Does anyone use any other non-ediable toys ....? You really want a list ... I could go on for hours! I have a pet food and treat shop, so any chance to sell to chicken keepers is worth my while. With that in mind, I've spent ages playing about with my hens to find the very best toys and enrichments...

Sorry, got distracted by a call that my tea was ready .... THANKS everyone for your help.

As far as I can remember Mareks is a neoplastic herpes virus, which can result in tumours developing on nerve endings, etc. I think, and this may be out of date by now, in the US there are assorted versions from mild to deadly, with only some showing post mortem findings. I was just wondering, as y...

We got some exbatts, thanks to Bluebell and her crack squad of rehomers, on sat 19th and by monday 21st one was very wobbly on her leg - as if she had broken it. I left them as a group and simply placed feed in bowls near her, allowing the flighty birds to settle to my company before investigating f...

Cocci? Our original 12 hens became 5 before we and the vet worked out stronger strains of cocci were arriving with each batch of four hens from the same so-called free range farmer. The farmer turned out to be totally unaware of diseases and DEFRA stepped in after we called them. Anyway, the least n...

.... a buzzard will often eat where the prey was caught .... You beat me to it! Was going to say that, as we have assorted birds of prey in my area and they all seem to use a strip of our land to hunt for small rodents, then eat on various fence posts within ten or so yards of the kill. We've ended...

If you know there were eggs there why haven't you removed them? To try and catch her. I started to wonder if egg eating was happening after hearing the usual "I made an egg!" crow two days running yet finding no eggs within moments (I work all day within thirty yards of my hens) so starte...

One of out Marans is eating any eggs she finds in whichever nestbox she goes in to lay her own egg. There are six hens in a shed 5 x 8 feet, with two nestboxes they all seeem to choose and two boxes nobody likes much. They're out on masses of land daily of course. The Maran is our largest hen and v...

Would it help to put a towel round her so she can't flap her wings. Can't harm, we do exactly that with our cat and it works really well. However, I never had to with the hens, they have been brilliant given time to calm down. You could try soaking dried mealworms in oil, if maggots don't appeal to...

Wuss? No! After a couple of years I'm still dodgy holding a hen and doing something to her, trust me. But, when we had leg problems with ours and I was alone to sort it I worked out hens aren't easy to hurt and are easy enough to manage if you're forced. Being right handed, I hold the hen under my l...

... I've put woodchip on top of slabs so they have something to scratch around in. I hope I've got a suggestion that might help (and probably save money, too!) A few months ago I started bedding my horses on pelleted woodfibre, like the pellets you buy for woodburning stoves. Now I've got the chick...

Hi, I'm new and have joined as I can see you guys know far more than I do! Now I'm going to start asking daft questions .... but please help if you can. I got a few hens from a free range farmer (who I thought ran a nice, clean farm) last summer and pretty quickly one died. Another followed, again f...