The road less traveled...back to good health! They have lice, mites, scale mites, worms, anemia, gl

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There's life in the ol' boy yet!!! Go Toby....amazing what a week of good care will do! Life's simple pleasures, crowing rooster and hens that lay.
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Beekissed said:
I can't imagine why...nothing poisonous about cooked potato skins that I know of. Same way with feeding grapes to dogs....someone should have informed my dogs because they stripped my grape vines each year. Garlic for dogs is supposed to be toxic...but I've been feeding it to my dogs for years. No dead dogs in my yard yet that weren't there due to a .22 lead injection.
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I think the potato skin scare is an over reaction to the fact that potato skins exposed to light - turn green & contain oxalic acid (think rhubarb leaves). But point being we all tolerate some oxalic acid - & I think we & the chicks would have to ingest a ton of very green skin before feeling the effect -- you know a little diarhea or something -- another one of those a little knowledge going a bit too far things.

Toxic is a continuum, not a live or die thing.

I've heard the grapes & raisins eaten by dogs thing from my daughter who works at a vet - they do sometimes see some poisoning cases from that (think small fluffy city dogs) - but don't you think that can be an individual dog & a weight vs qty thing also??? I do -

I picked out some apple seeds while slicing & eating & sharing an apple with the chicks on the back deck yesterday. (You may know apple seeds contain a small amount of arsenic) -- and one of the chicks came up & stole the seeds from the table -- I just had to laugh. so much for my good intentions!

I worry less about what a creature chooses to eat/graze on given a choice. I'm not growing deadly nightshade on my property - but I know there are several probably not so great things - aren't buttercups bad - rhodys not so good -- but these creatures have to have a certain level of self-preservation after all. And if I have to manicure or fence off parts of 5 acres of mostly natural vegetation in order to have chickens free range - well let's say it's just not going to happen here.
 
chickiemomy said:
I think the potato skin scare is an over reaction to the fact that potato skins exposed to light - turn green & contain oxalic acid (think rhubarb leaves). But point being we all tolerate some oxalic acid - & I think we & the chicks would have to ingest a ton of very green skin before feeling the effect -- you know a little diarhea or something -- another one of those a little knowledge going a bit too far things.
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I thought that too until....

I ALWAYS eat the skins while I'm peeling anything (apples, sweet potato, etc.). One day I was happily eating skins and IMMEDIATELY got very sick. Walked out the back door and threw up.

I wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't experienced it... After throwing up I was just fine. I'm glad my system said, GET THAT OUTTA THERE, NOW!" ...not sure how it would have been if it had gone through the whole digestive system.

I had never heard of the green skin toxin thing. I mentioned my reaction to someone who pointed me to some research about it.

So....just some food for thought.

And, that being said, I ate potato and sweet potato skins for my entire life before I had that happen and that is a LONG TIME... I have, however, read of instances that didn't turn out quite so well.
 
Was that store bought potatoes, LM? They treat those with something that keeps them from sprouting and it could be that treatment that made you sick and not the skins. If you had eaten such skins all your life and they were home grown, that could have been the difference.

My son cannot eat the skins of store bought apples, no matter how much we wash them, without throwing up his cookies right away. In our own orchard he can eat all the skins of the apples he wants.

I think chickens are pretty savvy about what they can and will eat...but I think that chickens confined to a coop and run system, when presented with fresh foods, may eat them out of sheer desperation for something fresh. If those fresh foods are not ideal for their systems and it causes problems, it could be where those kinds of tales get started.

In my orchard, chickens ate apples for months...don't know if they ate the seeds or not and didn't care. My dog ate an apple about every 10 seconds all through the season...pooped red for a few months each year. No toxic build up of arsenic there. The arsenic in apple seeds is mainly more concentrated in green, unripened apples and these are rarely ingested by dogs or chickens or even people.
 
From what I've read the green part of raw potatoes have Solanine poisonous to birds. I don't give mine potatoe skins or salt or avocado. And of course no unhealthy junk food. Easy stuff to avoid when there's plenty of other good stuff to give them.
 
Did a one week raid on the coop tonight to check progress on all the gleet, lice, skin mites, scale mites, etc. I'm adding bumblefoot to that list....I guess their feet were so dirty when they arrived that I didn't catch this, but seeing clean feet tonight I noticed that several of them have had bumblefoot at one time or another. Several feet with the callous, dark scab and evidence of a deep wound bed...none currently inflamed and no chickens limping, so I won't get too enthused with that little item.

