Silver Laced Wyandotte gender?

[chooks4life]

The wet feed could be doing it. When I made fermented feed, I made it by just adding enough water to cover the grain, so it was all soaked into the grain by the next day when I'd feed it to them. Not the orthodox way to make FF, I didn't even use ACV often, but it still works. It could be a temporary imbalance due to those mystery spores, but since they're doing normal poops at night it's probably just the daytime temperatures combined with wet feed.

Good to hear you're into garlic. I've convinced some professional breeders to get into it once they've seen the health of my flock, but they struggle with the fear of the supposedly toxic 'allium family' despite seeing me feed my healthy chooks and turkeys as much garlic, onion, etc as they want --- chives, leeks, shallots etc are all fine too. I didn't realize how easy kelp and garlic in the daily diet made my flock keeping until I moved house and had to stop; it was an eye opener. Sad.

So, so keen to be getting onto another big property and tending them the way I want again, hopefully soon!

 

[lauranickerson]

The wet feed could be doing it. When I made fermented feed, I made it by just adding enough water to cover the grain, so it was all soaked into the grain by the next day when I'd feed it to them. Not the orthodox way to make FF, I didn't even use ACV often, but it still works. It could be a temporary imbalance due to those mystery spores, but since they're doing normal poops at night it's probably just the daytime temperatures combined with wet feed.

Good to hear you're into garlic. I've convinced some professional breeders to get into it once they've seen the health of my flock, but they struggle with the fear of the supposedly toxic 'allium family' despite seeing me feed my healthy chooks and turkeys as much garlic, onion, etc as they want --- chives, leeks, shallots etc are all fine too. I didn't realize how easy kelp and garlic in the daily diet made my flock keeping until I moved house and had to stop; it was an eye opener. Sad.

So, so keen to be getting onto another big property and tending them the way I want again, hopefully soon!

Good luck on finding some land for your animals! I live with my dad (I'm 21) but I'm looking for a house of my own, too. And a significant piece of land is a must! I want to expand from just chickens and ducks to more when I have my own house.

Hey, so you obviously know what you're talking about. I just picked up 5 laying hens from someone on Craigslist. They told me that they were very healthy, but some of them are in molt. I get there, and there were definitely some in molt (at least I think they are) and the conditions aren't terrible I suppose. I pick out 5 of the best looking ones. It appears I have 2 Australorps, 1 Black Sex Link, 1 Barred Rock, and 1 RIR. They looked healthy but I didn't totally inspect them while I was there (1, I don't really like being at strange places and 2, it was almost 100 degrees and I just wanted to get back into my car's cold AC and get home.

Anyways, so I get home and check them over. The first thing I notice are lice! NOO! I haven't found a single one on my flock so far, so I really don't think I have them yet in my flock. I doused them in DE and kept them out on the lawn in a little fence while I ran and found the best thing I could. I got Garden and Poultry Dust insecticide. I hung them from the tree by their feet and covered them in that and some more DE. I also put Vaseline on their feet and legs because I'm not sure what leg mites look like, but I don't want to take that chance. Some of their feet have some wear and tear, and are a little dry and cracking.

They are currently in the garage. What else can I do to kill this as fast as possible!? I'm leaving for over a week come Thursday night and REALLY don't want to have to think about my dad whining that he has to do more than necessary.

Now that we've been talking about it, should I feed them raw garlic? You mentioned it makes them unpleasant to pests. How much to feed them and how often?

 

[chooks4life]

Sounds to me like they were kept on an insufficient diet (bare patches that might be moulting, dry cracked feet, mites etc being symptoms)... This is no slur to the person who probably fed them an approved diet, it's just the way it is; if the animal's on its feet it's considered healthy, despite signs like that. Most people wouldn't know a truly healthy chook if it bit them, lol! Sad, really.

I didn't do many 'quick fixes' with new poultry, all I did was treat them through diet. My quick fix was pine tar/Stockholm tar on the legs, it makes the entire infested area just fall off due to a new layer of flawless skin/scales etc growing underneath, and that's the end of the infestation. Unfortunately the closest the USA has to stockholm tar seems to be something called NuStock which isn't pure and doesn't work the same but seems like a handy thing to have on hand for treating bad wounds. Olive oil, (extra virgin cold pressed) is great to feed mixed with cayenne or similar to supply some raw healthy oils, omegas etc, and worm them in one go. I wouldn't give them a huge dose to start with since they've probably never had it before. They sound like they're lacking natural oils in their diet. You can feed it in their grains or whatever but probably best on some wholemeal bread for this purpose.

The issue with using garlic as an insecticide is that it takes a while to build up in the tissues and bloodstream. So if you feed it once or twice and hope that'll do it, it won't. Never too late to start feeding it regularly though. If you've got them in quarantine it's worth dusting with stuff like you have, but if they've already mixed with the population you can expect the others to get mites/lice, though they can get them from wild birds too.

