Recent content by SpringFarmChick

Good morning, did you ever tile your coop? I have had a long term rat problem (big holes in the floor) and want to put down cement board and then tile it (myself). Rat poison is not an option, and they are too smart for have-a=heart. I think tile and concrete are the only things they won't be...

How did this floor clean up?

The temperature in my area now is 40s to freezing during the day, mid twenties at night. Not a great time to have chicks, but a hen's gotta do what a hen's gotta do. I have had hens kill "strange looking" chicks in the past, but always had good luck with seramas as foster mothers up until now...

Update: I did not get the above reply and I was tired of hearing the chick squeal when the hen nipped at it. The hen is in a brooder box with the chicks as it is too cold here to have them in the coop yet. I dyed the chick, using a mix of green, blue and red food color. It was not easy to...

I have a serama raising several chicks. One of the last to hatch is a beautiful gray chick (they are all mixed hybrids) but the hen has rejected it and pecks it. All the other chicks are yellow and brown. I am thinking of dyeing the gray a brownish color so it can blend in (mixing food color...

I had a hen that was limping on the left side, then progressed to being immobile. I brought her in the house and gave her electrolytes and colloidal silver. She began to eat and seemed to recover. I let her back with the flock for one day, but her right eye seemed to bother her. Now she is...

This sounds similar to what happened to my hen. I'm pretty sure my hen has Marek's disease.

I recently posted about Marek's too. I drenched my hen (force fed) colloidal silver and electrolytes with vitamins (Emergen - C). She had gone over a couple of days from limping to finally just lying on her side on the floor of the coop completely immobile. It took a couple of days of...

Hi Tatiana, Colloidal silver is a liquid suspension of microscopic particles of silver. It has been used and touted for centuries as a natural anti bacterial and anti viral. The Economist, in its science section, had an article about it in 2009 or 2010--I forget which, but you could google...

I know there has been some discussion of Mareks Disease, because I have read quite a bit of it. Unfortunately it has shown up in my flock. I have an 8 month old Americana cross, that I got as a chick this June, along with five others. I have a mixed flock of 16, including two roosters. One...