Consolidated Kansas

[Hawkeye95]

Just talked to Madawinks and I hope her hen pulls through. I think she breathed in some of the dry stall. Let's all say a prayer for little Bloom to recover. It would really break some kids hearts to loose her.
Great progress on the coop Trish. You have more energy than I do.
Well I found my first case of bumble foot and it was an awful one. I am surprised I never saw it before. This is one of my old Marans hens who's crop is always impacted and hangs down to the ground. I've made multiple attempts to treat it but it doesn't get better and she doesn't seem worse for the wear. I noticed a bump on her foot so I caught her. She had a bumble that had grown all the way through her foot and had started to penetrate in another spot. She had two other huge bumbles on the other foot. Surprising I was able to just pop the core right out of the two big ones without even soaking her feet. I brought her in and soaked her in epsom salts for a while and went to work with the exacto knife. The new spot I got a lot of stuff out of but I'm not sure I got the core if there even was one yet. On the other foot I cut about half way around the spot and simply pulled the core out. It bled but otherwise didn't seem to bother her. I put antibiotic ointment on both feet and gauze and vet wrap. She's back out running with the other birds. I don't dare cage her. The last time I did to treat her crop she quit eating and drinking altogether. She just won't accept a cage.
I hope her foot heals cause I know it will get wet. I'll just watch her for a few days. She spends most of her time near the porches on the house so she's easy to find. I don't know if she even lays anymore but she's always been a sweet hen so I don't care.

Whoa, that sounded like a nasty bumblefoot case! Glad you caught it before it killed her. My Polish has had her 3rd shot of Penicillin (today) and is hanging in there. I was so worried about what Josie said, I went two days between shots instead of every other day. I hope she'll be okay. I haven't pulled off her vet wrap yet to check. I'll do that another day. Your bird sounds WAY worse than my Polish. I hope your bird will be okay. I think so long as you get that core/plug out and then squeeze out as much as you can, it's about all you can do. The antibiotic then has a chance of working once it's washed out. My other birds did really well after the surgeries.

Trying a nebulizer with saline and a bit of albuterol.... Have in a dark room to decrease stress... Used Vicks on her comb. She has no mucus- it just looks like asthma.....

Sounds like you are doing your best-- more than a lot of people would ever think of doing. I sure hope she will be okay! How is she handling the nebulizer? Hopefully the noise isn't freaking her out. I think saline is a great idea. I'm guessing she could have checked out the stall-dry, maybe ate it? But even if she ate it, it shouldn't hurt her. I bet she just inhaled it.



It's raining again here! It's pretty much rained off and on most of the day! I can't believe our luck!

 

[chicken danz]

Trying a nebulizer with saline and a bit of albuterol.... Have in a dark room to decrease stress... Used Vicks on her comb. She has no mucus- it just looks like asthma.....

Yep I'm guessing she just needs to get that stuff out of her system. I never thought of using a nebulizer. I have two of them. I have my own and my Dad gave me my Mom's and her left over meds. I hope the albuterol is safe for her. Did you wash out her nostrils?
Too bad you don't have oxygen you could give her! Not really trying to be funny cause I know this is serious, but can you imagine a tiny little chicken oxygen mask? I do hope she pulls through.
Be sure she gets some special treats when she starts feeling better.
I've never had a problem from DE but it does cause a really fine dust.If it got air borne it could be a real irritant. It has tiny sharp edges on it.

 

[Hawkeye95]

Yep I'm guessing she just needs to get that stuff out of her system. I never thought of using a nebulizer. I have two of them. I have my own and my Dad gave me my Mom's and her left over meds. I hope the albuterol is safe for her. Did you wash out her nostrils?
Too bad you don't have oxygen you could give her! Not really trying to be funny cause I know this is serious, but can you imagine a tiny little chicken oxygen mask? I do hope she pulls through.
Be sure she gets some special treats when she starts feeling better.
I've never had a problem from DE but it does cause a really fine dust.If it got air borne it could be a real irritant. It has tiny sharp edges on it.

Good point about the albuterol-- I know my son gets really shaky and wired with the child size dose of it. FUNNY image of a chicken mask.. hehe!



Okay, I'm back to being obsessed with greenhouses again lately. There's no way I have time to build one, but I want one soooo much and some of these DIY houses are so cute!! Here's a few of my favorites!

okay.... sorry about the Greenhouse overload!! But-- aren't they adorable?!?!