GOOD: Not one single bird has lice or skin mites now....not one. Clean as a whistle!
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I know...I'm stunned also. Just a few days ago we had checked and there were three that still had a good showing of lice and skin mites. Now there are none.

GOOD: Lots and lots of feather regrowth going on....many, many pin feathers. Even in the places that were bald from gleet and lice damage.

GOOD: All birds that had previously been noted to have had pretty bad gleet were showing signs of gleet free skin, no new fungal growth at base of feathers, no bad smell from the gleet. All that was left was NuStock residue that could be combed out or flaked off easily. No balls of fungus!!!

I don't know if you have ever smelled or seen this stuff but it smells like pure rotten meat and it looks like runny, oozy, diarrhea water on the feathers and the fungal knobs at the base of the feathers look like crusty little balls of poop..but they aren't. They cannot be washed off like you could do with poop but would have to be soaked, scraped and pulled off forcibly.

GOOD: Scale mite is not progressing and some scales on a few birds are hooving up in a ridge in preparation of falling off, with new growth underneath....that fast. I know. This NuStock is some kind of miracle. It did it that fast last time I used this stuff and I was so duly impressed that I've been singing the praises of this stuff ever since.

BAD: Found one chicken that we had missed medicating around her vent with the NuStock upon arrival. She had lots of good feathering there and we just missed her...no evidence on her skin or feathers that we had applied NuStock previously. She had gleet really bad...I mean stinking, wet, horrible won't forget that smell anytime too soon bad. Clipped the wet feathers away from her vent and cleansed the whole site with straight ACV. I know...harsh. But it was all I had on hand at the time and it did a good job. She had bleeding ulcerations on the inside lip of her vent which were consistent with what I had read about gleet.

We cleaned it good and applied NuStock to the whole vent area and the surrounding tissues. I even applied some right up inside the vent on the ulcerated areas. We'll check this bird in a week and see if there is any progress.

BAD: Everyone's still too skinny but that is to be expected in only a week. Some feel like they've added a few ounces but not enough to really make a difference.

If you had ever told me that I would be down on my knees at midnight, combing and clipping bird butts I'd have told you that it may happen in some kind of parallel universe...but not in this one.
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Overall I am very, very pleased with the progress made in one week on these birds...no lice, no skin mites, improved scale mite damage, drastic decrease in gleet symptoms, good feather regrowth starting, clean and healthy looking feet, cleaner and healthier looking feathers, improved comb and leg coloring.

Everything I've read about gleet would suggest that it could not be resolved that fast and that it was systemic and all through the alimentary canal. All I know is that the birds that had it that got NuStock treatment to their vents and their swollen, reddened abdomens have shown marked improvement with no signs of gleet around the vent and the swellings are about half the size they were. The one bird that didn't get any NS on her vent still has active gleet...I don't know what to make of all that but I will not be surprised to check her in a week and find that gleet gone.
 
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Thank you! I am happy as well...I thank God for their improvements. It's good to know they are no longer being eaten alive and are on the mend. Just need to get some meat on them now....
 
Suzierd said:
From what I've read the green part of raw potatoes have Solanine poisonous to birds. I don't give mine potatoe skins or salt or avocado. And of course no unhealthy junk food. Easy stuff to avoid when there's plenty of other good stuff to give them.
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when my hens are out, they hang out under my avocado tree(which is just finishing with the fruit). I pick up any thay have fallen before letting them out, but if one falls when they are there, they eat it, they peck thru the skin and eat the meat and leave the pit. we also have plenty of wild periwinkle here and they leave it alone. Like what has been mentioned before, their instinct usually tells them what not to eat.
 
galanie said:
Really, people are supposed to spell out the words the first time they are used then use the abbreviations after that: " Apple Cider Vinegar is good for putting in their water. I've used ACV for years."
But no one does that. So I throw in the towel and try not to LSMFT over it all.
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When I first logged onto BYC I used to think that DH mean't dumb husband. My husband tells everyone how much he hates chickens and yet at dusk I have to say to him, "let me close the chickens and turkeys tonight". lol
 
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