Agree, clean it up and maybe add an antibiotic ointment.
Lock your birds in their safe coop and covered run! Your hawk hasn't given up, and will be back, maybe for a couple of weeks.
Mary
Welcome!
Your chick is already severely affected, and usually these birds do get worse over time. Like @Mrs. K , I've had a very few of these, and haven't invested the extra care that these birds require. At least, deep food dishes, with mash or crumbles, not pellets, and a deeper water dish...
Our lids are wood framing with hardware cloth, very well attached. Heavy, but safe.
Chicken wire or welded wire aren't safe enough, it takes hardware cloth to protect chicks from evil visitors!
@Tram, add hardware cloth to yours and it will be good.
Mary
May it continue to be effective for you. @Shadrach also has a good article about roosters, worth reading. His management style may not work so well for many of us, but definitely a good read.
I've never had a permanent fix work for a human aggressive rooster. Never. Just be very watchful...
Welcome!
This is an older thread, and I just looked @Howard E up, he's been off since 2021. Miss him too, BTW. If you click on a member's name, it will let you know when they last posted on this site.
Mary
Right, what's best for eggs to be incubated, totally not the same as for eggs to be eaten. We don't wash hatching eggs, and discard any that are actually dirty. Same if we have a broody hen, we check and discard any yucky eggs she's trying to hatch.
Mary
Our local TSC has been getting chicks from Townline, and we've raised some occasionally. Nice backyard birds, very ordinary from a breed standard point of view, but fine otherwise.
Mary
We've ordered many times from Cackle, and been happy with the birds sent. All pretty good quality from their breed standards, no complaints. MMcM sent us nice birds too, and their buff Plymouth Rocks were really nice. Other, more popular breeds, generally on the small size, but good for our...
Here in southern Michigan we (thankfully!) don't have as much severe weather as many of you experience.
What do we do? Our coop is built as well as most houses, not up to serious winds, but pretty sturdy. Electricity out there is up to code, fire is very unlikely. And we have at least 30...
De is strip mined, look it up. Not good! And it's a poor insecticide, and bad to inhale. Not worth using, IMO. Sevin (carbaryl) is an insecticide that's no longer approved for use on poultry in the USA. Just don't use it.
Here we use permethrin spray, if possible, or the dust, if it's just...
It works, true, but scary stuff! Although it's questionable if any of the newer long lasting products are actually safer. Definitely better than DDT, although that product did save many human lives, over malaria.
Always trade-offs!
mary
It's been interesting, not in a good way sometimes, to see, over decades, how this all plays out.
Lead and asbestos used to be everywhere, not any more. Then DDT, malathion, and lindane, also everywhere, now also gone. Cigarettes, symbols of adulthood, not so much any more. Now we all worry...
You aren't going to spray into their faces, and need to wear at least a N95 face mask and long sleeves, and shower after using any product.
Mites and lice will kill chickens; ask me how I know...
And there's no egg withdrawal using those products. Don't wait until your birds are overwhelmed...
Older books recommend favoring early maturing cockerels, for producing early maturing pullets. It's pretty low on my list, because I'm going to cull for poor temperament, structural faults, and small size first. It depends on what your breeding goals actually are; in my case, with dual...
Welcome!
This is a really old thread, and there are better grade traps out there. Some people love the Duke traps, look them up too. And only trap if you will shoot the raccoons!
Mary
Impressive chickens!
Your birds likely do have mites now, and in the USA there's permethrin spray, permethrin dust, or spinosad spray. All work fine, your local feed/ farm store should have the permethrin. In mild weather the spray is least expensive and easiest to use.
That hawk was likely...