Consolidated Kansas

[chicken danz]

I just lost a valuable breeder hen. Dang it. Upsetting! I did a necropsy and found cecal worms. Those are fairly uncommon in chickens and seem to effect peafowl and turkeys more.
So today is worming day. Thank heavens it's warm and dry out. Otherwise I have a hard time getting them to drink the water with Safeguard in it. I am reducing water to a half gallon per pen for now in hopes they will ingest all the wormer. That's what happens when I don't stay diligent about worming in all four quarters. I had planned to worm the 21st for spring but I guess this winter and spring wormer together will be close enough. Makes me angry at myself. Otherwise she was in perfect health and very very fat. Lots of egg sacks left too.
Just telling all of you this as a reminder it is about spring and an excellent time to get those birds wormed.

 

[KsKingBee]

I agree on the need for worming but I disagree on the method. The old recommendation of three ml per gallon of water for x number of days is not effective. For instance, if a peacocks weight calls for three ml of Safeguard per day for five days to get all types of worms, capillary being the hardest to get, he has to drink the entire gallon of water with the three ml of Safeguard in it. That will not happen. If you are going to treat effectively the drug must get into the birds system and not lay in the bottom of a waterer. It needs to be an oral drench or put into their mash and the entire amount eaten.

See this thread, it starts out with a concern about feather damage but turns into a great discussion about the correct dosing of Safeguard.

https://www.backyardchickens.com/t/926738/safeguard-and-feather-damage-while-molting

 

[chicken danz]

Well I hate to disagree but I do. I have wormed birds who were going down and totally recovered using 4cc safeguard per gallon of water for 3 days in a row.
Also scanned through those posts and I'll hold my comments about lack of education from some of the posters. 3ml of Safeguard worms 125 pounds of body weight. You must have some enormous peafowl if you have to use that much for one of them!!!

4ml will worm 175 pounds. That is way less than a pen of peas that would drink a gallon of water in a day. How many of these people are veterinarians? Have you asked your's? I use a veterinarian recommended dosage.
I can't individually worm several hundred birds here and I've had excellent results using my method. If I could do the individual worming I would use panacur and dose that way instead.
Yes it settles to the bottom. I mix the drench in sugar and then mix that in the water. It stays suspended for most of the day. And I mix up fresh the following two days. That is also why I reduced the water to a half gallon per pen this morning. Once they have consumed all that I will give them more water if they need it.
Leggs peafowl also recommended this exact dosage to me in an email a couple years ago. I'm checking with him as we speak to see if he has changed methods.

 

[KsKingBee]

I did check with my veterinarian and the script she wrote and put on the label says, "At a dose of 50mg/kg, 1ml of this product will treat 4 lb of bird (0.25ml/lb) Give for five days in a row. Orally. Safeguard for goats. I am sorry if I am saying something that you disagree with, but after loosing a number of peas last year, doing necropsies, and working with my vet doing fecal exams before and after the worming and Corid treatments I now know that the old hearsay information that has been passed around is not effective. She proved it to me and my dead birds proved it to me. I am only trying to be helpful here, my losses were significant and I don't wish that on anybody if I can help them to understand correct dosing.

 

[chicken danz]

I wasn't trying to make you mad. Since I started worming this way I haven't had any peas lost to cecal or capilliary worms. I was given the dose by a vet who has moved from the area, but that was his recommendation. I certainly wouldn't want to risk the health of my birds because I wasn't doing it right.
The bird in question incidentally that brought this up was a chicken, not peafowl just for the record, but I worm them all the same. I'll do some checking with my current vet soon and see what she recommends. If her recommendations are in line with yours I'll definitely change my method. I certainly would rather admit that I am wrong than loose a peafowl. As far as I know I have no cecal worms in my peafowl and have never found them. I found some capilliary worms a few years back in some chicks I lost, which is why I sought out a recommendation for worming them in the first place.
That is the beauty of this group. Quite often we have differing opinions and that leaves the reader with a knowledge base to work from.

 

[thndrdancr]

If I could worm using water I would as I desperately need to for my flock. I was told it doesn't work? But I have some adults I just can't catch, have tried. My bs hen has looked like she hasn't felt well all winter. She only gets out of the coop a couple hours s day and I certainly need something to perk her up, and now we are going into laying season!

Kskingbee,I thought your ad looks great, and a good price too. I haven't heard back from the lady with the greens, going to stop by there this week. She may have sold most of her critters after her husband passed, I am sure it's a hard thing. They took in just anything anyone left there, had two one legged ducks, etc.
Maybe I will take the dog, he could certainly use a bath.

 

[Heidi A]

Hey Heidi,

I am Karen S., mom to 8 kids, 7 of them still at home. I homeschool 3 of the middle schoolers. We live on approx 5 acres and have had chickens for 3 years. We use electric poultry netting to protect the birds from predators but they free range inside the netting. I would be happy to have your kids come to our place and have my homeschooled kids and I talk with them about how we do things.