 

[medawinks]

Andy did ask me why we couldn't make a tiny chicken mask . I just used a tiny bit of albuterol and mostly saline in the nebuluzer. She has some pink back in her comb and wattle, but is still gasping.... My kids are beside themselves. Our silkies really are very much their pets that they cuddle daily, like our little dogs. Bloom is very much at ease in all of our arms and seems to know that we are trying to help. She makes eye contact pleadingly....

What will be will be.... My Sera is named for that phrase and good things have come to us through it.

 

[Deerfield Acres]

Just finished reading up on everyone. It's nice to get caught up again. So, after the kids got in school they quickly brought germs home and I've been sick also. What a bummer. I'm over it now and trying to get caught up on everything that went to heck while I was lounging around the house. Sheesh!

We had rain last night, which I totally slept through even though there was thunder and lightning. Yay, me! Today, I've been out and about and we've had lots of rain! I love it! Right now, we're having some lightning again, some of it really close and LOUD! I'd almost forgotten what a real thunderstorm was like. Not to worry, I'm running the computer wireless.

HEChicken, sorry I didn't get you replied to but my Alohas have begun laying as well. By my calculations they are about 20 weeks old so they're right on time! One of the eggs I got was white and a really large one. How odd is that? A few are really small pullet eggs too and are more the color of the Sussex eggs a kind of pink color.

I have a couple Swedish pipping and zipping. They're due to hatch tomorrow so I can't wait to see how they come out.

Today was wild. One of my daughters went to a sleepover birthday party yesterday. While I was shopping at Sam's I got a call that she had fallen and hurt her wrist badly enough that one of the medical parents thought it needed x-rays. It took me forever to get from the north side of Wichita to the south to pick her up. I couldn't get hold of DH, even though he was home to go pick her up and take her to the E.R. so away I flew! Poor kid. Finally got her picked up and off to the E.R. for xrays and turns out it's a bad sprain so it's going to make it a little painful to play the flute for awhile, but she didn't have to be casted.

I'll throw in a pic just for fun. Up front is my spottiest Aloha girl. Isn't she a cutey? I think she's the one who laid the white egg, but don't know for certain.

 

[Deerfield Acres]

Ah, medawinks, that poor bird just looks pitiful. Hope she comes around.

Hawkeye, love those greenhouses! I can just see those on top of my basement!

Are you getting any rain over there Danz? Hope so!

 

[chicken danz]

I love the greenhouses too...especially the first one.
Medawinks I hope Bloom is doing better. I'm trying to send you all the positive vibes I can.
Karen so glad to hear your back among the living. Life is never quiet there is it? Your spottiest aloha looks a lot like one of my little Orlandsk pullets. She is still only about 8 weeks old though so things can change a lot.
I am a bit surprised that the Swedish don't have more dramatic color when they hatch. I can't wait for my next batch.

So what do other people do on a Saturday night. I've been out in the dark trying to catch chickens. It works for one or two and then the others get wise and take off. I feel so mean. They aren't going to be eaten. They are just going to some one else's house to lay eggs......... Well, the girls are. The boys are going to be put in a separate pen so as they grow they can become part of a Chinese cuisine. The wild ones are something else. I can't get within 10 feet of them even in the pitch black dark. I came back in so they would settle down so I could catch some more of them.
It feels good to lighten the load but it sure seems like there's a lot less chickens out there. I realize as I am accounting for them I have had many disappear. About 8 of my red stars are gone. I've got some polish and pheonix that have disappeared from the breeder group. Makes you wonder why you never find a body or feathers or anything. I suspect that some of them got out far searching for food and got overheated or eaten by a predator. Sometimes they wander pretty far into the field looking for bugs. Hopefully soon I'll have my breeders all penned and just the layers will be out ranging.
My next step is to start selling off some of the big breeder roos I won't be using. Now that will be hard! I love my big ole roosters.

 

[medawinks]

No luck for our Bloom girl.... She will be sorely missed here. Morning just won't be morning without her singing to us all.

Never put DriStall down while chickens are in the run.....

We learned the hardest way possible. My kids are a mess and my abilities to see life slip away in my arms really need to be stronger....

