oh dear, guess that told me! Feel like slinking off to vegetables - certainly never feel so wretched murdering a tomato. Thing is though, I have kept animals (cats, dogs hamsters and so on) (and 3 children) forever, all of whom have generally lived to see peaceful old age (apart from a couple of hamsters which met grizzly ends at the hands - claws - of our cat and a neighbours dog). How hard could looking after chickens be? Well jolly easy, by all accounts(3 friends and several books) And we did try. We wormed them, scrubbed and scoured the coup, checked combs, faces, feathers, feet, fussed over them, asked advice...and yes, we did ask the vet but he was very dismissive and because we had had such a terrible experience with our cat, we were feeling very raw and anti-vet anyway, so we felt a bit hopeless. Advice from other chicken keepers was wildly variable (don't worry, I call this 'slow chicken', it will get better or die in three days!' )and we were useless because we simply didn't know what we were looking for and had no comparison with healthy hens to judge. Anyway, I am not excusing myself, just pointing out that it is not always easy and if you really don't know enough to be able to confidently deal with elderly or ill hens, it really is better to buy from a proper dealer who will take the time to show you some of the basic things which are not really clear in books. Amazingly, I also didn't think about an obvious solution - to find and join a local poultry keeping society. It was actually through this forum that we did eventually make contact with a chicken expert but it took 3 MONTHS of generally messing up. Part of me is eyeing up the huge area taken up by chicken run and thinking 'rose garden'. I know a lot about them.