Australia - Six states..and that funny little island.

[satay]

How lucky can I get got 4 roosters out of 6 hatched marans doh!

now will have to decide what to do with them

Bummer.

 

[satay]

Today was a 5 egg day!! That means atleast one of my original girls are definitely laying!!

 

[Kooka]

May also be location, My property is at roughly the same height as Mount Macedon ( I think around 600m) and if I was wanting to warm up at night and not set a fire in the house.....I could go sit in the fridge that 4C
Not sure how many chooks would keep laying in a fridge like temperature.

 

[cluckcluckluke]

hahaha great story Satay! Also what skill to have been able to not drop any rubbish. Imagine the clean up if it had all fallen open.
Thanks for the Marans help. I'll separate some of them tomorrow.

 

[Fancychooklady]

I stand corrected @Teila
 , but I would think it *quite* rare 

Whilst a mature aged hen or one that has hormone in balance can begin to crow she is not capable of insaminating another hen. So she is not truly a rooster, more like a menapausal hen.

 

[Fancychooklady]

Hi guys. :/

We had our first fox attack today.

I heard the chickens screaming and saw my dog chasing them.  At first I thought it was him chasing them because I'd forgotten to feed him last night and this morning (my memory is rubbish) and I brought him in and chastised him.  I found one of my Anconas on the fence with tears in the flesh on her back and feathers missing, as well as 3-4 groupings of feathers of various areas of my yard.  One chicken (of 17) is still missing. 

I chased the fox off twice and it took me 4 hours to round up all of my chickens into their fox proof coop until I could make sure that the fox had given up.  It hasn't come back in several hours now.  A friend brought over her Irish Wolfhound to help deter it and that seems to have helped.  I realized that what my dog must have been doing was trying to help round the chickens up.  He'd  never been aggressive to them before so it was a surprise to me when I saw him barking at them and chasing them into the front yard.  He's only a pug - and was perhaps a third of the size of the fox - so he was unlikely to be helpful in keeping it away.

The injured Ancona has at least two tears to the flesh on her back - but no actual puncture wounds that I can see.  Many missing feathers.  Her legs and wings seem fine apart from a cut on one toe which looks like she caught it on something when she was fleeing.  She is eating and drinking but is quiet in the way that suggests pain (unsurprising).  

I'm wondering how I should best treat her wounds.  They're still wide open at the moment.  I have quite a complete chicken first aid kit including sedatives, painkillers, antibiotics (sprays/pills/creams), chromic gut sutures and all of the dressings anyone could desire.  I have given sutures before and know how - but I am wondering if I should leave them open to prevent an infection under the skin.  

My first instinct is to flush the wounds with a saline and betadine preparation, then flush them again with isopropyl alcohol and spread Manuka honey over and through them for the time being, leaving them open to drain any possible infection.  Should I close them? Should I go straight for the antibiotics?  I think that her wounds are superficial enough to where she will survive them assuming that I an find off infection.  She doesn't appear to be shocky at all, just in pain. 

In the meantime I've just let the chickens back out of the coop so they can get at their waterer and have a drink and a forage before bed while my son plays outside (he's almost 5).  A friend cautioned me, saying that she thought a fox might try to kill a 5 year old.  This seems HIGHLY unlikely to me and if anything his presence would likely deter a fox from coming after the hens again.

I will try to get photos of my Ancona's wound as soon as I can get her to come to me - she's hiding in the back of the brooder from me.

I personally would leave them open to drain. Flush with saline and spray with terramycin. I use medical grade manuka honey but the problem with honey is that in the early stages , it is just too difficult to remove when daily cleaning is required. We save the honey for later down the track, once the risk of infection has gone and we are down to weekly dressings.
Never heard of a fox taking a human, perhaps a dingo ??

 

[cluckcluckluke]

Getting some nice eggs here as well as some very big ones. That white one on the top left is a good 90g.
The four brown eggs are from my Marans.

