Sorry for not getting back to you guys sooner on this one.
First let me say that where I live, antibiotics are hard to come by. Yes, we gave the rooster some general antibiotics for a few days and he improved. Before his eye was swollen and sometimes closed, but eventually opened, but only to...
Saw him the other day with one eye shut. Isolated the bird and have been tending to him twice daily. He usually has a small amount of pus built up which we remove with a cotton swab. I've tried some eye drops that are used to treat infections in human eyes and am also giving him some...
It's night time here so if I can, I'll post some pics tomorrow. And yes, appears to be a foul pox from what I can find on the internet. We've already looked up treatment options and will isolate 2 birds tonight.
Any ideas what it is? I noticed this guy standing alone yesterday, beak pointed upward and figured something was amiss. Today I noted a growth at the base of his beak. I asked one of the locals about it and he called it "buba" (pronounced boobah in Spanish) and said if not treated it could...
Excellent advice. Don't know if I can find ceramic eggs here, but I'll give it a try.
We also have our boxes on the ground so just about any old bird that passes by can see the eggs. There were two hens that became problem egg-eaters but they both ended up in a gumbo so the problem was...
Thanks MissChick. You're always very helpful.
And you're right. I reached the conclusion that if I continued to put her with the big birds, she'd get killed or mortally injured. While I'm out there I can keep an eye on her, but to leave her 24 hours a day would be too big a risk.
I've got...
Ah, almost forgot. Watching her yesterday, her stools were much looser than normal. I also noted during the process that she's got a tape worm. They're very common here in wild birds so it's no surprise our chickens might have them as well. They're normally not life-threatening, but I'll...
I've had to separate her from the others pretty much from the beginning because the bigger hens dominate and abuse her. Though there's plenty of room in the pens for her to run away (the smaller birds have no problem escaping more aggressive larger ones), when she's attacked, she just...
This bird is not yet fully mature, though she doesn't lack much. She has free range of one area of the backyard and normally sleeps in a covered box about waist high. Yesterday was rainy and cool and I noticed that when I went to check on her, she'd not left her box, which is the first time...
Thanks for the advice MissChick@dee. My wife would love to find 5 more hens for the big guy. A question she's asked and I couldn't answer was how often a hen needs to be bred in order to lay fertile eggs on a consistent basis. Any ideas?
My birds are just mixed breeds, nothing purebred.
I've got two roosters, separated. One has two hens in a smaller enclosure, and the other in a much larger enclosure that has seven hens. Two of the seven are brooding and one has baby chicks.
This fellow lives up in the nearby mountains, raises coffee, and I guess, chickens. We buy coffee from him on a regular basis. We're talking one day and I mention a few laying hens we have and a single rooster. Here locally the breed is called Tococa. I don't see anything special about them...
During our summer when my birds were suffering from the heat I'd freeze water in 2 liter plastic coca-cola bottles and just lay them in the pen. In no time the birds were drapped all over them cooling off.
In the evening after things had cooled down and the ice had melted, the bottles would...
I normally process mine between 36 and 42 days. After 45 days I tend to see more leg problems. The birds, by nature, are lazy. Add a predisposition for leg problems and this is the result when they get big. All in all though sounds like you did a good job of getting them to market weight.
With my first batch of meat birds (300 in total) I weighed 5 random birds each week. When very small I found a pillowcase worked best. When they got up to about 4 weeks I tied their legs and weighed them in the produce scale. They don't care for the experience but none had any problems.
As I may have mentioned in this thread, I've tried the 2 week rotation for about 7 months now. All was well until the rains hit and then all heck broke loose. Way too many sick birds. I was told from the beginning that the young birds infect the older birds, not the other way around. I'm now...