Arizona Chickens

[Gallo del Cielo]

Thanks for the replies. My friend kindly picked up a huge bale of straw for me - a "coop warming" gift, if you will. So at least for the moment, I will be going that route.

The crop (if that's what it is) is very soft and pliable. I will watch it. I've been giving them a lot of yummies besides their chick food; wet almond meal left over from making almond milk, loads of carrot, pear, spinach,kale, apple pulp from the local organic juice shop, juicy cantaloupe rinds... My family is BIG on produce.

Maybe I'm overfeeding?

We're big on produce too.

I don't think you're over feeding. The crop thing is weird at first, but you'll see that it expands and shrinks throughout the day. It probably looked odd because you could see it without the feather covering.

 

[Beckyhsinglsc]

Hey, I just posted in the sick chickens forum but I want to repost with more questions here. Hope that's okay. Besides wanting to know if there's anything wrong with my featherless chicken with a bump on her breast (which could be the crop?) I also need to make a decision about sand vs straw for the bottom of the coop.

The new coop / run arrives tomorrow. It doesn't have a floor and I don't have grass, just granite gravel covering very hard clay. I'm in the process of raking away all the large stones so the birds will have a softer place to walk around. I could leave it bare or cover it with sand or straw. At the moment, the coop they're in STINKS, even though I hose off the gravel every day. I need something that will clean better.

Since there's no floor to the coop, won't sand just leak out under the edges of the coop? How deep is your sand? If I use straw, how deep do I layer that? Does the deep layer method work in the dessert?

If anyone has a composter they love, share the info?

Okay, if you've come this far, here are the photos of my funny looking chick. None of the others have this problem. Thanks!

My guess is that your "funny looking chick" is a cockerel. That is why "he" is feathering slower than the others. "He" doesn't have a tail or feathers on the shoulders like the other chicks and "he" has an upright stance. "He" looks like a cockerel to me.

 

[MandyFitch]

My guess is that your "funny looking chick" is a cockerel. That is why "he" is feathering slower than the others. "He" doesn't have a tail or feathers on the shoulders like the other chicks and "he" has an upright stance. "He" looks like a cockerel to me.

 

[MandyFitch]

If she has sour or impacted crop the baldness could be her plucking feathers out because it's bothering her. The bump she has looks like when my EE had sour crop. If it's soft like a squishy balloon it could be sour, if it's hard it could be impacted.

This is what I do for sour crop

1. Hold chicken like a football, tilt until head is pointed down to the floor and massage crop to let her vomit letting her breathe in between until you get no more vomit.
2. Isolate chicken in area with no hay or pine shavings (sour crop is like an upset acidy stomach so the chickens will try to eat pine shavings and straw to try to settle it but this can make the problem worse and form a big clump in the crop. We found this out the hard way)
3. Make a thick soup from lactose free kefir milk and crumbles or smashed up pellet, feed only that until crop is empty in the morning.
4. Massage crop for a few minutes a few times a day
5. Make grit is available
6. add Apple Cider Vinegar to water. I used 1tsp/quart. (Some people say baking soda instead of ACV but I went with ACV and it worked well)

When our EE ate all the bedding and blocked up her crop we did pretty much the same process but would occasionally give her some vegetable oil before massaging the crop. It eventually broke up and dissolved.

We love having sand in both the coop and run. We have a solid coop floor and use the kitty litter scooping method to clean it out. It stays very dry and never smells. We have 2-3 inches in the coop and a thin layer on the dirt floor of the run. If the girls didn't free range as much we'd keep it deeper in the run, probably 3 inches. Since they range I have a dust bathing area in the corner of the yard that's bricked off and filled with sand and dirt for them. I'll never use anything else. I'd rather be able to remove the poop then let it sit and throw more stuff on top of it.

As for composting I had made a post a little while back with our barrel tumbler, I love it...
https://www.backyardchickens.com/t/31227/arizona-chickens/39970#post_12077963

While the stuff in the tumbler is cooking for 6 months I throw stuff in a trashcan which pretty much gets ignored, I don't wet it or anything. Once the tumbler is emptied I dump the trashcan's contents (leaves, grass, chicken poo) into the tumbler and start all over.

 

[Demosthine]

Just think of how much broth, stock and canned chicken you can make out of them! Yeah, yeah, doesn't help with the eggs, though.

 

[Beckyhsinglsc]

Good call on the hiding-under-chair emoticon. Is there an one for pulling one's hair out? Is it possible to get a straight run of twelve birds and get TWELVE **** roosters?

I've got a parrot cage, a chicken coop with four nesting boxes, a run I built myself, and a much larger coop/run being delivered tomorrow. And it's entirely possible I will not have any hens to live in any of them!

I keep telling myself this is all a learning experience. A practice run, perhaps. But at this rate I may not have eggs for two years...




Quote:

Some of the other chicks in your pictures looked like pullets.

 

[MaddBaggins]

The same is true of any animal, the older they are the tougher they are, because they have exercised their muscles, making them denser and more fibrous, leading to toughness. This is also true of different cuts of meat on large animals like beef. The tongue and neck are very tough because they are exercised daily. The flank and shoulder are a little more tender and of course the most tender is the 'tenderloin' that muscle that runs along the spine, because it gets less exercise.

I never thought of it that way for birds and I'm a hunter. My bbq always gets brined first anyway. That may take care of toughness in the birds. My plan for the chickens is to collect eggs until they start to really slow down production. Then I get some eggs to put under a broody and raise those up as replacements for the flock.

 

[LadyKotaDoria]

Flower and I went to the Fair and saw ZZ TOP. the show was great. But........
First I made a trip down to get tickets, wanted good sets. The line was very long, I expected that.
This is were it goes bad!

I did not expect it to take an hour and half to get in. We were not that fare back in the line. It took so long because we had to line up, men on the left, woman on the right. Each of us had to be patted down, purses and pockets searched. They found my NEW (purchased Saturday) 3" metal fingernail file, OMG!!!! Dangerous weapon, it was confiscated, I could not get it Back. To ad injury the guy was pleased to make sure I saw in throw it away. I should know better then to have weapons! At a consert. I know were my sets were, I started to the right.

Stopped had ticket checked and scanned. [Now, Flower and I had be separated on getting in.] I was told I was going in the wrong direction, I was directed to the left. I went to what I thought was were I was to be, it looked full, did not see Flower. My ticket checked again, sent to the balcony? Re-directed down to the ground floor 5th row. I had it checked again.... Was directed back to the 5th row, worked myself down 20 full sets..... No Flower, people in the set. All 20 sets had people in them. I make my way back to the floor. Ticket checked again. I was directed back to the entrance check point. This time I was directed to the right. I found Flower, we had great sets. But ZZ Top was in full swing. People were still coming in. Most of us were between 45 and 80, few youngsters 35 or younger. We are known as a dangerous group. When we left we has to go to a different exit. Somebody was being give CPR, ya! We old folks are dangerous. We are so accustom to respect and living in a fee country... Get used to it our freedoms are do longer. You are guilty until proven innocent, not innocent until proven guilty........

I do not believe I will be attending very many more concerts unless Elvis, Bob Marley, and James Brown are appearing on stage live. I will be naked going in.

Yes, ZZ TOP WAS GREAT........

 

[pipemum]

I had a bunch of early red combs develop and thought i had 7 out of 9 roos. Turns out i only had 2! Whew!

 

[MandyFitch]

I had a bunch of early red combs develop and thought i had 7 out of 9 roos. Turns out i only had 2! Whew!

I'm going to cut this out and pin over the door of my coop. Thank you for giving me hope!