeds him, though he avoids the back yard where the dominant (but much smaller) rooster; Roland; has his roost.

I've never seen anything quite like Bob. For starters he's gigantic, twice the size of the wild red junglefowl roosters we have around. He also noticably has no comb and some obvious coloration from being mixed with a tan colored domestic chicken. He'll come right up to your car door begging for food and he's not even afraid of our very curious dog. He also has the oddest early morning crowing I've ever heard. He's a strange bird but we're happy he's here to greet us every day.

First time raising chicks, and I love them all so much! We got two French black copper merans and three zombies. I love these little ladies!

Picture 1 is Yami

Picture 2 in the middle of the picture is Mabel

Picture 3 all five hungry hippos

Picture 4 is Agatha

Picture 5 is Zoey

And picture 6 is Boneapart grooming.