 

[cluckcluckluke]

@tandykins I am very sorry to hear about the attack upon your chickens. I don't have much of an idea about how to look after your injured hen apart from just making sure infection doesn't take a hold, but I have a few suggestions for fox deterrence that could help.
Try and get your dog as well as that Irish Wolfhound to urinate around the chickens pen.
Also try and collect as much dog hair as you can and pack it into old socks or stockings. Then hang them around your yard/ chickens pens.
The best method probably is what Ash uses and that's to have an electric wire (at fox nose height) run all around your chickens yard.
Good luck with your flock and I hope no more attacks occur.

If you scroll down through this page it has several diagrams for optimum electric wire placement.
http://www.wildlifeonline.me.uk/fox_deterrence.html

 

[Anniebee]

I have a huge old light sussex hen that doesn't roost. She's content on the ground and has made herself a nice little bed on top of shavings so I let her be. On some nights Whoppi joins her, other nights she's roosting with the others. I just leave them be, unless they have take up residence in the nest boxes.

In other news - I heard a bit of a weird comment from my Nan yesterday when I went to visit her. She said she had a lady around to do some work on one of her horses and mentioned what a nice rooster Nan had. Nan replied I don't have a rooster, which chicken are you talking about. This woman pointed to one of Nan's big light sussex and said "That one, his comb and wattles are big and red, that's a rooster".
Nan apparently was a bit bewildered and said she'd never heard it crow and just before the cold, the chicken was laying. This woman said a chicken can change it's sex from a hen to a rooster and that my Nan definitely had a rooster.

When I visited her yesterday she told me all of this and asked if I've ever seen it before. I told her it was impossible for a chicken to change it's gender, but that it wasn't unheard of for a hen to take on the role of a rooster in the absence of one; attempting to crow and mounting the other hens.
She then took me over to see the bird in question - I told her immediately that the chicken was no rooster, that my light sussex hen looked nearly identical with big red wattles and comb. She was relived that the hen wasn't a rooster.
Nan told me this lady insisted she's seen it happen in a couple of cases. I just shook my head no.

Had some discussions in the past, about weird behaviour by chickens. ... My own ( Mindy ) Araucana, took to crowing like a rooster, but being in a moult recently she has said nowt. But she ain't no rooster ( at present ). An excellent layer when not moulting. And she is an Araucana and they are given to making weird crowing sounds anyway.

My biggest girl - Mandy Welsummer, is brightening in her comb at present, and has laid beautiful terra-cotta colour eggs in the past, however, I have a sneaking suspicion that she might have given up with the almost-every-day-hard-push - forever !! - guess we will see when Spring pops up. .... She has a smaller comb than normal now, but her wattles are red and large. She is also very very dominant, more so now than ever, and pushes my poor Molly RIR who has been moulting, around, pecks at her over special food, dominates the tucker. .. She is a huge chicken ...

I have to stand referee when I feed them both my special (?) chook mash. She has displayed homicidal tendencies towards Mindy Araucana, who now lives separately - permanently ( to avoid visiting chicken heaven ).

However, this comment so intrigued me, I did a bit of Googling. Found the following :

http://www.livescience.com/13514-sex-change-chicken-gertie-hen-bertie-cockerel.html ....

Read somewhere else that chickens can cross genders - at any stage ? so I am wondering, myself.

 

[tandykins]

I personally would leave them open to drain. Flush with saline and spray with terramycin. I use medical grade manuka honey but the problem with honey is that in the early stages , it is just too difficult to remove when daily cleaning is required. We save the honey for later down the track, once the risk of infection has gone and we are down to weekly dressings.
Never heard of a fox taking a human, perhaps a dingo ??

We gave her a little aspirin last night as we were treating her wound yesterday. I flushed it with saline and sprayed it with terramycin. This morning she was eating and drinking, if quiet. I did notice that the little pullet whose brooder I chucked her in (mostly for lack of anywhere else to put her) was starting to peck at her wound so I will remove her to something else today and give her another spray and another round of aspirin.

So far so good. One chicken still missing.

I haven't let the chickens out again this morning yet - I'm making them wait until I am fully awake and dressed, ready to run out there and defend them should the fox come back. I've moved my computer to the big picture window at the back of my house which gives me a view out into the yard. Hopefully I can even get a little work done today. D:

The council gave me a possum trap that they wanted me to try catching the fox in - however, the fox is at least twice the size of the trap. It's huge. That's just not happening.