Hi everyone :)

[Yard Farmer]

Howdy, welcome to BYC!
Glad you're here with us. Hope to see you around.

 

[triciayoung]

Hi there! I‘m happy to join, my name is Jennifer and (next to our many other pets in our home) we have a few chickens.

We got our first ones about 2 years ago and currently we have a small flock of 8 Ladys.
We started with rescued hybrids, 3 of them are still with us, and the other ones are 1 Altsteirer, 2 Barnevelder and 2 Lavender Araucana.

We plan on having more rescued hybrids and maybe some special breeds we like if we get the chance we just love how they’re roaming the garden, and our daughter especially loves to catch and cuddle them. She says they look like dinosaurs when they’re running around!

We live in Europe and my main Language is not English, so please excuse my limited Expressions.

Welcome. I just love that you took in rescues and you want to take in more. I want to share an experience with you in hopes it will help you. I have several rescues, and some are disabled. We all know about quarantining chickens for 30-days before integrating to catch any type of disease they may bring into the flock, but I am here to tell you that quarantining will not catch many diseases - even if it is 3-months. I rescued 3-lavendar orphingtons that were a year older than my first flock and 1 1/2 years older than my second flock. They were given a bantam rooster but were sharing a fence with the other flocks. 5-months later my flock was having respiratory symptoms and even after doing our best with a vet - I lost an 8-month old EE's. I did testing for many diseases, almost all with respiratory symptoms. Infectious Coryza is one of the diseases a chicken(s) can have and not show symptoms until there is a stressor. The hen I tested came back negative for both MG's, all of the other respiratory diseases, but positive for Infectious Coryza. The reason I know it came in with the three rescues is that I lost a silky suddenly the week before the lavender orphington's arrived so I got a necropsy. (I will never get another necropsy again, or get testing from anyone that has a duty to report). She did not have IC. To this day, only my first and second flock showed symptoms - the orphingtons have not. Many people have said to cull because they will have it for life - but, I will never do this...I will just close my flock. I have 6-acres and if I add, can do so far enough away. In any case, there are many other diseases that are more devastating. With my vet, I treated them with Oxytetracyline and most responded, the ones that didn't we treated with sulfadimethoxine. If you get older rescues, I would just test for those diseases that won't surface during a quarantine. It took me a long time to find a lab that didn't have a duty to report to state agencies, but I did. Here is the link if you want to test: https://www.vetdna.com/