Consolidated Kansas

[tweetybaby2005]

I hope everyone fairs well with all this rain. We have had over 2.5" of rain within the last 24 hours and more to come according to the forecast. I was going to clean the coop and get things all tidy up but no go. It was just mud every where. My chickens love to go out in the rain for some reason. Ducks were having a blast bee-lining out under the rain as soon as my DH let them out of the coop yesterday.

22qzoo and Cherwill - I only have 5 eggs daily and I have over 12 laying hens. I think they are molting as well because there are feathers every where I turn.

Danz and Hechicken - Guess my broody hens may become broody again later or next year. Will see how that goes. The broody BR hen decided not to sit on the empty nest after I took all the eggs. Oh well... it was hot over a couple of weeks ago and I was not ready to have more broody hens and chicks then.

Trish - Cute ducks! I really like ducks, their personality is just awesome! They quack so loud when they see me it was just comical.

ashncarson - The butterflies are beautiful! I was watching a documentary about how the climate change is affecting the butterflies population over the weekend. We are planting lots of bushes, flowers, etc. to attract butterflies and wild birds so hopefully we are doing our share to keeping the population up. But I can't control the climate, unfortunately...

OkieQueenBee - Welcome to BYC and the Kansas board. Looks like you have a gamut of birds and such, that's awesome! Got pictures to share? We love pictures...

Saraswank - Hope things go well for your ex and you get to have more time to yourself again.

cleansquared - I was looking for fresh green apple fragrance oil for my warmer. Last year around Christmas, I bought some wax squares from WM and they smelled heavenly. It was the fresh green apple scented wax squares by Better Homes, I think. But they have stopped carrying this scent and I've been searching high and low to no avail. I did see some green apple fragrance oil on eBay and the seller did indicate on her page that it was OK to put in the warmer. Just don't know how it smells so I hesitate to buy it plus it was expensive for just a 2 oz. bottle. Do you know where I can find green apple scented oil or wax cubes in Wichita?

Hope I didn't miss any one. My tablet just won't let me do multi quote so it is hard for me to keep track of who said what after reading a few pages of posts.

Stay dry everyone. I love the much cooler weather but sure hope to have a break from the rain. I think forecast said 4.5"+ close to Topeka area so for those of you who are in that vacinity, hopefully you can prep for flash flood. I know in my area, the ground is definitely saturated.

 

[sharol]

I agree that bumblefoot has some mysteries. I had a period of time a 2 years ago whens several of my hens developed bumblefoot. I operated on 4 and soaked them and 2 others using Tricide Neo for a couple of weeks. I had mixed results. My first EE hen had a nasty one, and after 2 surgeries and a followup a year later, she still has a spot on her foot. However all the extensive swelling has gone down and not returned, so I'm like you, I'm not putting her through that again. She lays regularly and gets around just fine -- no limp at all anymore.

The others seemed to stay gone. I have 2 right now showing bumble, but they aren't causing any swelling or pain that I can see. I'm going to start spraying their feet on the roosts with Vetericyn. It really helped the first time, so I'm going after them again as soon as it warms up. They aren't keen on having their feet sprayed, but I think that is what completely cured a couple of the girls who had only tiny spots.

I think there is more to Bumblefoot than we know. There are too many mysteries and variations that go unexplained. Why does the Vetericyn work? All it does is change the pH of the feet. How can that cure staph? Does Tricide Neo really work? It is very expensive, and it doesn't store worth a darn (moisture causes it to cake and I assume deteriorate). But both do seem to at least help. Why do some chickens respond, and some (like my beloved Butch) don't respond to anything including antibiotics and invasive surgery?

Nuf said I guess.

Lizzy, I have a hen with bumblefoot. Hawkeye came over several months ago now and we did the surgery on her. Hawkeye is pretty confident she got every bit of the infection out of the foot but the swelling remains even now (never really went down post surgery), and the hen still limps. She seems happy enough and is still laying (or at least she was until she went broody and the snake last week scared her off brooding but I don't think she's back to laying since then). In fact, when I take out treats, she's out there in front of the everyone, making sure she gets her fair share. So, despite the pretty pronounced limp, I decided I'm not going to put her through another surgery and if she starts to decline I will cull her.

