Chickens for 10-20 years or more? Pull up a rockin' chair and lay some wisdom on us!

[Lollipop]

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I'm not an old timer, but I would suspect mites or lice.

Hmmm, poop smeared on her backside? If it`s white stuff, it`s chicken urine. That`s what that white stuff is in chicken crap. Runny white stuff building up is referred to as pasty butt. What this amounts to is constipation. It means that something is blocking her up and only liquid can get by it. The cure is molasses in her water. Molasses is a natural laxative for birds. Mix it to look like weak tea and let her have it for a day. Things should clear up after that. Lice/mites are not the cause of every malady in chickens. Don`t mean this to be a smarty pants........Pop

 

[southerndesert]

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Most of the real feed stores here in AZ also have a limited number of breeds, but it is not because they can't get others. It is because they carry breeds that do best in our scorching summers and often feed stores elsewhere carry breeds best suited for the environment. That said we can get BA here and they do quite well....

It can be nice to have some unusual hens in the flock, but they may not do well under extreme weather conditions so researching this before buying can be very important.

Until joining this forum I had no idea how many different breeds were out there as we keep mostly breeds for best production and overall health in Arizona's 110 plus degree summers. Before moving here we kept chickens hardy enough to handle the cold Northern winters without heat etc....

Often I see advise given here at this forum with no one considering their method may not be the best for someone 3000 miles to their East or West...

Just saying....

 

[NYREDS]

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Wish I had any insight into what you were trying to say here?

BTW-you don't have chickens yet you've posted here nearly 4,500 times? About what?

 

[Ridgerunner]

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I don't worry about some poop stains or residue on their butts as long as they are acting all right and it is not causing a problem. It's something different and they may be trying to tell you something, so you need to watch them, but you always need to watch them to make sure they are acting OK if you see anything different.

This is just my theory. I'm not putting it out here as fact. My chickens normally free range. They eat about anything they can find. Some foods cause loose stools. Some humans are more susceptible to that. Maybe some chickens are more susceptible than others?

 

[southerndesert]

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I'm with ya. Most of what's touted as "green" now (and almost all the parts that make sense!) is pretty much what we used to call "frugal".


But then, so many Cool New Ideas are just subsets of what we used to call "common sense" back before common sense became rare. I saw an article in the paper the other day about how you can save on food costs by having a veggie garden! Wow, what an amazing notion!

Same as new movies just being remakes and new songs.... and... so on. Seems some just shine up old ideas and methods to try and look smart these days. Book fed know it all types are lurking out there as well.

Hope I never get too smart to want to learn from someone who's been there and done that.

 

[kefiren]

I've been trying to formulate this question for days, Old Timers. Hope I can get this across.

Since I wasn't brought up on a farm, I have no idea how much I'm supposed to handle the chickens. Up to now, I've been really hand's off.

I suppose that it is important to handle chickens, and not just eyeball them when it comes to figure out which ones to breed or cull? And that you probably need to have handled them a lot at all different times of the year and times of life...to know what you are looking for?

For years I've watched one of my hens stretch her leg all the time. I suppose I should palpitate it, but I never have. And I also suppose that next time I see her do it I should mark her so that I don't breed her, since her leg bothers her.

Do you bring the chickens one by one to a table or counter to examine?

On a related note, I'd really like to hear about marking chickens, what is the easiest way? Do you order bands from catelogs? Can you make them from household stuff?

I once read a great article that related body style (width, length), and rate of growth to egg and meat production and longevity of lay. I bet an OT knew this stuff... The article talked about how BR's were both long and wide, and nh's were a bit shorter than rir for some reason and so on. When a person is choosing hens and roosters to breed, this comes in, and I bet you need to handle your chickens to really know which BR is the longest and widest... maybe you might even measure to figure out which specimens are the best? This month's poultry mag has a great article about jersey giants and how the skinny, long teenage roo might be the right choice in a slow growing breed, not the stocky shorter one who looks better.

I suppose this might be where pure breeds have their benefits. It is well known how they should appear at each stage of life, and so you can more easily choose the best ones. But of course, it takes experience to know what "long" or "wide" is.

Renee

 

[Ridgerunner]

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I share the frustration. We all have different conditions, whether that is breeds, strains of those breeds, management practices, goals, weather, coops, incubators, prevalent diseases in the area, legal restrictions, financial restrictions, whatever. What works for me may very well not work for you. Some people on this forum seem to have a lot of trouble understanding that, whether they are giving advice or receiving advice.

Some people totally misrepresent or just reach the wrong conclusions. One example I'll give. Someone on here wrote that you cannot have a hen raise chicks with the flock. She tried it and the chicks were killed. She put a broody with her chicks in the run in a separate pen, but the wiring was big enough that the chicks could get through. All that pen did was keep the broody from being able to protect her chicks. But to that lady, that was proof a broody cannot raise chicks with a flock under any conditions.

