Anyone else freaked out by the Emergencies/illness section?

[KimberlyJ]

Quote:
Ditto. I especially like the ones where the poster is re-posting frantically begging for input. The input is already here for you...just search!

I have wanted chickens for two years but joined BYC just after I ordered my first 6 chicks. Not sure I would have even ordered if I read all these posts first.

But I think we're on the right track here--we only see posts of the ones that are sick, not the masses that are happily living their lives!

 

[woodmort]

Quote:
That may be the downside to all the illness posts--it tends to scare new-to-chicken owners into thinking this kind of thing is common and they start seeing illnesses where there aren't any and thinking some kinds of normal behavior is the sign of it. Luckily for them there are enough knowledgeable people willing to answer to put these fears to rest but it still makes it scary and kind of off-putting.

Of course, I suspect one would find the same thing with new mothers if they were to go to a pediatric forum.

 

[speckledhen]

Honestly, if you read The Chicken Health Handbook by Gail Damerow , from cover to cover, before plunging into chicken-keeping, you'd never get chickens. But, to put that in perspective, if you read a human health encyclopedia, you know that you don't get every disease in the book, any more than your chickens catch everything in the book (with some biosecurity and smart practices in place, that is).