This is my second experience with bumblefoot surgery. The first was last summer and I operated on the same hen several times but it never really got better, even though I always got out everything I could find. That is why I wanted Hawkeye to help with this bird, in case there was something I was missing.

I think perhaps bumblefoot is one of those things that is exceptionally hard to completely eradicate once they have it. I have several other birds that if I look at the bottom of their foot they have a bumble but there is no swelling or limping, they eat well and lay regularly, so I decided I'm not going to mess with those if they're not having issues.

 

[lizzyGSR]

I think perhaps bumblefoot is one of those things that is exceptionally hard to completely eradicate once they have it. I have several other birds that if I look at the bottom of their foot they have a bumble but there is no swelling or limping, they eat well and lay regularly, so I decided I'm not going to mess with those if they're not having issues.

My experience with my duck agrees with you on the difficulty of completely eradicating the bumblefoot. However, that is only for severe cases. For the less severe cases (i.e. there is a bumble, but only minimal swelling, no limping, etc.), I have started using Vetericyn. I wash the foot, spray it with vetericyn, and wrap it with vet wrap. I re-spray and re-wrap daily until the bumble is gone. I have one duck whose foot I've wrapped for 2-3 days. Another day or two is probably all that will be needed for her minor cases of bumblefoot to finish healing. When I finish with her, I've got one more duck that has a minor bumble that needs attention. The duck that had the surgery a month or so ago has one other bumble on the same foot and another two on the other foot. Yeah, she's got it pretty bad. So, I've been wrapping both of her feet. The minor bumbles on her foot are getting better, but the bumble that we did surgery on is taking its sweet poky time healing. As far as I can tell, she's eating, drinking and acting okay. However, my birds have drastically slowed down in laying. My geese are moulting and my ducks have gone from each giving me an egg a day to only giving me one egg every 2-3 days.

 

[chicken danz]

I don't know that she is still running a fever... Her feathers have grown back in, and she seems to be doing better, but I'm not convinced that she's feeling back to 100%. Can you tell me how I tell if she's still got a fever? The incident with her in the pool was about a month ago. Is it possible to still be running a fever?
A normal temperature for an adult duck is about 107. Normally you would take temperature rectally but most human thermometers only go to 106 or so. I suppose any thermometer with a probe you don't mind sacrificing to a bird butt that is fairly quick reading would work. Personally I think I would give her antibiotics to be safe. If that staph infection is in her bloodstream it could kill her. The laying problem however could be due to the heat. My ducks usually stop laying during the hottest part of the summer for a while.
One reason that I'm not convinced that she's feeling better is that I think she's stopped laying eggs. I have two khaki campbells, of which she is one. They had been the only birds laying eggs. I had been getting 2 eggs per day from them until just recently, when I started getting only one egg per day. I'm assuming it's her that's stopped laying, though I really have no way to tell for sure.

I am open for suggestions so if you have any thoughts/ideas on what the best route to take with this particular duck is, please share!

Well had an inteesting weekend in oklahoma are you saying danz put the lye on dry on the dirt in the barn then soak with water ? I have lots of lye as i buy it by the 50#bag for soap what exactly is oxine? And ive been studying blue egg genetics and i also woild like to create a high production blue layer mabye we could work on that together i have some thoughts on that.. Wewont close on the house till sep so if your ok keeping them a while longer that would be helpfull (roos) i can bring you some wheat after the 5 im out of town next weekend too im supposed to meet with my brother when i get back and get wheat at least it would help feed my little roos once we get moved i will take some guennys from you and mabye a pea chic trio as the ticks are pretty bad and every thing ive read says they are great for that. Between the two of them they lay an egg every other day (legbars)

Yes I just sprinkled dry lye all over the ground then wet it down really good with a hose. I used to use that with my dog kennels and never had a flea or tick or any sickness. I don't mind helping you with idea on creating high production blue egg layers. My first impulse would be to take a leghorn and cross it with a cream legbar rooster. Then cross the F2 birds to each other. It would be a slim looking bird but I think if I understand it right that all of the offpsring (well the hens anyway..

