Colorado

Anyone here vaccinate against Meraks? Randall Burkley sells the vaccine but I am not sure how easy it is to administer or if I could hurt the chicks giving it.
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My first chickens came already vaccinated and I have not done the rest. Mereks is not very common but perhaps with the increase in the Colorado chicken population and warmer overall temps, it is something to be considering.
 
X2! Heard an interview with her on my way to work one morning last month, still very busy woman, I remember when she first came to the national spotlight thinking, at last!

She's incredible. I've watched the slaughterhouse videos that Peta puts out and I don't want to be like them. I don't want to pretend I'm doing something right because everyone else does it that way. She inspires me to accept that culling is a necessary part of livestock but that it doesn't have to be ugly and inhumane.

Here's a standard of humane care for chickens that Temple and others helped create. It is in a pdf file and this is the link I had talked about before. It is geared toward poultry operations but the part I zeroed in on is what they recommend for euthanasia. http://files.meetup.com/1778265/Standards for Humane Chicken Husbandry.pdf There was a pamplet published for home farms but I can't find it now. If someone should have that link, please post it or PM me. In that, the best way to cull was cervical dislocation.

edit: if i have a small chick that needs to be euthanized, I use CO2. Not all at once but in minute quantities with food and water in an enclosed tub, until they fall asleep. If you go too fast, you take the risk of them flailing. I still cry when the baby chicks have to be euthanized because I know what a struggle it was for them to free themselves from their shells.
 
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X2! Heard an interview with her on my way to work one morning last month, still very busy woman, I remember when she first came to the national spotlight thinking, at last!
I work on a farm and we raise Berkshire pigs. We only have the pigs processed at facilities that Temple Grandin designed. I wouldn't/couldn't do this anyother way. It is amazing to see how the pigs behave; no fear, only curiousity and 'hey, what's that over there'? They have no idea what so ever that anything is happening when they are stunned.
I worked one day at a USDA poultry processing plant and I honestly feel it is more humane and clean to process chickens at a farm or backyard where they are raised.
 
Got a few things done this morning.....
Loaded 12 bags / onw trailer load of the free mulch. Got it all spread out, and found we need at least one more load to gt it all done. That will have to wait until next week.







Then I got some wire fencing up on the upper front sections of the breedong / brooding pens.




We did the sign last weekend.
 
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This is what I will be doing this spring, too (raising day-olds and then selling them as started pullets) - have an order in with McMurray which is supposed to ship 1/28/13, I've had good luck with the birds they sell in the past, and hatcheries are really the only sellers of day-olds where you can order just pullets, unless someone is breeding a sex-linked breed, like Wendell should be able to pick out pullets day one.

There's a possibility there will be an additional order from Urch, BTW, not sure yet whether it would be earlier or later than the one we already sent in, and if my first group of started pullets sell well and quickly enough I will order anther group to raise. I'll start taking reservations next month, and if anyone wants something specific I'm sure it isn't too late to add to the order. Right now I've ordered 25 each Barred Rock, Buff Orpington, White Leghorn, and Ameraucana/Araucana.
Judi, Will you be getting in any SS? I would be interested in two or three. I am trying to build my flock to around 12 or 15.



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