There are many, many types of "chicken farms" but many of us here are just backyard chicken keepers who want fresh eggs and keep our birds as pets. Some are breeders of rare and/or heritage birds, others raise layers to sell farm fresh eggs, hatching eggs and chicks. Fewer raise their own meat to avoid the antibiotics fed to grocery store meat birds from start to finish and avoid contributing to the current ecologically disastrous methods of raising eggs and poultry meat. Of a fairly recent concern is the GMO corn and soybeans fed all commercially raised chickens. I am not a chicken farm but I am a good example of raising some food for our own table. One year my children and I processed 70+ birds for our own use. That's 70 less birds raised in factory farms.

This time of year around here is not good for processing birds because we are just now incubating the chicks that will be used later. We haven't started hatching the ducks yet, either. Commercial type chickens and ducks take about 6 weeks to raise to slaughter.

I am raising birds in an effort to create a new breed and perpetuate a few old ones. My focus is on Buff Sussex, a rare chicken in the States originally imported from England. I am adding Light and Speckled Sussex birds this spring. These birds are in need of perpetuating. Many older breeds have diminished extremely in numbers due to factory farming of the Cornish X broilers and hybrid layers. I am incubating Buff Sussex eggs this year to sell and will raise meat for our family from the ones that do not sell. I am also using these birds in my breeding program to increase size and structure of a project bird called the Aloha chicken. There are probably only about 20 flocks of Alohas in the United States. I kept 2 of my best Aloha hens and will be breeding them to a Mille Fleur Sussex (a cross between Buff and Speckled Sussex). The Aloha is intended to be a dual purpose bird, good for meat and eggs. The color I am shooting for is a ginger colored bird with evenly distributed white spots (known as spangles). The Aloha is currently a very flashy, but small bird without structural integrity. We are working hard to change that but breeding is a very slow process.

Years ago, a cousin's family and a long time friend's family, raised the typical factory layers in Kansas and Missouri, so I am familiar with those methods. I have used youtube vids to demonstrate those methods with my kids as to how grocery store eggs and meat are typically farmed. My homeschooled kids and I are currently working on a unit on exactly that topic.

I, and my middle schoolers, would be very happy to have "your kids" come to our place and see our natural methods of keeping our small flock and explain to them why and how we do what we do. We have one bird we could use to demonstrate the butchering process and talk about the robotic processes that result in a lot of salmonella and camphylobactor contamination in grocery store chicken.

We typically cull before winter so the flock is smallest in the Spring with only the breeders remaining. We have appoximately a dozen chickens and only 4 ducks right now but have 51 eggs in two incubators.

My mother was an organic gardener before it was cool and even though I was raised in the city, my mom and grandfather tried to teach me a lot about respecting the earth and using natural methods for raising food. My mom is gone now but I feel it is part of her legacy that I am passing along that mindset to our children. I would enjoy sharing it with yours.

 

[Trish44]

thndrdancr I use a wormer I put in the feed, it's Rooster Booster Triple wormer. I feed FF anyway, so I just put it in with that when I worm. I may also follow up this time with the Safeguard to make sure I get everything. I really haven't had a lot of problems with worms here because I do worm every spring & fall. I know the peafowl need to be wormed more often due to their wormload but I don't have any of those any more. I don't like to overdo it on medications, I give them as I need to but the rest of the time I try to keep them healthy other ways.

 

[chicken danz]

I had someone come to get barred rock chicks and sold them an extra orpington chick as well, then before she left I had some locals show up and buy 6 chicks for fair birds. Turned into a nice day for selling birds.
It's a good thing. I just spent over $1000 for gates to put in my building for the individual pens. I finally found some the size I need and a place that would ship them in at no cost if I picked them up at the store so I ordered them. Looks like I may get them about the 25th or 26th.
I think I need a few more customers. But any money coming in unexpected sure helps.

 

[tatinatimom]

Danz,
I forgot you have barred rocks!! I have been wanting to add those to my flock. Not sure if I will be doing that anytime soon or not.

I had someone come to get barred rock chicks and sold them an extra orpington chick as well, then before she left I had some locals show up and buy 6 chicks for fair birds. Turned into a nice day for selling birds.
It's a good thing. I just spent over $1000 for gates to put in my building for the individual pens. I finally found some the size I need and a place that would ship them in at no cost if I picked them up at the store so I ordered them. Looks like I may get them about the 25th or 26th.
I think I need a few more customers. But any money coming in unexpected sure helps.

Danz,
Congrats on the sales and your gates!!

I forgot you have barred rocks!! I have been wanting to add those and silver laced wyandottes to my flock. I need to pattern to go with the colors out there.

Everytime I go to my local farm store and they have chicks I think about it but IDK if I want to get any from there. Not sure if I will be adding them anytime soon now or not though.
My DH is in panic mode. The test batch of 20 eggs I set before the actual Easter HAL appears to be doing VERY well! For the HAL I set 33 at noon on SAT. We candled the test batch SAT nite and 16 out of 20 I could see that they were alive and developing. The other 4 I couln't see through the shell well enough. 3 are EE and one is just a dark brown egg so I need a stronger light to penetrate those shells.
I keep telling him we don't count our chickens before they hatch be he only sees he big number.

I can't help but laugh at him, after all this was HIS idea!!