) would produce blue eggs. Again the cream legbar influence should calm the leghorns down. You would want a white egg layer or you would end up with olive eggers.
I am a little worried about what I am going to do with the boys after mid August though. I am hoping to have my breeders separated. I guess I am just going to have to make a rooster pen and hope all the boys don't try to kill each other. Before I was forced to sell so many birds I bought pinless peepers to put on roosters in hopes of keeping them from battling. I haven't used them so they are worth a try.
Oxine is a wonderful product that can be used as is or becomes much much stronger when activated with citric acid. When activated it goes a long long ways. It kills most bacteria and is used to purify water in public systems. You can give oxine (not activated) directly in the drinking water to your birds to kill a lot of infections. It is a remarkable cleaning product. It smells like bleach when activated particularly. I used it to disinfect almost everything. I also use tektrol but it can't be consumed like oxine can. I use oxine to clean in the house and about everything imagineable. You have to order it on line.
Quote:

CHERWIL , thanks glad to hear its not just me. I do think they are starting to molt too. I've only had those girls for a little more than a year and being a newbie to all this I really don't know what normal is . Truth is every little sniffle and dog fart I hear and I have to go check the Internet to see if its "normal". ; )
LIZZY or DANZ,could that ducks foot be soaked in oxine ? I saw that a lot of horseshoers use it for white line disease and thrush. I don't know , it is bothersome to have to order it if you need something right away. I got mine in two days.

I imagine you could soak their foot in oxine but Epsom salts is a much better choice for something like that.

I hope everyone fairs well with all this rain. We have had over 2.5" of rain within the last 24 hours and more to come according to the forecast. I was going to clean the coop and get things all tidy up but no go. It was just mud every where. My chickens love to go out in the rain for some reason. Ducks were having a blast bee-lining out under the rain as soon as my DH let them out of the coop yesterday.

22qzoo and Cherwill - I only have 5 eggs daily and I have over 12 laying hens. I think they are molting as well because there are feathers every where I turn.

Danz and Hechicken - Guess my broody hens may become broody again later or next year. Will see how that goes. The broody BR hen decided not to sit on the empty nest after I took all the eggs. Oh well... it was hot over a couple of weeks ago and I was not ready to have more broody hens and chicks then.

Trish - Cute ducks! I really like ducks, their personality is just awesome! They quack so loud when they see me it was just comical.

ashncarson - The butterflies are beautiful! I was watching a documentary about how the climate change is affecting the butterflies population over the weekend. We are planting lots of bushes, flowers, etc. to attract butterflies and wild birds so hopefully we are doing our share to keeping the population up. But I can't control the climate, unfortunately...

OkieQueenBee - Welcome to BYC and the Kansas board. Looks like you have a gamut of birds and such, that's awesome! Got pictures to share? We love pictures...

Saraswank - Hope things go well for your ex and you get to have more time to yourself again.

cleansquared - I was looking for fresh green apple fragrance oil for my warmer. Last year around Christmas, I bought some wax squares from WM and they smelled heavenly. It was the fresh green apple scented wax squares by Better Homes, I think. But they have stopped carrying this scent and I've been searching high and low to no avail. I did see some green apple fragrance oil on eBay and the seller did indicate on her page that it was OK to put in the warmer. Just don't know how it smells so I hesitate to buy it plus it was expensive for just a 2 oz. bottle. Do you know where I can find green apple scented oil or wax cubes in Wichita?

Hope I didn't miss any one. My tablet just won't let me do multi quote so it is hard for me to keep track of who said what after reading a few pages of posts.

Stay dry everyone. I love the much cooler weather but sure hope to have a break from the rain. I think forecast said 4.5"+ close to Topeka area so for those of you who are in that vacinity, hopefully you can prep for flash flood. I know in my area, the ground is definitely saturated.

