Consolidated Kansas

[chicklover56]

Well, I've got another chick with an eye problem. It had been walking around with its eyes closed, and I didn't think much of it until today when I realized that it would open one eye (rarely) and not the other. I got it to open its other eye and there is clear discharge in it, but it is not leaking out. I out some antibiotic ointment on it and have it separated from the others, but how should I treat it?

Just checked on the chick again. It is walking around with both eyes open and eating and drinking! I think what i may have thought to be discharge was actually the antibiotic cream I had put on its eye. Is there anything I need to do or should I just keep the cream on it and let it recover?

 

[chicken danz]

Quote:
I'd watch the chicks and see if there are further problems. If you see problems tomorrow I'd just add more ointment.
Well the guy that said he got 15 roosters sent me a couple videos. All together I counted 16 birds so either I threw in an extra or he duplicated one. I counted 5 sussex pullets and the partridge orpington I sent by mistake. So that was 6 pullets. He was counting in the video and only counted three. There were 5 other birds that were cockerels. Then he sent a second video with 5 more cockerels. I have no idea if they were the same or different. I told him I would give him three more pullets which would make over half of the 15 he paid for, plus he has a more expensive orpington pullet as well.
If he's not happy with that there is nothing else I will do. I guess I need to make a disclaimer on sales that I can't guarantee a percentage of pullets vs cockerels.

 

[sharol]

I'd watch the chicks and see if there are further problems. If you see problems tomorrow I'd just add more ointment.
Well the guy that said he got 15 roosters sent me a couple videos. All together I counted 16 birds so either I threw in an extra or he duplicated one. I counted 5 sussex pullets and the partridge orpington I sent by mistake. So that was 6 pullets. He was counting in the video and only counted three. There were 5 other birds that were cockerels. Then he sent a second video with 5 more cockerels. I have no idea if they were the same or different. I told him I would give him three more pullets which would make over half of the 15 he paid for, plus he has a more expensive orpington pullet as well.
If he's not happy with that there is nothing else I will do. I guess I need to make a disclaimer on sales that I can't guarantee a percentage of pullets vs cockerels.

I would think that would be understood when you buy straight run chicks.

My white orpington pullet (almost a year old) is going broody.

The eggs in the incubator are on day 13, so they are probably too far along to sneak a chick under her when they hatch. I don't know what to do with her. I keep taking her eggs, but sooner or later I have to give in. I really don't need any more chicks of any sort. ARRRRRGGGGHHHHH.

 

[HEChicken]

My white orpington pullet (almost a year old) is going broody.

The eggs in the incubator are on day 13, so they are probably too far along to sneak a chick under her when they hatch. I don't know what to do with her. I keep taking her eggs, but sooner or later I have to give in. I really don't need any more chicks of any sort. ARRRRRGGGGHHHHH.

Has she been broody before? If so, she might surprise you. Maybe you could try giving her a pipped egg when they start to pip and if she hears it hatching under her, she will probably accept it. If she does, then you can give her another chick as well. I just got a hen to accept chicks this week that had only been broody a week. She's raised chicks before - if she hadn't I wouldn't have been so quick to try her.

 

[sharol]

Has she been broody before? If so, she might surprise you. Maybe you could try giving her a pipped egg when they start to pip and if she hears it hatching under her, she will probably accept it. If she does, then you can give her another chick as well. I just got a hen to accept chicks this week that had only been broody a week. She's raised chicks before - if she hadn't I wouldn't have been so quick to try her.

No, this will be her first time. She is definitely broody. She did the crazy run around squawking and pooping thing this morning. Maybe @chicken danz has some eggs. I'd love a couple more whites. If the timing were just better...

Oh well, go with the flow, I guess.

On a slightly different note, this is Gidget, my little foster dog. She is quite pregnant. The vet says at least 3 puppies. At a whopping 13 lbs, she is probably really tiny when she isn't preggers. She has had several litters before apparently and was surrendered with two of her teenage pups on Saturday. She wasn't doing well at all in the shelter environment -- completely freaked out and shaking. Our shelter manager rescued her from the general population and put her in a quieter place, but I just couldn't leave her there.


We don't know her name, so I'm calling her Gidget. She is a very sweet little dog who gets along fine with our cats and even the big puppy (Red). She is a little leary of his big feet, but not at all aggressive or submissive, just firm with him. She seems to be housebroken. The vet says a week or two before puppies. This could be interesting since I've never "birthed no babies, Miss Scarlett." At least not dog babies.

