Kes
Chirping
- Aug 9, 2017
- 58
- 78
- 71
My chickens have had a rough Summer and Fall.
I live in PA, where, for the majority of the Summer, we had rain 5 days out of the week, every week, on top of our typical hot and humid conditions. I believe it sent one if them into an early molt. Three of them also went broody even though they're not particularly broody breeds (EE and Leghorn). I couldn't break them of it until those girls also began to molt.
The rain caused the absolute worst mosquito population I've ever experienced and many of my birds ended up with fowlpox (the dry kind).
Half of them are molting now and to top it off, a dog broke into the run a couple weeks ago and killed two of my girls. : /
Out of my 12 birds, only three of them are laying.
For the ones that are still molting, I understand that it might be a little while longer before they start up again. However, I have some concerns about a few of them regardless- in particular my Dorking.
She stopped laying for a week or so this Summer. I got one big egg from her after a while and then nothing since. This was around the time that some of my birds started to go broody and then fowlpox struck not too long after, so at first I thought her behavior might be part of that but she never displayed any signs of broodiness, pox or molting. Recently, I've started to notice that she's become extremely underweight (hard to tell since her feathers make her look big) and she's had diarrhea for a while. She also has some sort of vision problem- she lacks depth perception and can't target things like bugs.
I'd say she's fourth from the bottom of the pecking order, so I've started bringing her inside at night to make sure she's getting access to food, in case the others are chasing her away. This week I'm going to set up a separate feeder as well, but I'm just wondering if anyone has any ideas or can recommend something to maybe help a few of them put some weight on.
My treats for them (in the evening, after they've had access to food all day) have consisted of cracked corn, mealworms, sunflower chips and unhulled oats. Recently I've been trying to boost their protein a bit with some eggs and canned salmon (no added salt).
We don't really have vets around that know about chickens so I'm kind of at a loss.
They haven't been dewormed but I haven't seen any evidence of worms either and didn't want to put them through the stress of that on top of everything else if it's just a needless precaution.
edit: I also forgot to mention that my Dorking had a bumblefoot scare earlier this year. I took care of it and there's nothing that looks worrisome about her feet now but maybe it's worth mentioning.
I live in PA, where, for the majority of the Summer, we had rain 5 days out of the week, every week, on top of our typical hot and humid conditions. I believe it sent one if them into an early molt. Three of them also went broody even though they're not particularly broody breeds (EE and Leghorn). I couldn't break them of it until those girls also began to molt.
The rain caused the absolute worst mosquito population I've ever experienced and many of my birds ended up with fowlpox (the dry kind).
Half of them are molting now and to top it off, a dog broke into the run a couple weeks ago and killed two of my girls. : /
Out of my 12 birds, only three of them are laying.
For the ones that are still molting, I understand that it might be a little while longer before they start up again. However, I have some concerns about a few of them regardless- in particular my Dorking.
She stopped laying for a week or so this Summer. I got one big egg from her after a while and then nothing since. This was around the time that some of my birds started to go broody and then fowlpox struck not too long after, so at first I thought her behavior might be part of that but she never displayed any signs of broodiness, pox or molting. Recently, I've started to notice that she's become extremely underweight (hard to tell since her feathers make her look big) and she's had diarrhea for a while. She also has some sort of vision problem- she lacks depth perception and can't target things like bugs.
I'd say she's fourth from the bottom of the pecking order, so I've started bringing her inside at night to make sure she's getting access to food, in case the others are chasing her away. This week I'm going to set up a separate feeder as well, but I'm just wondering if anyone has any ideas or can recommend something to maybe help a few of them put some weight on.
My treats for them (in the evening, after they've had access to food all day) have consisted of cracked corn, mealworms, sunflower chips and unhulled oats. Recently I've been trying to boost their protein a bit with some eggs and canned salmon (no added salt).
We don't really have vets around that know about chickens so I'm kind of at a loss.
They haven't been dewormed but I haven't seen any evidence of worms either and didn't want to put them through the stress of that on top of everything else if it's just a needless precaution.
edit: I also forgot to mention that my Dorking had a bumblefoot scare earlier this year. I took care of it and there's nothing that looks worrisome about her feet now but maybe it's worth mentioning.
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