Recent content by Susan Skylark

Gray partridge and ring necked pheasant are now resident breeders in many parts of the US, but I think coturnix only lives feral in Hawaii(?), I wonder why they haven’t established themselves somewhere? Maybe we’ve bred broodiness out of them and they never successfully hatch or raise chicks...

The hardest part about bird anesthesia (and rabbits) is their metabolism: they need much higher doses on injectable meds and they work for a much shorter period of time. The hard part is keeping them asleep! This should be a fairly quick procedure, much easier than a mammal amputation (no soft...

I am well aware of zoonotic potential and that I have not had this submitted to a laboratory for confirmation, another factor to consider is that mycoplasma is very resistant to many antibiotics or is so small traditional antibiotics don’t work against it. It is notoriously difficult to treat...

No that’s irony!

Bilateral conjunctivitis, both eyes are red/inflamed, teary, didn’t want to open them. Was depressed and off by herself. 24 hours on tetracycline conjunctivitis is improving, opens both eyes, interested in food and company this morning (which is a problem as she has only 4 now very amorphous...

Fly eggs and yolk, ugh!

Seizure? Acute head or spinal trauma? Neurological infection? Toxin? Keep her in a dark, confined quiet spot. Watch other birds for any issues (suggestive of contagious or toxic cause). If it is just her more likely injury or seizure. A short, passing seizure is scary but not necessarily...

Keep it splinted, minimize movement and hopefully in a couple weeks she’s good as new (calves are three weeks to heal, I would assume chicks are as quick or quicker!)

Yay!

The nearest one with layer feed was 150 miles away, they wanted 11.99 to ship to store or to my house, I’d still have to drive 90 miles to get to the nearest store so obviously if I had needed the shipped feed I’d just get it shipped there. I also talked to the feed guy at another local chain...

The chances of a raccoon spreading a disease to your eggs or ducklings via surface contact are minimal, hope they hatch!

I was having the same issue and looking at shipping purina layer feed from tractor supply but then found a high protein chicken layer feed (21 percent protein) at the same local chain that sells the purina game starter but not the layer. I can buy it locally and it as half the price of shipped...

So let me know if my reasoning is off here: roux is a sex-linked recessive, for males to express it they need two copies but a female only needs one (like color blindness in people, just with sex reversed). So with my random chick assortment, anything expressing the roux trait is most likely...

I need to find some Italians, they are so pretty and I apparently have everything but!

I know a guy who raised goats, had a set of triplets, one had basically a wry neck, he spent $10,000 fixing the neck then gave the goat away as the others were now mean to it!