What I did with mine was just give them all an average of a freshly cut or crushed clove or garlic each; more is fine but might be expensive where you are. Some people recommend dusting with sulfur, I've never done it though, but for a quick fix it ought to mimic the effects of garlic being fed, at least externally. I would just take birds with scaly leg mite, lice, feather mites, etc and chuck them in with the whole flock and gradually over time they'd lose their parasite population, though I did have DE and wood ash in some spots they could dustbathe in so that helps. If the scaly legs were bad enough I'd use pine tar on them, but they never seemed to get them, only old artificially reared chooks seemed to. Otherwise the garlic seems to make them quite resistant.

Some mites and lice are more persistent than others so might be best to treat like you are. Sorry I can't help more, I rarely took the quick fix in these areas because the slow one worked so well, but it's different if you take badly reared birds and try to keep them on a natural diet with natural treatments because their body has badly-built flesh that it immediately starts replacing, and everything else takes a backburner so it takes a while. Worth it from an animal welfare and human consumption point of view, but economically not, which I don't care about. Health is not economical for humans or animals in the modern world. So what. We both need it. lol

 

[lauranickerson]

So do you think I should worm them before I leave on vacation tomorrow night? Someone else mentioned I should, but I'm nervous, because I read somewhere on BYC that it is really straining on the bird, and you could risk losing it because it's so hard on them.

With better observation, it looks like one of them has vent gleet as well. I followed the instructions given here from others on BYC, and then used Blue Kote on her because she might have an ingrown feather right under her vent.

I haven't gotten an egg from anyone yet. Is that because the stress of the move and being in a cage in the garage? There obviously isn't any nesting boxes in the quarantine area. This girl with the vent gleet seems to be looking better after treating her today, but her vent is pretty dry. Usually it kind of sounds like kissy lips when you lift their tail up, but hers isn't. Maybe I just have to wait until she is better.

I would definitely do the slow method of curing if I could. I might actually when I get back. This was just all bad timing. I could do such a better job if I got them after my trip, for example. I just didn't expect these problems when she said they were perfectly fine.

I have not introduced them with the others at all yet. They haven't even seen each other. You're saying to just put them all together and that would disperse the lice/mites between all of them? I don't really feel good about that.

Is there a way I could get the pine tar online?

Thanks for all the tips and techniques by the way!

 

[chooks4life]

So do you think I should worm them before I leave on vacation tomorrow night? Someone else mentioned I should, but I'm nervous, because I read somewhere on BYC that it is really straining on the bird, and you could risk losing it because it's so hard on them.

Yeah, modern worming is a bit like 'we'll poison both the animal and the worms, and see which one survives. I bet it'll be the animal because it's bigger!' LOL.

Worming is a strain on the system when the method of worming is to poison the entire organism so the smaller parasitical organisms die. It's a bit like chemo, really, it's a broad scale attack that hopefully kills the offending parts while leaving the patient alive. It's a gamble. Obviously worming poisons are more targeted than chemo.

Using natural methods to worm them doesn't impact them negatively. Chooks like hot stuff, they don't taste the 'heat' like we do. Left to their own devices they will eat hot stuff every day, you'd never need to worm them. Worms rarely kill chooks, there would need to be a severely incompetent stewardship in place for that to happen since it's a slow killing issue. So there's no need for the fear that's ingrained in a lot of people about worms, I mean, some people I know worm their quail every single month! They look near-death, it's that bad. It's not the worms that will kill those poor things. People don't tend to use the first hippocratic oath in regards to their chooks: 'first do no harm' --- it's counter productive to harm an animal in order to treat it, and it's very rarely necessary to cause any harm to heal.

I use cayenne powder or chilli, tabasco is good too; I give it on wholemeal bread, no precise measurements needed except make sure that if you've used powder, it's bound up with something liquid so they can't inhale it, and there isn't so much excess liquid that they're likely to end up with it in their eyes. That's never happened to me, but I'm careful just in case, lol. I make them sandwiches of (for example) cayenne or tabasco using yoghurt, olive oil or similar to stick it to the bread. If it's plain tabasco no need to use a 'binding agent' but using good olive oil will help act as a mild laxative that will shift the worms out quicker. The best time to worm is right before the full moon; during this time, worms that are embedded or travelling in tissues and organs tend to move to the digestive tract, specifically to the lower intestines, to lay their eggs. This is the one time when you can get some species of worms naturally, without using toxins that poison the whole animal and leave worm corpses in their organs. The timing applies to every species of domestic animal, and is best repeated monthly so any new populations can't establish themselves and create side effects/issues like cysts in tissues.

I just make them sandwiches and tear it or cut it into little easily swallowed pieces so they don't need to wrestle with it. Unless your birds are skeletal there's no need to use poisons but really you should do what you're comfortable with so you can rest easy feeling you've done what's best.

I haven't gotten an egg from anyone yet. Is that because the stress of the move and being in a cage in the garage? There obviously isn't any nesting boxes in the quarantine area. This girl with the vent gleet seems to be looking better after treating her today, but her vent is pretty dry. Usually it kind of sounds like kissy lips when you lift their tail up, but hers isn't. Maybe I just have to wait until she is better.