 

[cleansquared]

Ok first the fragrance oil is in no way theraputic just so you know its a chemical....a link to a decent brand is http://www.wholesalesuppliesplus.co...rafters+Choice™+Green+Apple+Fragrance+Oil+266 to make a tart for melting like you bought at walmart get 1# (pound) bees wax or veg wax melt on stove in a stainless steel pot on 1-2 heat no warmer it will take a little while when wax is melted take off stove add 1 -2 table spoons of your green apple fragrence oil and one oZ veg oil stir quickly and throughly pour into small silicon molds (tray kind like wilton with several) let harden then store in sealed glass jar or large zip lock bag

 

[cleansquared]

Next i dont believe the clb would be the way to start here is why the clb has a brown layer in its history it also has a gene for limiting or surpressing that brown layer gene which is what i think makes the eggs pale blue instead of a darker blue also clb was created with hetro parents only one set of blue egg laying genes per parent which also makes the egg a paler shade of blue.. I think to get the best blue egg you would need to start with an arcana or americana 3 differant lines... then i could work with one color of leg horn and you could work with another the goal would be in each gen breed it to a diff line of americanas(true breed bloodlines) untill in each gen you had a birds that were homo- for the blue gene 2 sets each bird which should give nice blue egg keep breeding these out using this then breed back to the original blue homo pair then from that breed our two together the hardest part besides keeping track of things would be making sure your only breeding out birds that are homo. For blue.. If you wanted the autosexing feature you could add in a bared holland that lays white or alternatly use the new 55s leg horns mix from greenfire that might work too..

 

[sharol]

I'm 40 miles or so south of Topeka, and we haven't gotten the amount of rain that some have (2 inches over the last 48 hours). This morning between rain episodes, I got the mower and moved the tractor/hoop/coop that my broody and her 3 little ones are using to higher ground. The south part of our yard tends to collect water during rain storms, and I didn't want them wet. I already built a platform for one side of the coop part of the hoop, but they needed dryer ground.

It was an adventure. Because the hoop moves in a jerky way sometimes, I wanted to separate the babies (a week old) so they wouldn't get squashed. Marlena (my broody) was not impressed. She had a holy fit and flew in my face when I was corralling the babies into the cat carrier for the short trip. Everyone was fine, and she was ok after they got back out. I was just afraid that she would lose her balance trying to protect them and hurt one. All's well. They are out of the puddles and she has them out in the run between rain storms.

This is almost as weird as last year's 116 degree weather. Not complaining, you understand. Just sayin'

 

[cleansquared]

You know kansas was once an ocean... Mabye climate change is turning us back into one ~lol

 

[tweetybaby2005]

Ok first the fragrance oil is in no way theraputic just so you know its a chemical....a link to a decent brand is http://www.wholesalesuppliesplus.co...rafters+Choice™+Green+Apple+Fragrance+Oil+266 to make a tart for melting like you bought at walmart get 1# (pound) bees wax or veg wax melt on stove in a stainless steel pot on 1-2 heat no warmer it will take a little while when wax is melted take off stove add 1 -2 table spoons of your green apple fragrence oil and one oZ veg oil stir quickly and throughly pour into small silicon molds (tray kind like wilton with several) let harden then store in sealed glass jar or large zip lock bag

cleansquared - Just popped in for a quick check and saw your reply. Thank you so much for the link to get the fragrance oil. I think I've seen bees wax @ Whole foods or Food for thought and even @ Michael's so I'll check that out. I have some old ice cube trays which I used to freeze baby foods I made for my kids years ago so I can use that as molds unless you think it is not a good idea. I may have to cut the cube to smaller size when I put it into the warmer though...

Thanks again for the information. I'll go to the store to get some bees wax and then order the fragrance oil to make some. Can't wait to smell the green apple scent again... it literally smells like Jolly Rancher green apple hard candy!

 

[cleansquared]

You can use old ice cube trays however 1) you will never comepletly get them clean again 2) you need to throughly oil them before you pour your mix if when they are hard and you oiled your tray inside well and you still cant get them out freeze them for an hour then try again