Congrats on the new chickens! :) You're going to love having chickens, once you get past this first hurdle. Chickens stressed from being either shipped or rehomed can benefit from a few days of warmth and quiet (away from noise, barking dogs, cats & overactivekids), and by giving them unflavored Pedialyte (find it at the grocery store, in the baby aisle) to drink for the first couple of days. Pedialyte will give them a needed electrolyte boost. Other things that can help are offering various goodies such as live mealworms or crickets (at the fishing bait store or pet store, they are kept refrigerated so ask at the counter for them) to eat--chickens LOVE live mealworms. :) Cooked ground beef, scrambled eggs, diced grapes, raw corn on the cob and cooked noodles are also great and a great way of offering entertainment and nutrition for the chicks. It also helps cement you and your family as the 'good guys' who love and care for them, in the chicks' eyes. How old are the chicks? Not the Americaunas, you said they were about 10 weeks old--the others. Are they all feathered out? I normally keep my newly hatched chicks in the house in a brooder box, under a heat lamp, for 8 weeks, gradually reducing the amount of heat (turning off the heat lamp during the day once they are all feathered out, then gradually at night, too) and at the age of 6 weeks on, giving them limited outdoor time in an enclosed pen during the warm part of the day and bringing them back in at night. This gets them used to being outside. If yours came straight from being indoors and protected at all times to outdoors full-time, that could be your problem. Also, you MUST protect them from drafts. Drafts can kill young chickens, especially in colder climates. Heck, drafts can even kill adult birds in the right conditions. Like fancifowl said, either soften stuck-on poop with warm water and gently wipe away and/or snip it off carefully. I do a combination of both--soak and wipe away the loose stuff, then trim off the poopy feathers. Chicks have very tender skin (as you now know). If you do choose to put Neosporin on the skin, use a Q-tip to place it and apply VERY sparingly--you don't want to glop it on or overly soil the feathers, as the chick may get chilled. The chicks' big problem is going to be that the other chicks are going to peck at it's bare spot, Neosporin or no. You may end up having to isolate the chick. If you do, I'd do it in such a way that it can still see and hear it's flockmates--chickens are flock animals and do NOT like to be alone. You and the kids spending more time with it will help ease it's anxiety. As for the weeping eye thing, you can gently clean it with a bit of warm water on a washrag--it could be a slight injury or something in it's eye that caused it. Then add the eye ointment--sparingly, don't foul the feathers--IF it is OK to use in birds (call the vet & ask if you aren't sure). Keep an eye on the chick and watch to see if it is a simple eye problem or if it is a respiratory problem--look for sneezing and watery discharge from it's nares (nostrils) and for other signs of illness--sitting around fluffed up, listlessness, losing weight, strange poops, etc. I've got a chicken info site here, it may help: http://jackshenhouse.com/ If you post pics of the chicks here, we might be able to help you ID the mystery chicks! :) Velvet ~:>

I have 2 rhode Island reds and 3 red star sexlinks. Sweet girls. I have a chicken tractor my hubby made me. Here is some pics of chicken tractors. www.thecitychicken.com. It is easy and with a chicken tractor, when the floor is dirty and the grass is ate, we move them. We have them get into their coop, shut the door and move the tractor. We don't move them when they are in the run so they don't get hurt feet. Protects them and allows them to be free range eating fresh grass, taking dirt baths (which they love) and They eat the weeds, seeds, grass and fertilize the lawn. Poop in the coop goes in my compost. My chicken tractor is bigger than alot of those on the website. It is really fun and healthier since they are free range. We put ours on organic chicken food pellets. It is double the price, but i am assured there is no pesticides in their feed which will make me more comfortable about eating their eggs. My property has no pesticides or chemicals. Cheryl Here is a link that might be useful: The city chicken

Violet, she may not have any, but I know Dorothy of Dorothy's Digs greenhouse has ducks. Here is a link to her website with her phone number down at the bottom right hand side. BTW, she carries a great selection of large-size perennials, including Clematis and shrubs for extremely reasonable prices. Glenda Here is a link that might be useful: Dorothy's Digs - possible duck eggs

I go with the idea of scrounging whatever you can from wherever you can. I frequently find bookcases on the side of the road during "curb shopping" expeditions - they're usually particle board with cheap lamination, and most often the back has fallen off, which is why they're being disposed of. Take those home, throw them down on the ground, fill them up with the soil mix of your choice. They look fairly neat. In a couple of years, of course, moisture will make the particle board fall apart; at this point, you can take the bed apart, peeling off the veneers and trashing those. Then you get a new bookcase, put the half-composted board at the bottom of it, refill with soil or lasagna layers or whatever, and start over. Or you can put the particle board some place near your compost bins where it can moulder away and be added as browns when it crumbles. Eventually it will be compost. (Particle board shouldn't be burned, but composting is a slow and safe way of dealing with it.) Don't go buying new ones for this purpose; but reducing the bookcase to a small wad of veneer and a bunch of organic material is much better than putting the whole thing in a landfill, IMO. Cabinet frames and old drawers do nicely, too, and provide varied heights for interesting design (and raising plants to comfortable levels). Plain wood bookcases last longer if you can get them, but don't use painted ones - the paint flakes off and gets in the soil, and you have no way of knowing whether there's lead in there or not. Plastic "milk crates" can be used to support cardboard boxes full of soil, or even brown paper bags. After harvest, dump all the used soil, complete with the crumbling remains of the paper, into a pile, refresh it with some compost, and put it into a new box. You can rearrange the boxes easily. Plastic swimming pools with holes in the bottom are also good, as long as you don't mind the "blue with little fishies" look. If you do mind fishies, stack used bricks, stone or broken concrete around the pool to hide it. You should never, ever have to pay for any of this stuff - plenty of people throw stuff away every day that can be repurposed and saved from the landfill, at least for a while.