Moving often does throw them off the lay. Doesn't sound like laying now would be a good idea for at least one of them though. The one with the really dry vent sounds like a fatal case of egg binding waiting to happen. For her mucosal membranes to be that dry, she is severely depleted on natural oils. I would be feeding them a half-teaspoon of olive or coconut oil each per day, mixed in with feed or whatever; if her vent is this dry then her other mucosal membranes, i.e. in her lungs, digestive system, brain, organs etc will all be dry also. That's near-failure state you're describing; if she gets dust in her lungs now, for example, she does not have the mucous to protect herself, and instead of a sneeze or two she could get a serious infection and die.

The' kissy lips' thing you described is unusual, I've not heard that before, sounds like abnormally weak sphincters. Some viruses can do that. Any serious dietary insufficiency can also interfere with any normal function of any system. Alternatively it could just be a physical characteristic of the breed's strain, a physical abnormality like the many horses which need vulva surgery to correct their deformity (the Caslick's operation) or similar. Not uncommon; the issue is when people just fix it externally and keep breeding the genes that produce it. I don't know what's going on with your hens there. Might just be too little in the way of natural oils in their diet.

You're saying to just put them all together and that would disperse the lice/mites between all of them?

Lol, no! I was saying my chooks were high in natural sulfur and natural antibiotics due to raw garlic in their diet so they didn't suffer from lice or mites, and when I did bring in new birds hat had both lice and mites, I could just put them together without worrying about my birds catching them, because they were more or less protected.

Gradually over time the mites and lice would die off, not disperse; they didn't want to be on any bird that was high in sulfur and so as their hosts ate more and more raw garlic it poisoned the lice/mites into extinction. They couldn't spread to my birds because of their already high levels.

Is there a way I could get the pine tar online?

I get it at produce stores but the USA doesn't seem to have the exact same sort. But I'm sure they do somewhere... It's not an Aussie invention as far as I know. I just googled it, and came up with the following info. It is for sale online in Australia but I don't know about America. Anyway, hope something's helpful:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pine_tar

I don't know where you could buy it, sorry. I get pure Stockholm tar, but that's all I know about it. Best wishes.

 

[lauranickerson]

Just got back from the first half of my vacation. All birds are still alive! Ha! My dad actually fed them! They started laying the day I was leaving. They laid 3...or was it 4 eggs that day. Don't know if it was because I put wood shavings in their cage or not, but they've laid a few since then. At a glance, all the laying hens seem to be okay. One has ruffled feathers, and doesn't seen to be preening much (I just got back early this morning so I haven't really had a chance to observe). I may try your working technique when I come back at the end of this week. I haven't pulled out the hen with vent gleet yet, but I plan on soaking her in epsom salt again and re-applying the Blue Kote before I leave again. Haven't picked her up and checked her vent yet, but I will be doing it in the next couple hours.

I hope it's not a fatal egg problem. She's a nice girl.

 

[chooks4life]

There's a few threads on the forums detailing how people treated vent gleet. Some used natural methods, some used man made products (need a better term for 'artificial' than 'pharmaceutical', it gets people to react a certain way lol...) But overall it seems quite treatable, if that is even what she has. Many things have identical or similar symptoms.

The old form of vent gleet was characterized by yellow diarrhea, and it's an infectious disease that would mean you'd have to isolate the bird in question and disinfect the pens etc, but modern gleet would be an adapted strain and people don't seem to treat it the same, nor does it seem to present with the same symptoms or infectious capacity. In the old days garlic, fasting, and the vent being cleaned with a garlic solution was how it was handled. But there are very different modern methods that work, too, so best wishes with all that.

 

[lauranickerson]

So the vent gleet doesn't seem to be totally gone yet. The feathers haven't grown back yet, but the area is still red, and I noticed traces of urate still sticking to the feather stubs where I cut them off.

Another thing. When I went to go see them one last time before bed (about 30 minutes ago), she was panting. It's only maybe 60 degrees here right now at this time of night, so it's not heat. I thought I spotted a runny nose, too, but couldn't tell in the dim light.

Any clue on what that usually means?

(Just realize this thread has taken a whole new course than what it started out as. Haha. Maybe I'll have to post some pictures of my SLW to compensate.

)

 

[chooks4life]

Lol, I think you as thread starter are fully licensed to hijack your own thread.

About panting: generally means distress, unless you are sure it's from fever. It usually means pain or nausea. If this is the case I don't think it's vent gleet after all. Are you sure she didn't just do a marathon run to get into the cage right before you showed up? Ok, that's grasping at straws.... You may have a more serious disease on your hands if it wasn't vent gleet but then again you may just have a random circumstance...

 

[lauranickerson]

I don't think she was moving around a lot before I walked in? It had already been dark for a couple hours so I'd think she'd be roosting a while by then. She seems to be acting fine any time else, except for some weird poos from all of them every once in a while.

Man....now I'm reluctant to even put them with my flock. Just can't catch a break with these guys. Guess I learned my lesson about buying hens off of Craigslist...