Diary of a Crossbeak: Support for Special Needs Chickens and their Keepers

[chavira777]

This thread is so encouraging to me!!! Thanks everyone for all of your posts! I'm a chicken keeping noob, and have a 2 week old EE girl with a cross beak. We're feeding her and the others fermented feed, but her face is getting all matted up. Any ideas on how to keep her more clean? It looks uncomfortable. I bathed her today, which she wasn't a fan of!

 

[laul28]

I have had my crossbeak since 2012. I trim her beak about once a month and I put poultry dust on her then too. She has a harder time preening and tends to get lice more than the others. Other than that she is great.

 

[kada6305]

got this girl lastnight. not sure of breed. But she is drinking on her own. She is a week old. havent seen her eat on her own but if is drinking she should be able to eat, right? I've been showing her food dish few times a day. She is also missing one eye. I was origionally going to free range this flock..but being she only has 1 eye would she be able to??





here you can see her missing eye.

 

[kada6305]

This thread is so encouraging to me!!! Thanks everyone for all of your posts! I'm a chicken keeping noob, and have a 2 week old EE girl with a cross beak. We're feeding her and the others fermented feed, but her face is getting all matted up. Any ideas on how to keep her more clean? It looks uncomfortable. I bathed her today, which she wasn't a fan of!

we are feeding FF as well. what kind of feeding do you have it in?

 

[chavira777]

we are feeding FF as well. what kind of feeding do you have it in?

Hello,

Sadly we lost Octavia. She just wasn't getting enough feed, because of her beak. But we still do Fermented Feed with the others, we are using Scratch and Peck Chick Starter with water and a little tiny bit of Kombucha to kickstart the fermenting process. The chicks love it! Here's a link to the feed site:

http://www.scratchandpeck.com/shop/naturally-free-starter/

 

[chavira777]

we are feeding FF as well. what kind of feeding do you have it in?

Woops, and I just realized you were asking about our feeder and not feed! Doh! We have it in just a basic mason jar chick feeder. I just fill the bottom with feed.

 

[kada6305]

Woops, and I just realized you were asking about our feeder and not feed! Doh! We have it in just a basic mason jar chick feeder. I just fill the bottom with feed.

haha it's okay my phone autocorreced feeder to feeding. Thats is what we are using as well. with we have the part with all the holes off. I am hoping she is getting enough feed. So sorry for your loss!! I hatched out a cross beak with one eye in october that passed after a week of care.

 

[Avion211]

My little one passed this evening, it had stopped growing this last week and the beak was almost at a 90 degree angle and the neck muscles were a bit torqued as well. I knew this morning was going to be the last day and the bird held on till I got home.

 

[kada6305]

My little one passed this evening, it had stopped growing this last week and the beak was almost at a 90 degree angle and the neck muscles were a bit torqued as well. I knew this morning was going to be the last day and the bird held on till I got home.

So sorry for your loss! It's never easy when we lose one. I cry every time.

 

[cosmic chicken]

Looking forward to reading this thread, I have a cross beak hen too. this is a photo of Evey and her dedicated boyfriend Dexter. I feed her wet crumbles.