One of the worst wounds I’ve had was from a rooster. I thought he was out of the hen house and had closed the door. As soon as I went for the eggs, he went berserk. He managed to cut my leg open with one of those fighting spurs. It wasn’t as bad as it looked, but I refused to gather eggs for a few days.
I’ve been attacked by a mother duck as well. There was almost no damage, but the experience was a little more traumatic. My dad had asked me to gather a duckling for a friend of his. I found a mother and little ones and followed them for a bit. Then she went under a fence. This was my chance. I snagged the last duckling in the procession. It had completely slipped my mind that ducks fly. She came straight up and over the fence .She attacked from behind, managed to get one foot on each of my shoulders, and was beating me in the head with her wings. I dropped the duckling and she backed off. I went back and told my dad that if he wanted a duckling, he was going to have to get it himself! Lol
We’ve been very lucky with our three roosters. They don’t really fight with each other, unless the
younger two are after the same hen, and then Boss, our oldest rooster, gets after them and makes they stop. And none of the three have ever tried to attack us. We can usually catch them pretty easy when we need to clip a wing to keep them from flying over the fence (we do it to all our chickens) and they don’t even fight us then.
What I hate are geese! We had friends who had a vicious one. I carried a small bat around with me whenever we were at their house because it would come up behind and bite. It got whacked with my bat a few times before it decided not to bother me, but would still come and squawk at me to let me know it was there. I hated that bird. They finally killed it when they got tired of it being mean to everybody.
Animals can be so finicky. We had a couple of geese when I was growing up. They weren’t particularly friendly. However, one of them liked me and the other liked my sister. We could put our arms around their necks and they were fine. It’s not like we raised them. They were on the property when we moved in.
Wont run too high on chickens. Most vets don’t do chickens. The bigger raisers are for meat or ehhs so they consider them disposable, they don’t use vets.
we just bought 8 chicks, have never had chickens before so its been a crazy 2 week adventure so far. we got easter eggers as well and can’t wait to see all the beautiful eggs… Thanks so much for the feeder design, mine keep emptying the jar kind so maybe this will do beter. what thickness of acrylic did you use?
Mine have grown so much in a month. They are about the size of large pigeons now and are mostly feathered out. I still can’t tell the hens from the roosters. I’ve read it takes 6-8 weeks for easter eggers to start exhibiting the tell tale traits. We’ll see.