I've fixed her a little pen with a whelping box in it and a pet warming pad under it, and she can come and go through our pet door arrangement we use with foster kittens. This one is going to be easy to love, i think.

 

[chicken danz]

@sharol I sold my whites last fall. I no longer have them. Little by little I'm eliminating some of these birds. I am down to two reds which are my favorite. I got contacted last night looking for a red orpington cockerel. I made a deal to trade my cockerel and hen in exchange for 6 chicks later on. This person has one red hen so it is a good chance to get some other blood lines in there. And it opens another pen in the building.
I've decided to do something with the mottles as well. Not sure if I'm just going to put them in the laying group or sell them. My mottle rooster is so outstanding but my girls aren't. I'm just not selling many and not happy with the quality of spots on them either. So that will be two pens open. I am on the fence about which other one to eliminate. I have a deal made to trade some goslings for some black langshans. These are show quality lines. I want to add them because my great grandparents were well known breeders of show quality Langshans and it seems the honorable thing to do. Strange because I have tried to avoid black birds after finding I lost many when it was really hot out. Yet I seem to have accumulated several.
Sharol, I love birthing puppies. Well not me... the dog!

I've spent many a night out comforting and helping a dam with her pups. Precious is due to have her litter about the 15th so we'll both be having puppies near the same time.
Looks like it is going to be a very stormy day. It wasn't supposed to rain last night but we got rain in spite of that.

 

[HEChicken]

Oh my, I sure hope Gidget was bred to a small breed dog - I'd hate to think of a dog that small having whelping issues.

Danz, what's funny is that I love lambing and kidding season. I love watching baby chicks and poults with their mothers - I can do it for hours. But I just can't get excited about having puppies. My LGDs are an unrelated pair, both from good bloodlines and due to the rarity of their breed in this region of the country, I've been getting some pressure to let them have a litter or two. I even have a half dozen people who've said if I do have a litter they may be interested in one of the pups. But somehow I just can't get excited about the idea. Having to go through heat cycles and build whelping boxes and then find good, working homes for all the puppies.....and I am not a sales person who really likes dealing with people. And both my pups came from large litters - 10 and 11, which means it is likely they'll have that many themselves, which is a LOT of puppies to find good homes for. So what I really want to do is wait as long as I can and then spay/neuter them - and I'm really leaning towards doing just that. But, we'll see what happens.

Sharol, I have to confess, I frequently make feta out of cow's milk. Don't get me wrong - I prefer it made from goat's milk - it has a stronger flavor that we really enjoy. But, cow's milk is what we have the most of. And, feta keeps better than some other varieties of cheese due to the brining. So if cow's milk is what I have to use up, that's what I use to make the feta.

I have a ewe who is bagging up. I believe her due date isn't for about another month but she is my friendliest sheep and already lets me handle her udder and simulate milking her. I am planning on training her to the milk stand after she freshens and I'm excited to try making feta out of sheep milk.

 

[chicken danz]

HEChicken, My own personal belief is that a dog who has a litter of pup reaches a fuller maturity. Something about getting that mothering experience seems to round them out. I am sure all the anti breeders would feel differently about it. But since my dogs are working dogs and not some mutts to overpopulate the world I don't feel I'm contributing to any over populating problem.
I don't like having litters close together. 2 - 3 years apart is just fine for me. Pups are a lot of work and expense. I am only having another litter now because I was hoping for a masked pyr but the stud I had lined up got sold. If I happen to have a masked pup I will for sure have Precious spayed and keep the female for pups in a couple years. I sure don't need 4 dogs but you have to plan to have one coming up in training so you can be assured you have a working dog in the future you can count on.
I'm personally sick of puppy ville right now. Yeti is in the total pack rat stage and the stage where he has developed selective hearing and always seems under foot. I swear, sometimes he is the smartest dog that acts the most stupid! I had forgotten what a pain these guys can be while they mature.

 

[Trish44]

HEChicken, My own personal belief is that a dog who has a litter of pup reaches a fuller maturity. Something about getting that mothering experience seems to round them out. I am sure all the anti breeders would feel differently about it. But since my dogs are working dogs and not some mutts to overpopulate the world I don't feel I'm contributing to any over populating problem.
I don't like having litters close together. 2 - 3 years apart is just fine for me. Pups are a lot of work and expense. I am only having another litter now because I was hoping for a masked pyr but the stud I had lined up got sold. If I happen to have a masked pup I will for sure have Precious spayed and keep the female for pups in a couple years. I sure don't need 4 dogs but you have to plan to have one coming up in training so you can be assured you have a working dog in the future you can count on.
I'm personally sick of puppy ville right now. Yeti is in the total pack rat stage and the stage where he has developed selective hearing and always seems under foot. I swear, sometimes he is the smartest dog that acts the most stupid! I had forgotten what a pain these guys can be while they mature.

