Arkansas folks speak up.........

[Tala]

Quote:
Behind me is a right-of-way type drive way thing. The neighbors on the other side of it have a large dog, maybe a Pit mix but I'm not sure, and a small yappy dog. They have those tube cattle/horse panels with welded wire attached to it - plus a car width between us, and the crappy fence on my side. I'm confident that their dogs aren't getting out because they probably would have today if they could. I'm appreciative of a neighbor who actually builds a fence strong enough to keep their own dog in!

We actually had more of a stray/loose dog problem in the year we lived here BEFORE chickens. When I got chickens my neighbor suddenly learned to keep her little mini dog in, and amazingly there's been no trouble from unknown dogs either. A long-legged bloodhound visited us about a month ago and he didn't bother the chickens a bit. The only predator that I've lost birds to has been walking on 2 legs (human), although we had a raccoon visit us one night we got lucky, so knock on wood I guess.

 

[angel1]

I just joined last night. I've been surfing for information on how to feed and keep my cornish cross rocks (I got them this morning- 75 of them!) and ran across this "where are you?" post. I am in Havana, AR about 45 miles from Russellville, AR (that's the biggest town around here and we call it "the city". Anyway, we are getting ready to relocate to the extreme Northwest AR. By the way....thanks ya'll for the big welcome. appreciate it. When I was growing up we use to keep chickens all the time...but they ran loose in the back yard and we fed them tabel scraps along. we never had to worm out chickens and it just befuzzles me that I've seen ALOT of people it seems nowadays that HAS to worm their chickens. I wonder what is going on? and another thing....what is a long crowers? I've never heard of them. THanks again ya'll..................

 

[Tala]

Quote:
Well, I haven't had to worm my indoor/outdoor cats since I adopted them as strays, but my sister who has INDOOR-only cats gets tapeworms in their poop all the time. Tapeworms come from fleas, and I use Advantage pretty religiously because my cats go outside. My sister just swears "my cats don't have fleas, they're indoors only" but guess who gets tapeworms??

My chickens free range and I've yet to see a suspicious poop under the roost, so I haven't wormed them. My dog was wormed last time she had a fecal done, but we haven't done that in a while.
Basically it's my understanding that there are always *some* worms and the animals can handle it, it only becomes a problem if the worms get overloaded on one's system.
Perhaps others just worry more about it than I do too. I go by the condition of the animal and it's poops. I watched a wild horse documenterary once and they said that the wild stallion they were featuring tested his poop positve for worms and they retested his poop 6 months later and he was negative. Nobody dewormed him.

Perhaps people just know more about it now too. I bet you didn't used to feed your chickens Layena feed either

 

[19Dawn76]

i have started giving my chickens apple cider vinager in their water to deworm them. It makes their feathers super shiny too! I never knew of them having worms I just read somewhere that you were supposed to deworm.

 

[angel1]

glad you haven't have any trouble with the pit mix. I KNOW how bad SOME of these dogs are. Son n law brought his 2 FB pits here and put them in a pen on my place and I didn't know they were here til me and my son went to town and came back and ALL my ducks and chickens were DEAD and more than 1/2 my goats. I had 2 deer that was rescues that I took and they were doin fine after I put a baby buck goat kid in the pen with them and he was showing them how to eat grain and hay and how to drink water as I still had them on the bottle because they were so young....yes, even they were layin dead. It broke my heart so bad that I haven't actually had any chickens, ducks or anything after that for about 5 months. I was sooo MAD. We have a FB pit living here on our place and he never bothers anything...has never even tried. He belongs to my 26 yr old son. He keeps him hooked up to a big log chain and takes him for walks and plays with him. His name is spencer....but *I* call him "smoochie" and he answers to it. This dog has gotten loose a few times over the last 4 yrs...but when that happens, he trots to the kitchen door and knocks on it with his tail cause he wants in! The only way that this dog would hurt me is if he licked me to death. There's just a difference is dogs even if it's the same breed. Oh yeah, and your right about me us not feeding our chickens Layena. I am assuming that's laying pellets? we fed ours chops or corn and the rest of the food came from them eating bugs...but they always layed plenty of eggs. There IS one thing that my mom always gave the animals.........old dishwater! she gave it to the chickens, the dogs and the pigs. she always said that it wormed them...but I never knew whether it did or not...........

 

[heritagehabitatfarms]

it will if you use lye soap to do the dishes with... idk about the modern dish liquids lol...

 

[jenjscott]

Hi Angel, a longcrower is just that, a rooster that crows for a looooonnnnggggg time. here is a very short you tube link.

This is actually short for a longcrower I think.

 

[angel1]

Elias,
actually, using lye soap isn't a problem...I make it all the time. However, with that being said..we were poor when I was grwoing up and mom always bought the cheapest dish liquid on the market. What is idk?

 

[angel1]

jen,
I went to the link you provided and WOW...I've never heard a roo crow that long before. You have turkeys? what kind? I've been searching for turkeys too along with some ducks and geese but seems everyone is sold out right now so I'll have to wait....

 

[Ridgerunner]

Quote:
I'll come on here to welcome you to the site. I PM'ed you in response to your email. Since you are new to the site, if you have not received the PM, just ask about it and someone will tell you how to get to it.

They recently did a poll on here as to why people on this forum have chickens. Pets and eggs just about tied for first place in that poll. There are still several of us on here that grew up with chickens roaming the farm and pretty much taking care of themselves, giving us eggs and meat, but we are not in the majority. I can't do it that way either as I do not have enough property and can not keep them out of the road. I have to keep them penned up and feed them.

You will find that we all have different set-ups and different reasons to keep chickens so our attitudes and responses are going to be all over the board. I remember one person posting that she had a chicken in her house perched on her shoulder while she was typing a message on this site. I cannot see myself doing that and I'm not criticizing, just pointing out how different some of us can be on here. I think all this diversity makes for a great site.

All this to get to the worming. Since more people see them as pets, they are more willing to spend money on them to give them the best care possible. Or others may see it as any worms are bad and must be gotten rid of immediately. Some of us keep them in more confined spaces than roaming the farm and can observe them closer, thus seeing more than we would if they were roaming free. Some of us, and I'm one of them, take more of Tala's viewpoint, if they look healthy and act healthy, then they are doing OK. But since I have them confined and not able to roam free and get a wider variety of what to eat, I do watch them closer for disease or infestation than I would if they were allowed to roam.

An example of different attitudes. I saw a post on here where someone was cleaning out an old coop that had not been used for a few years, getting ready for chickens. They found some insect eggs in the coop. The immediate reaction on here was

:

get rid of them they are horrible. My thought was that there was no way they could be mite or lice eggs, so this was something the chickens would really enjoy chasing and eating. Since the coop was going to be disinfected anyway, the eggs were going to be destroyed, but I thought of all the fun the chickens were going to miss. Just shows that we are different.

idk mean I don't know. People use a lot of abbreviations one here, some I understand and some,