chicken experts - please give me some advice!

[mabel1973]

I have recently aquired 2 chickens. They are living in a little coop with a 6 foot run attached in our back garden. They came from a friend of my dad, and were previously kept in a barn ( he used to let them out but has kept them in since the bird flu). I am not sure how well they were looked after, they have never been wormed or treated for lice.. Is it necessary to worm them etc?
I am feeding them layers pellets and scraps from the kitchen (bread, veg peelings etc) is this ok? I read that the layers pellets contain the grit they require, but have also read that you should give them additional grit if they are not allowed to roam free - is this correct. We are aiming to secure the garen properly so that we can let them out, but we do have foxes so it would only be whilst we are around.
They are laying 1 egg each every day, so i assume they are happy.
Also one of them has feathers missing down the front of it's neck, it was like that when i got them, so not sure what's caused it and they don't appear to be growing back at the moment.
Also their legs look quite scaley, i am not sure if this is normal.
I think they are black rocks - or a mixture of black rock and something else, they are a rusty clour with a bright red comb (is that what it's called??!)
Thanks for any advice

First of all the scaly leg is caused by a mite. You can get cream to rub on their legs to sort this out. Have you got a country store/feed merchants near you? You'd probably be able to get it from their, if not get on google!

I have 2 chickens and don't bother giving them extra grit. Mine have a bigger area to roam in than yours though. You could add some grit to the pellets.

I feed mine pellets (always in the hopper) and every afternoon I give them a couple of handfuls of corn. Given the choice they will only eat corn and leave the pellets. They will get fat if they do this and not lay so much so limit the corn!

You ought to worm them, you can get worming powder again from a feed merchants or similar. Its called flubenvet.

Not sure about teh missing feathers, it might have been pecked by the other one. But they sound happy if they're laying. Hope that helps.

Thanks stripey - that does help! I will definately get something for their legs..though how i will get them to let me rub it in is another problem entirely!

If you kind of pin them to the ground and kneel lightly on them then you can do most things. I manage to clip their wings by myself. You just have to be quite firm with them.

the other thing i wanted to know about was a dust bath.
Do they need this to keep their feathers clean?
i filled a cat litter tray with fine play sand, i thought they might like, but they haven't showed any interest so far.

WELL mine don't have a dust bath but they have pecked enough grass up in one end of their run that it is never gong to grow back again. They sometimes use this - I'm sure yours will make their own if they want one.

Good luck with them.

thanks that's great