Consolidated Kansas

[22qZoo]

Good morning ! Testing,testing is this working ?

 

[chicken danz]

It is here!

 

[chicken danz]

We got rain last night...not sure how much but it sounded ferocious. It's 48 out right now. Burr! I should go out and make sure all the birds faired the storm okay, but I'm not ready to tackle the cool air just yet. I need to go somewhere today and get some more chick starter. I am going through gobs of it. More reason to get some birds moved out of that brooder house. I need to construct a couple of quick shelters so I can move some more birds around. Just doesn't seem I have time to start any more projects. Today I hope to get some cleaning done inside and spray the house for bugs. I have some more peeps in the incubator I need to make a space for. I am full up on places to keep chicks.

 

[22qZoo]

Gerr.... I tried to post twice yesterday and it wouldn't go . Oh well..
Lizzy- I hope things for you and baby have settled down. For my two cents I'm going to guess girl. My first was 5 wks early and she was fine, she had to stay under a "grow light" for a few days because she was jaundice . But now when my twelve year old rolls her eyes when I tell her to clean her room it's all a distant memory.
I have a ? We have two roos that are loosing neck feathers. All my other chickens have finished their molt and are looking really nice . One is a light brahma , the other is I think 1/2 brahma 1/2 ?. They eat FF and free range, I use ivermectin a couple times a year , looked them over and didn't see any beasties. They are about 6 months old . Could this be molt or is there something I'm missing?

 

[chicken danz]

I have a few roosters that look like that right now that for sure is molt. But at 6 months I don't know that it would be. It wouldn't hurt to treat again with Ivermectin. I use the pour on stuff for treatment like that when I don't want to worm everyone. I have some really sick looking birds right now. Bare spots every where. I hate for people to see my birds this time of year cause so many look so rough. I actually should just worm about all of them right now. I'm barely getting eggs so I should take advantage of that.
Speaking of that HeChicken or Josie. I was looking at Valbazen a couple days ago. It seems to me there was a dosage for use in water you guys were using. I can't find anything except to mix up a very small amount and give it to individual birds one at a time. Am I remembering wrong?
Also read that it is a good wormer for dogs. I considered buying some but need more information.

 

[KsKingBee]

I have some more peeps in the incubator I need to make a space for. I am full up on places to keep chicks.

How about under the bed or up in the attic? You could put them right next to your bats in the belfry.

 

[JosieChick]

Gerr.... I tried to post twice yesterday and it wouldn't go . Oh well..
Lizzy- I hope things for you and baby have settled down. For my two cents I'm going to guess girl. My first was 5 wks early and she was fine, she had to stay under a "grow light" for a few days because she was jaundice . But now when my twelve year old rolls her eyes when I tell her to clean her room it's all a distant memory.
I have a ? We have two roos that are loosing neck feathers. All my other chickens have finished their molt and are looking really nice . One is a light brahma , the other is I think 1/2 brahma 1/2 ?. They eat FF and free range, I use ivermectin a couple times a year , looked them over and didn't see any beasties. They are about 6 months old . Could this be molt or is there something I'm missing?

I am SOOO embarassed of our birds right now. They look just awful. There are piles of feathers everywhere. Ugh, I hate molt. I haven't used Valbazen before, must be HEchicken.

I have a few roosters that look like that right now that for sure is molt. But at 6 months I don't know that it would be. It wouldn't hurt to treat again with Ivermectin. I use the pour on stuff for treatment like that when I don't want to worm everyone. I have some really sick looking birds right now. Bare spots every where. I hate for people to see my birds this time of year cause so many look so rough. I actually should just worm about all of them right now. I'm barely getting eggs so I should take advantage of that.
Speaking of that HeChicken or Josie. I was looking at Valbazen a couple days ago. It seems to me there was a dosage for use in water you guys were using. I can't find anything except to mix up a very small amount and give it to individual birds one at a time. Am I remembering wrong?
Also read that it is a good wormer for dogs. I considered buying some but need more information.

My bread beggers at the gate

 

[HEChicken]

Speaking of that HeChicken or Josie. I was looking at Valbazen a couple days ago. It seems to me there was a dosage for use in water you guys were using. I can't find anything except to mix up a very small amount and give it to individual birds one at a time. Am I remembering wrong?

Unfortunately there isn't a dose that goes in water as far as I am aware. I had to dose each of my birds individually. Yup. That is why I put it off for so long - it is a daunting task to dose 100 birds, one by one, not once but TWICE, since it has to be repeated after either 7 or 10 days. Now I don't even remember. When I had initially inquired into it, there is a user on the forum who swears by the stuff and I had contacted him privately to discuss options with him and he was kind of dismissive and like "its not a big deal". Of course, he only has a handful of birds. And when I pointed out the difficulty of dosing a large flock with it, he was still dismissive and made suggestions that simply weren't practical for my set up. Like, "oh, just dose and then throw that bird in a different pen". Well, you've seen my place. I don't have a "different pen" to throw them into. And, with a bunch of broody raised birds, it isn't that easy to just walk out to my chicken yard and pick up a bird to dose it.

The way I ended up doing it was in the evening when they were settling down for bed. The first dose I did alone, so I set the bottle of stuff (actually, I poured some into a cup) and syringe on a table, and then one by one I went into the coop, grabbed a bird, sat down, holding the bird under one arm, and with the hand of the same arm that was holding the birds, I grabbled the wattles, to pull down and open the mouth. Then with the other hand, I'd squirt it in. You want to be careful to just dribble it in versus forcing it down their throat. Most of them then swallowed and I let them go. A couple shook their heads and sprayed it all over me, but most were good. Then I would draw up the next dose before grabbing the next bird. I had to keep a mental tally of who I had done, which at that point was doable as I knew each bird individually. (Now I have a bunch of BR and NH chicks growing out plus all the Exchequer Leghorns, that when they are all grown, I won't know who is who).

