B.Y.C. Dorking Club!

[Kibi78704]

HELP Needed

Thank yall so much for any feed back
Blessings
Lisa

Lisa, I wish I could help, but I can't. I am so sorry this is happening. Please keep us posted, and best wishes for a speedy recovery.

I'd quarantine, if possible, ASAP.

 

[Kibi78704]

I really needed to vent, I guess. I think about my birds every day and progress is so slow. My husband thinks it's nuts. My friends don't even like chickens. Hence my rambling on a Saturday morning.

Kim

Kim, hang in there! You aren't alone. We understand.

Everyone disses Ideal's SG Dorkings, but mine looked more like bricks on short sticks. Most were rectangular front and back. Not one duck foot in 20 of them. All had 5 toes on both feet (though the 5th toe didn't always point upward, it was always well formed with a good toenail.) The colors were good; some better than others. They were huge (for their age in comparison to my Ameraucanas). They weren't spectacular, maybe, but they were solid birds with wonderful personalities. Some were better than others, admittedly. They were cheap, too.
Maybe they sent the best ones to Texas customers? Maybe because I special ordered them through my feedstore who gets ALL their birds from Ideal? Idk, but I loved my birds. I'm getting another flock from them next spring.

*&^$)(#^$# raccoons.

 

[RedBugPoultry]

HELP Needed

Went out to coop today and one of my 7 month old buffs was pale and standing in the corner, noticed a puddle of liquidy stuff with blood in it, I also found several other bloody poo piles ( I have removed them from the area) I seperated her and began my research.
I live in florida and we have had RAIN EVERY Day for about a month now. my coop is on a hill and drains off well. I did not use medicated feed and still don't. After reasearch I think it might be coccidiosis, although my dorkings are 10 wks old I would have thought they would have been the ones to get it first. I am treating with Corid, have seperated her from the flock

she is :
1. not eating or drinking.
2. she will get up and walk around every now and then
3. Her eyes are very clear
4. giving corid water by dropper and she takes it little bits at a time.
5. her boul movements do have alot of blood and are very liquidy.
6. She laid an egg this morning but it is VERY pale in color compared to what is normally laid. No blood on the egg.

Of course I am guessing that the pale one come from her but we have never had one that color. Egg production has not dropped at all, and I read that is a sign of cocci. I have only 6 egg layers and I get 5-6 eggs every day!!

The other birds are doing fine, eating and drinking (for now!!).

One more thing...... about a week ago I had another buff with what I thought/think is fowl pox. I wasn't suprised with all the rain and I live in florida. I chose not to vaccinate and I believe it is/was the dry pox not the wet. I did however begin to put a vitamin and electrolyte mix in the water to boost health and fight possible secondary infections in the sores. No other chickens broke out and she never really got any worse and I applied a salve to the sores and she still has just a few sores but never got as bad as the pics I have seen posted. I include all this because I have been told that coccideiosis feeds on Vit B and that while trying to boost their immune I might have given the coccidiosis the oppurtunity it needed. Anyone know if this is true? I have checked the mouth of the bloody stool chicken for signs of wet pox and all is clear.

I have stopped the vit and electolyte mix and

Question:
1. could this be any thing else? or do you agree with the coccidiosis diagnosis?
2. should I be doing something else?

Thank yall so much for any feed back
Blessings
Lisa

Lisa, how is the chicken doing? It does sound like cocci and the best thing if your hen is still alive is to get her to eat and make sure she is really eating not just pecking at the food. Try some scrambled or boiled eggs. I am in South Carolina and my chickens have been dealing with the rain too. I have only seen cocci in my Delaware pen but it came on suddenly and pretty bad. Several girls were passing blood but only one was acting sick-- I treated the whole bunch and have been giving them boiled eggs and turning them out on grass. One thing I have a lot of here is cocci it seems and when it rains it pours.... On a good note my Dorkings have seemed pretty healthy through this but they were all free ranging until recently. I think maybe I will turn them out today. Hope your girl is doing better!

 

[ki4got]

A bit off topic, but someone on the Facebook Ameraucana Chickens group (https://www.facebook.com/groups/65816532358/) posted a picture of an EE pullet that looks to my uneducated eye like a blue silver, maybe a lavender silver, but somehow very unlike the SG Dorking pattern. Until I noticed the rosy breast, it looked like a lavender to me.

Anyone heard of any of these before? What would cause this phenotype? The genetics that my uneducated brain is imagining are twisting my head.

I'm using black patterned silver duckwing on the chicken calculator (http://kippenjungle.nl/kruising.html) to look at crosses to see how one might breed a similar genotype. (Not that I would; my curiosity is peaked, though.) BTW - are SGs the same as black patterned silver duckwings? If not, specifically how not?

Ignoring the slight lacing...

What would you call a silver with the dilution gene? (Blbl+) A blue silver? A silver blue? A blue patterned silver duckwing? Something else entirely?
How about a silver with lavender/self-blue genes? (lavlav) Silver lavender? A lavender silver? A lavender patterned silver duckwing?
If it had both blue (Blbl+) and lavender (lavlav) genes, would it be almost white, e.g. pearl? Or does the lavender override the blue?

