Update:
Today when we changed the vet wrap, one leg is already fairly stable under her when unbound. The other leg has made progress but still pushes out to the side. There was some swelling of her ankles, which I think indicates that we need to wrap the cuffs a little looser. However she is...
Our broody Pilgrim goose hatched five fat, fluffy goslings last week. When she and the babies left the nest, I went to clean it out and found a few eggs remaining. Candling showed that one of the eggs had a live gosling inside, so I brought it inside and put it in the incubator to finish...
Thank you for your reply! However, Perry is a bit farther than I had wanted to go. I was able to find some on craigslist, so I am all set.
The chicks will be offered first to families of my students, as I work in an area where there is still a lot of active agriculture. If there are any...
Hello Michiganders,
I work in an elementary school and would like to acquire some fresh, fertile chicken eggs of any type to hatch in an incubator at school. I have fertile goose and turkey eggs, but they take so long to hatch that I would prefer to do chicken eggs. If you live in Washtenaw...
I raise midget whites but I live in Michigan. However, if you don’t mind going with a big hatchery, Stromberg’s and McMurray’s sell midget white poults straight run.
Well, I am very sad right now. The gosling had made himself a nice external pip but didn’t make much more progress all day. I thought I would assist if he still wasn’t out when evening came, but when I went to check him a couple of hours later, he had died! I have never had that happen before...
Today is hatching day for five of my Pilgrim eggs. Unfortunately, when I candled the eggs while transferring them to the lockdown incubator, I found that 4 of the 5 failed to internally pip and showed no movement.
So this morning one lonely little gosling has externally pipped and is working...
Leg problems in water fowl can sometimes be due to niacin deficiency, so adding B vitamins is a good suggestion. I always sprinkle brewer’s yeast powder on my ducklings’ and goslings’ food.
I have found that my turkey poults do best on 26% medicated turkey starter crumbles. I usually don’t feed medicated feed to chicks, but starting poults on it has significantly decreased my losses to almost zero.
Also, don’t forget to dip their beaks in the water the first couple of days to...
My goose Abigail left her nest like that when she was sitting last spring. She’d go for a swim and eat some grass for an hour or so, then get back on the nest. The eggs hatched just fine.
Our other goose Amelia sits much more tightly. I haven’t seen her off the nest for more than 20 minutes at...
I’d worry about the chickens possibly attacking them. If you can separate the poults with their moms for the first couple weeks, that might be the safest thing to do.
Personally I use pine shavings. CCXs poop so much and it’s so stinky that I add a thin layer of fresh shavings every day just so they aren’t sitting around in their own poo. At the end of six weeks, they are ready to process and then I shovel out the whole bedding mess and compost it.