Bleeding and can't get/afford blue kote?!?

Just thought I would throw this out there and perhaps help a few chicken lovers out...

A few weeks ago, my two roos started fighting and tore each other's combs/wattles up... Two of the hens got into the mix and they either got blood on their combs/wattles or they had small injuries but they started getting pecked as well on their combs/wattles... My husband was not home so I had no transportation to get to the feed store, nor did we have the money for it at the moment...

I could quarantine ONE but there was no way I could do it with four so, in desperation I got a small plastic spray bottle from the bathroom (was for perfume I didn't like) cleaned it out REALLY well with hot water and soap and then put some blue food coloring in some water.. i made it so that it was as dark as I could possibly get it and one by one, I got a chicken, wrapped him/her in a towel and stopped the bleeding as best I could... when the bleeding was finally stopped, I sprayed it really well with the coloring until the skin was stained and once it had dried a little bit (didn't want them going after it because it was shiny when wet)I out them back in the run... I didn't have a single problem with them pecking each other after that!!!

Now, I know I could have used corn starch or something like that to stop the bleeding but I had a bad experience with that in the past with my roo when I de-spurred him... I got the bleeding stopped completely and put just a little bit of corn starch on it and before i knew it, there was nothing but a bare pointed bone sticking out and the skin from around it was hanging and bleeding like crazy!!

I will definitely be using the food coloring when I de-spur them again!

Goddess

 

Quote:To de-spur them, I use the twist off method.. It was much easier than i thought it would be and there was only a drop or two of blood that stopped pretty quickly when I did it.. But, as soon as I put him back in with the girls, they attacked where the spurs were.. The hens caused him more harm than i did...

Goddess