A lot of things are interconnected. It regularly happens on here that someone asks a question, I try to answer as best I can based on the information given, then they give further information in a later post that makes my suggestion wrong.

You get incomplete information. On a thread talking about using chicken poop in a garden, someone posted that they use it in the garden, implying that it went straight from the coop to the growing garden. When we discussed that plants can be burned doing that, the person came back on and said, "well, yeah, I compost it first" as if it is common knowledge that you compost it first. There are ways you can put chicken manure in a growing garden and be OK, but there are details on how to do that that might be important.

This is a forum on the internet. You can't blindly believe anything any of us say. I might be lying to you, I might not have any experience about what I am talking about, or my conditions and experience might be so different from your conditions that it doesn't apply. I can't give you any advice as to how to weed out the wheat from the chaff. That's up to you.

 

[Beekissed]

Emptywagon2 wrote:

One of the hens..my best layer has poop smeared down her back side...She appears completely healthy...no signs of worms..still eating..no weight loss..no decrease in egg production. The eggs are clean when layed. Is this something to be worried about...do I need to cull over just some poo on the butt?

If I didn't have a hen or two who DIDN'T have a messy backside, I'd be thinking the world had stopped. After all...this is where the poop comes out. My granny always said her best layers were the ones with messy butts and I've found this to be true in my own flocks as well. Depending on the forage at that time of year, eating too many left over garden fruits, etc. Whatever the cause, your hen has had runny poops....this shouldn't be a problem. You've already stated she had no other problems of decrease in lay, health, eating, etc.

On this forum, I've noticed a constant obsession with the consistency of chicken poop...weird! I've often wondered if they were as obsessed with their own? Think of how often your own BMs vary according to what you eat. If you have a bout of diarrhea after eating your first mess of sweet corn in the spring, do you wonder if your health is in question? Probably not...it happens.

Chickens are the same way. They are omnivores, so their diet will vary and how they process it will vary as well. If they were ruminants, I'd be looking at stool consistency to determine their health. Depending on the time of year or any change in diet for a ruminant, the bowel consistency is indicative of digestive changes or health changes and needs to be monitored or corrected.

Chickens? Nah. You can tell their general health by their appearance and performance...and sometimes you can't. One day they'll be healthy as a horse and the next drop off the roost with a heart attack. Such is life on the farm.

ETA: Sorry, Ridge and Loli...didn't see your posts that had answered that already!

 

[jvls1942]

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I'm with ya. Most of what's touted as "green" now (and almost all the parts that make sense!) is pretty much what we used to call "frugal".


But then, so many Cool New Ideas are just subsets of what we used to call "common sense" back before common sense became rare. I saw an article in the paper the other day about how you can save on food costs by having a veggie garden! Wow, what an amazing notion!

Same as new movies just being remakes and new songs.... and... so on. Seems some just shine up old ideas and methods to try and look smart these days. Book fed know it all types are lurking out there as well.

Hope I never get too smart to want to learn from someone who's been there and done that.

this has nothing to do with chickens, but,,,, in reference to senseless remakes of movies.. this one really bugged me..
True Grit....... what was the sense of that one ??

I just answered a query on the incubation thread . something I seldom do. .Now, I am waiting for the booklearners to rebuke me.

I got a kick out of it when country music became vogue.. everybody ran out and bought boots and a cowboy hat.. LOL

we listened to the Grand Ole Opry on the radio before there was widespread television.. and we didn;t have the proper hats OR boots. heII, we could hardly afford any shoes.. LOL

 

[Beekissed]

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that must be rough on butchering day,,, I mean if her birds die "rather often",, how many times does she have to kill one ??
sorry, I just came from a different thread where we were acting silly..

I would not be hesitant to get fertile eggs from her.. what could be the worse thing that could happen ? hatch plenty of them, then prolly none of them would die..

She's been keeping chickens for at least 20 years, I've built her a pond, and when I bought nipples on here to build my waterer (still unbuilt) I ended up selling her part of the nipples and building her one. But I spot a dead bird on the ground in her pen now and then, so I am careful to wear my pond boots near her coops, not my regular shoes which are tougher to sterilize. She is a dear sweet lady in her 70's and I wouldn't hurt her feelings for anything, but I do not want to bring something home. Knock wood, the worst disease mine have had was dachshund syndrome (ended when I put my old dachshund down - after he killed his 3rd bird) and moulting. I did lose one to heat stroke this year. She lost half her flock to the heat this year. I think there's a problem, don't know what. She doesn't butcher, just gathers eggs and enjoys chickens. I am not old enough or wise enough to advise her.

Gypsi, with not knowing why her birds are dying, this is one lady I'd not get chickens or eggs from. No one wants that level of hardiness~or lack thereof~in their flocks if this is a genetic problem. Now, if she just keeps birds until they are so old they just die of natural causes, this is another thing altogether. Why don't you ask her about how old her flock is and how she manages it? Could be revealing and give you some answers on why this woman is losing half her flock to heat....this should never happen in a normal, healthy flock raised with good husbandry practices.