I agree danz on the "teenage stage" the GPs go through, it's just crazy. I thought about strangling mine, (I wouldn't have done it) but they sure were annoying at that stage. Once they got through that & got serious about working they were fine & they're great dogs. Speaking of my GPs, one of my ganders has bonded to my GP Jasmine. He follows her around everywhere she goes & she just hates it. It becomes a problem when she takes him off somewhere where he doesn't know how to get back. Does anyone have any ideas on how to break him from following the dog? At time to put the geese back in I have to get him separated from the dog & it's sometimes a problem because Jasmine feels like she's in trouble & slinks off with the gander following.

 

[HEChicken]

So far I've been really fortunate with mine. My situation is different than you guys because my dogs are confined to the pasture, rather than having access to the whole property. I don't know if the pack rat stage is just GPs, or if mine simply don't have access to stuff to haul home but they haven't gone through that stage. At least not yet. Kilo was 8 months yesterday and Karina is 6 ½ months. I'm doing everything "wrong" according to the experts on the various LGD groups who say not to leave the dogs unattended with stock until they are two. I couldn't wait that long and wouldn't know what to do with the dogs in the interim period - I am not someone who likes to see dogs penned or tethered. If they start to misbehave and need to be confined, I can do it but I figure why do that if it isn't needed? And besides, a dog who is penned doesn't have an outlet for excess energy so is more likely to misbehave when let out of the pen. Mine roughhouse and play together quite a bit which relieves excess energy - so far they haven't felt the need to play with the lambs or kids since they have each other.

We've gone in stages - its not like I put 8-week-old puppies directly into a guardian role. They had a dog run they were confined to at night and the sheep and goats were locked in the barn with them at night as well. When they were 7 & 5 months, I started letting them stay out at night instead of putting them in the dog run but the sheep and goats continued to be locked in. It is only in the last week to week and a half that I've stopped locking the sheep and goats in at night either. The barn door now stays open so they have the option to be out or in.

Keeping the pups in the dog run sandwiched between the sheep and goat stalls seemed to do a lot to help with bonding and I've noticed the dogs largely stay with the sheep now when they go out to graze. They might be playing together - but it is in the general vicinity of the stock. When the sheep come in to rest, the dogs come and lay down with them and snooze as well. Last week when we had a rain day, every time I checked, sheep, goats and dogs were all snuggled down together in the barn, staying out of the rain. (Funny - the dogs LOVE water and swim in the pond every day, but they didn't like the rain and wanted to be in the barn. Silly things!).

We're not through adolescence yet - and I keep waiting for the other shoe to drop - but so far, so good. Karina may actually turn out to be the better LGD. Kilo is huge and has an intimidating bark. His eyesight seems good and he is alert to what is going on in the neighborhood. When the people in back were out working on trees a few days ago, he was very vigilant to their movements and I saw him run the fence line to check on them multiple times. But Karina seems like an old soul. Even at 6 months, she has the look of a much older dog. She is great back-up for Kilo and will run behind him when he detects dangers. But I've noticed she is very vigilant as well and these days, is often the first to bark when she hears or sees something out of the ordinary. She likes to get up on the berm or on the one little hill in the pasture, so as to have a better vantage point, and she will lay there watching over everyone.

What has amazed me is how readily the stock have accepted the dogs' presence. They're not unused to dogs since we have 3 others, but they have accepted Kilo and Karina as one of their own, in a way they've never accepted the other dogs. When the pups are running circles around them chasing one another and roughhousing, the sheep keep grazing with no concern whatsoever. And while the adults don't yet rely on the dogs' to protect them, the lambs and kids who were born here, do seem to look to them for protection. I've seen Kilo start to bark at a perceived threat, and the kids all stopped what they were doing and immediately ran over to stand in front of him. Lambing/Kidding is a time when the experts say to never let a pup be around but they even got through that time with flying colors. At that time the sheep and goats were still locked in their respective areas as I wanted them lambing and kidding in a safe location. So the dogs weren't directly in with them, but seemed to instinctively understand that a new mother will be over-protective and they didn't even try to come close to the babies until some time had passed and the mothers had relaxed.

Trish44, I've never raised geese so I don't know what to suggest about your gander. Can he be penned with another of his kind until he bonds more to him/her than to Jasmine? Is he one of the ones you are trying to sell?