Ammonia smell in coop-first time owner

[A chickychickychick-ENN!!]

I gave my bokboks some tasty cabbage leaves along with a fat bit of the stubby nub with a lot of leaves on it. I thought they'd go cabbage crazy, but they huddled at the far end of the run away from it and just stared at it for most of the afternoon.

 

They've had it before. Freaks.

 

Who else has food-phobic chickens?!

[Ain't Nobody Here]

ME .

 

I'm often made to feel like I've chucked a hand grenade into their run. Well, you never know when an apple might explode in your face .

[Scramble]

Do not give them carrots within a 10-mile radius.

[Minnie the Moocher]

My chooks aren't scared of anything. Doesn't mean they'll eat it either.

[sadietoo]

Do not try to give them..... sweetcorn on the cob raw.... counselling is required afterwards... ..

[Chookiehen]

I chucked a tomato out the window, not long after my lot got to freerange for the first time, thinking they'd devour it, and reward me with lots of lovely eggs, and instead it exploded on the concrete and splattered poor Ethel & Mildred with seedy tomato goo, and the pair of them have run from the sight of tomatoes ever since.

[chickenanne]

Yep, mine are terrified of many vegetables; a bilt like kids. cabbage reduces them to quivering nervous wrecks. Silly birdies!

[Lydia]

Ping accidently got hit with a stray cabbage leaf back in in 2005 and has never ever forgotten it. Being top hen she's warned all the others and while they will eat it, it is approached with extreme caution and guilty looks. Ping meanwhile just sulks at the back and berates the others for their lack of values!

[finger lickin good]

Thought i would give the chickens something to play with so got them a nice cabbage. I have just put it in their fenced of section of the garden and by the look of the girls you would think it was a ticking bomb. They are giving it a very wide berth, and if they get too close they are running off. It is quite amusing to watch

 

They seem to be like that with anything new you give them for about 3 days then get used to it.

[Chook n Boo Mum]

Do not try to give them..... sweetcorn on the cob raw.... counselling is required afterwards... ..

 

The only counselling need is for the owner of the hand which has been removed in the rush to squirrel the cob out of reach of other beaks...! Ours love sweetcorn in any shape or form!

 

Cabbage does tend to be skirted around in our runs too!

 

Sha x

[chocchick]

Ping accidently got hit with a stray cabbage leaf back in in 2005 and has never ever forgotten it. Being top hen she's warned all the others and while they will eat it, it is approached with extreme caution and guilty looks. Ping meanwhile just sulks at the back and berates the others for their lack of values!

Megan sometimes runs in terror if you throw food into the run

[Gamebird]

Do not try to give them..... sweetcorn on the cob raw.... counselling is required afterwards... ..

 

Mine are the same

 

They won't go near it. However, if I s"Ooops, word censored!"e off the corn then they love it.

 

Are they training me?

[gracefruit]

Carrots turn mine into drama queens. They run screaming.

[Hen Watch]

Mine hate cabbage. Peck a bit then leave it all.

 

Carrots they would not touch for a year. But then all of a sudden they started to eat carrot peelings and now will peck at a whole carrot. They never used to ..... fussy little madams.

[brambles]

Mine are currently in post traumatic stress counselling from the scary broccoli which is hanging in their run. It has been there for three days and took them half an hour to come out of hiding when it went in!

 

Not a bit has been pecked at.

[piptiddlepip]

Ours will eat anything and everything, and are scared of nothing. I found a marble in the garden last week, and Maggie tried to snatch it out of my hand!

 

I also put some turkey in a bowl in the kitchen for the cats last week, and Maggie got in while my back was turned and took the biggest turkey piece she could find. Of course, she couldn't swallow it, so a Benny Hill chase took place around the garden, with me shouting "Don't eat that! Give it here!" and Maggie saying "Shan't! 'Smine!" until I caught up with her and tugged it out of her beak (and my god, did she ever hang on to it!)

[brambles]

They are now fighting a cauliflower corpse, which has been eviscerated and is hanging in their run like a Tudor victim hanging in chains.

 

The broccoli has been demoted to the floor and is no longer scary.

 

Odd bods!

[Valkyrie]

Mine do not like any form of broccoli or nice greens or cabbage - forget cauli's and carrots and cooked potato peelings, although boiled potatoes minus peel are scoffed in fractions of a second. They did strip the pak choi that had run to seed in the greenhouse last year which I had given them - it took a while but then a few tentative nips and then they were away. They also ate the turnip tops, beetroot tops and chard that I had in the veg beds and borders. They do not like sweetcorn at all. They will only eat small red tomatoes - which is good because it means more yummy Sungolds for us! They were very frightened of apple cores - which had quite a lot of apple left on it. The blackbirds finished that off!

[Abbey Road Girl]

Thinking to give my chooks something amusing to peck at in their run, I put some dried corn into a hamster ball. The idea was that they would kick it around and scoff up the bits that fell out. Theoretically it would work given that the dry corn would be dispersed through the slots in the hamster ball when the hens trundled it along.

 

Yikes! Invasion of the Unknown Terror!!!! They all cowered in the back of the run.

 

Won't try that again!

 

Might have been more successful if I'd put the hamster ball into the run after the girlies had been left out to free range in the late afternoon.

 

Fraidy cats indeed, but one can only sympathise with them.

[4Clucks-minusOne]

Mine got a red cabbage phobia a few months ago. They like greens and carrots but nothing red except grapes. Gone off corn too but complain loudly when I give it to the Robin.

[sarahs]

Any kind of raw vegetable is greeted with total disdain, and a 'do you really expect me to eat THAT' look. If I take the same veg and steam it in the microwave for a few mins, then they are jumping at me for the bowl as I walk in to their section of the garden!!

 

Little darlings!

 

Sarah

[chickinboy]

Ahhhh, more chooks that refuse to eat anything unless it's been heated! If I give them greens cold, I just get 'you say you love me but you can't even be bothered to cook my dinner?!'. I go out with the warm version, and it's all 'don't make me ask again' before taking my hand with it. The only time they'll eat cold leftovers is if it's half way in my mouth, at which point they have been known to fly at my face! This normally results in me screaming, spitting out the food, dropping the remains on the floor and running for cover. 'Job done'.