What would a splash (lavlav) or splash? (Lav+lav) silver duckwing look like? Would it be all white with black /blue/lavender splashes? If it were a split lavender silver (Lav+lav), would the black be diluted at all? Or would it be a splash all over? Or just where a black patterned silver duckwing is black?

since dorkings don't come in any of these color variations, I might suggest your questions be posted on an oegb thread, maybe. the oegb people seem to have a much stronger grasp on genetics than most other 'breed people'...
the oegb thread can be found here...
https://www.backyardchickens.com/t/276168/hello-and-welcome-to-the-oegb-thread

 

[blessedacre]

Hi everyone!!

My hen is still hanging with us. Through all my reasearch I have found that there is debate wether the eggs of a laying hen are forever contaminated??? I have found that the use of coridor amprolium is banned in the UK. can anyone expand on this. I have found reports of--- don't eat eggs during treatmentt------to wait 2 weeks after treatment --to wait 1 month after treatment---- to if you treat a laying hen with corid she is now a "PET" chicken because you can not eat the eggs. I have a call into the local live stock vet and the tech said she would find out my info and call me back. she said that they do perscirbe amprolium for laying hens so she is pretty sure it eventually leaves the system.

Anyone know more about this??

Thanks

 

[pysankigirl]

you'd probably get more info on this in one of the health forums
but honestly if corrid (and therefore medicated chick feed) is a bad thing, that would really be highly annoying as I have used it on all my chicks since getting chickens as I was integrating animals from a whole bunch of different places and didn't want them to all get coccidosis.

 

[lceh]

Hi blessedacre,

My DD's bantam flock was hit with this 2 years ago, under similar weather conditions (very wet and very warm for weeks). We had just moved to a new home and were super-distracted, and we hadn't moved the coop to new ground in a couple of weeks or cleaned out some spilled bedding that had fallen in the pen area and gotten wet. We lost 2 birds before we knew what was happening, and managed to save the rest by treating them all with Amprol for coccidiosis immediately (and yes, when these were chicks they were raised on medicated feed). And of course we moved them to new, drier ground and cleaned up the spilled bedding and disinfected the henhouse. The Amprol worked within 24 hours, but you need to get on it NOW or you will lose birds!! Coccidiosis brings them down fast. There is no withdrawal time for eggs, but if you're nervous about it you can follow a 14 or even 28 day withdrawal. I think we did 2 weeks just to be safe.

If you have a vet willing to do a fecal exam under a microscope for you, you could bring feces from a bird in the same flock but not showing symptoms to see if they can find cocci. I found out the hard way that bringing in the bloody poo from a sick birds can be inconclusive, so much mucus and blood dilute the fecal matter that the cocci can be hard to find.

On another note, I no longer feed medicated starter, since I have heard that it can actually diminish resistance to coccidiosis in the long run, which this episode seemed to prove in our case.

Here's a potentially useful article: http://poultryone.com/articles/coccidiosis-html

Good luck!

 

[RedBugPoultry]

I have seen where chicks fed medicated food do have a poor resistance if they get an over dose of coccidiosis--thus, wet, warm weather. I have not fed medicated foods for the last 2 or 3 years and had better luck (knock on wood) without it. I feel I get healthier chicks all together. If I do see signs of cocci I treat with Sulmet and have had good results with that. Pens have to be kept clean and dry and I have to be careful not to let food get on wet ground--I use a lot of sand spread around feeders. I have found that a lot of people feed medicated thinking their chick and young birds will not get cocci while being fed medicated food but it is not a sure thing by no means. Another good thing to do is keep lots of grit and greens available to your birds if they do not get to free range. On that note I need to go check on my flock....

 

[LilyD]

Okay I wanted to get some thoughts on my trio. I had a dozen eggs and these were the three that hatched. I know that the roosters coloring isn't the greatest as far as the standards go but I think they have the blocky look to them. They are 12 weeks right now.



























Any critiquing is appreciated. These are what I have to start with but I would like to know where I should go from here and what traits I should be trying to breed into the next generation.

 

[ki4got]

Okay I wanted to get some thoughts on my trio. I had a dozen eggs and these were the three that hatched. I know that the roosters coloring isn't the greatest as far as the standards go but I think they have the blocky look to them. They are 12 weeks right now.

Any critiquing is appreciated. These are what I have to start with but I would like to know where I should go from here and what traits I should be trying to breed into the next generation.

i'd say so far so good. the roo is not going to have great plumage probably until a good 5-6 months old. at least that's when my big guy did, and junior's in his first adult moult, so once he's done should be nice. right now he looks more like an araucana. LOL no tail at all.

as for the girls, i think they also have promise. they look like some of the pullets i've produced from my original trio. the only thing i wish were better (on my own), besides overall size, is foot conformation... but that will come with time and hatching LOTS more chicks.