For the second dose, I recruited DD and it went even easier. She pulled up the dosages while I grabbed the birds, so I could just sit down, take the syringe from her, dose and hand it back to her.

There was only one time where I looked at a bird and couldn't remember if I'd dosed or not. That was on the first dose and I didn't want to risk overdosing so she may or may not have ever had the first dose.

Oh - that user on that other section of the forum that I referenced above. Another recommendation is to soak a small piece of bread in the dose and then give the bread to the bird who will swallow it and it was suggested that is an easy way to dose. DO NOT DO THIS!!!! I started with this method, and if you have ever handed out treats, you can guess what happened. I cut up all the bread, and then soaked pieces of it with a dose so that I thought I was all ready to go. Luckily I only pre-prepared about 10 doses. I went out and handed a bird a piece of bread. She ate it and that was that. Easy peasy, right? So I grab the next piece of bread and throw it to another bird. First bird runs over and tries to take it away. Ooops. Now we have a problem. So now I want to make sure the next bird is able to eat her treat in peace, so I bend down to offer the third piece to a third bird and first bird runs over and grabs another piece out of my bowl. You can all picture this right? This system might work if you are dosing a half dozen birds and can separate them easily, but for a large flock, this is definitely NOT a way to reliably dose and be confident that each bird ate just one piece of medicated bread.


Unfortunately, Valbazen is apparently the only wormer that is recommended for tapeworm, and I knew I had tapeworm in my flock (you can see the segments in the poop). I was horrified a short time later to see....tapeworm segments in poop....so now I'm not even sure of the efficacy of Valbazen so I'm not 100% sure I'd recommend it.

Last year I also was seeing tapeworm segments in the poop and at that time I hadn't heard about Valbazen and didn't even know that what I was seeing was tapeworm. I thought it was roundworm. That was when I used the Ivermectin which IS easy to use. And after dosing with that, I didn't see any more of the tapeworm segments. Ever. So its possible this user on the other section is a Valbazen rep and that's why he says Ivermectin doesn't work and you can only use Valbazen. For the difficulty of use plus seeing tapeworm segments 3-4 weeks after dosing (although not since, I would have to say), I'm not sure I'd do Valbazen again. It is also a sheep wormer though, and since we keep sheep, I figure it's not a bad thing to have it on hand....

 

[chicken danz]

Well thanks for that info. I think I'll stick to my ivermectin. I have never seen tapeworm or any worm in any of the bird's poop. I do try to keep them wormed fairly often. I still haven't gotten the new turkeys wormed yet. I want to do several birds but was waiting for cooler weather so I didn't have water pans out for them to cool their feet in. I had thought I might order some Valbezen just because it can be used on dogs and cats as well, but it's too pricy just for that. There's plenty of other wormers out there I can give the bigger animals. It would take me months to dose all these birds by myself using the valbazen.
Well KSKingbee I decided to go down instead of up. I have too many bats in my belfry already! I mean the one on top my shoulders!!

I ended up putting some chicks in the basement. I still need to do some more sorting and moving. I moved all the red stars down there. But now I am really confused. I had a ton of eggs hatched that I had marked redstar and I got quite a mix of birds. I think I may have inadvertently gotten my hatching eggs and my red star eggs mixed up since they both come from the same general area. I have all these multi colored chicks I don't know what to do with. They don't look anything like the ones I have hatched out previously. So now I have a bunch of mutt chicks that I don't know what to do with. Geez HeChicken I wish you were closer. I could be feeding your snakes big time.
I need to clean out this other chick bin. It's amazing how fast they get it filthy.
I have more chicks hatching in the other incubator today as well. I must have messed up on dates when I marked them. They should have hatched 2 days ago. I checked both incubators and the temp is right on. Of course half the time I have to check the computer to even figure out what day of the week it is. If DH didn't work I'd never keep track.

 

[Trish44]

When I had goats the dumb things were always getting their heads stuck and then they'd fight me when I tried to release them. I got injured and they didn't!!
Some of my peachicks broke out the heat lamp so the two oldest ones flew out of the bin and are roosting above it. The little ones are nonstop yelling.
It's raining really hard right now. Sure hope all the birds are smart enough that they got some shelter. Some prefer to sleep on top of their houses rather than in them.
Yeah QueenBee I tend to look at legs to tell age. Well on second thought I kind of look all over them.
Trish I remember someone posting about those plastic storage things from Walmart. Is that what you use? I had forgotten all about them. Lots of my nest boxes are made from other discards...like old drawers or something.

Danz, yeah those are the ones I use that are the stacking bins. They have a lid, so it really makes a nice nest box for my outside pens. In my main coop I just have a bank of 6 nest boxes in there on the wall, but in my individual pens the bins really work well. Then if they get dirty you can just take them out & hose them off. I have to have mine cable tied to the fence panels in the dog runs or they tend to jump on top & knock them over. If it gets super hot in the summer you can just leave the lid off too & it gives them more air circulation, especially if they're silly & decide to go broody when it's 100 degrees.

We got rain last night & it was windy too. I didn't mind the rain, but boy did it get cool. I had to shut down the windows in the house except for a couple that I left cracked open for a little air. I like to have fresh air till it's just too cold to leave them open any more. I have been out today putting some of my tarps back up on the north sides of pens, it's getting that time again, darn. I still have a couple to get up, but one I need to wait till I get the top fixed & that requires my DH's help because the livestock panel I had on top has fallen in on one end. I have a 2x4 ready to hold it up if he can help me get it pushed back up. It seems like it's always something around here that needs to be done.