 

[chicken danz]

OH I am SO SORRY!!!!! I was so hoping she would pull out of it. Tell the kids that Bloom just wanted to go spend time in heaven where she can breath better. I wish I was there to help you comfort the kids...not that I probably could.
I am sitting here with tears in my eyes. I can only imagine how upset the kids are. I really adore you and love your kids. It is so sad to know they hurt. Do you still have the contact information for that gal you got her from? Maybe she has some offspring from the same breeders and you could get another bird that would be as sweet as her. I believe a lot of that is genetics.
On a different subject my little buff laced polish is looking more manly every day. (s)He has such a wild crest that it is hard to tell still.
It's hard enough when one of us so called responsible adults loose a bird, but its so hard for a child to understand.

 

[Trish44]

Well it's been a bad night here for me as well. I had told you all that I have sick birds in my grow-out pen. Tonight we had torrential rains & since there was no vegetation left alive in my yard, it was just all dirt now there was nothing to stop the water at all or the dirt for that matter. I had a flash flood in my grow-out pen & turkey pen. I fortunately was outside doing chores when the rain started again & this time it just poured from the sky in buckets, when we get rain we get RAIN. Those who have been here know what kind of a hill I have here so water just runs down that hill like a river when it rains hard. Well I was in the grow-out pen when water just started pouring into there, I mean it was coming in fast & furious & I'm thinking oh geez what am I going to do now, these birds are going to drown in here & there are some fairly small chicks in there still. Here they are already sick & now they were getting soaking wet fast. I looked around & saw one of my medium dog crates nearby & thought I just have to start catching these birds & take them all up to the main coop or they're not going to live through this. So here I was in my garden clogs with water & muck running into my shoes trying to catch scared chickens & throw them into the crate as fast as I could & mind you it was still raining cats & dogs out there with lightening & thunder like crazy. I'm thinking to myself that I hope I don't get struck by lightening or get electrocuted because I had the heat lamp on in there so I could see. I just kept chasing birds & of course they ran into the far corner where I couldn't really reach them because the roost is across the pen. I would catch a crate full & carry them through the water up the hill to the coop, empty that one out & come back down into the water again to get another load. I had to do that three times & by this time I was into water up over my ankles quite aways & sinking into slimy muck. The doors weren't opening very well on the pens because the water had washed mud & debris into the gate, so I had to push that away every time I tried to open the gate. I had to run out to the new coop where there is a pile of 2x4s too & shore up the top of the pen & tarp because they were filling with water & I was afraid they were going to come in on me & the birds. The turkeys were freaking out in their pen because it was flooding in there too, but I think they will be OK because they got up on their roost out of the water. I couldn't begin to push the water off of their tarp, so I will have to get my DH to help with that tomorrow. When it dries up again I'm going to take all of the covers off both of those pens & use the netting I got, I think that would be better than the darned chicken wire that hangs down & just is a mess. I need to put some supports across both of those pens too so that won't happen again. Anyway, the chicks are all in the coop & I have a heat lamp in there to hopefully help dry them off & keep them warm. This is just what they all needed since they were already sick. They were as wet as a bird could get, just soaked. I woke up the other chickens coming in bringing birds in & turning on the heat lamp. I'm sure they wondered what in the world was happening. I sure hope they don't pick on my little SF Hen chicks & Cream Legbars in the morning before I can get out there. Oh what a mess that's going to be in those pens in the morning, ugh. We have a flash flood watch out for Winfield tonight, I wonder what it looks like at the fairgrounds where people are coming in for the bluegrass festival. We had a big flood one year & they had to move a lot of people out of the campgrounds because it flooded there, it's right by the river. They ended up having a lot of the festival that year out at the lake & it was kind of a mess.

I guess now I will be treating all of the birds since I had to put the sick ones in with the whole flock. I wish I had that denagard here now. Heather you'd better hurry & get this turkey before anything else happens here, gosh!

Medawinks, I'm so sorry about bloom, you really tried your best. I know it won't be the same, but maybe you can find another bird close to what you had.

Karen, I love that Aloha in the front of your pic, she's really pretty!

Hawkeye, I love the greenhouses, especially the very first one, that's adorable! I think you should build one, you could do it.

I will try to get some pics tomorrow of the breeder coop with the frame partially up, I haven't taken any since we did the floor. I guess my floor got washed off tonight really well. It was really dirty from leaves blowing all over it & pieces of limbs. I'll get an updated pic of the hoop coop too. I still didn't get anywhere to get more supplies to work on that since my bird emergency happened tonight. I had planned to go grocery shopping, but that all went to you know what with the flood. Now I will have to go tomorrow & I hate shopping on Sunday. Our Walmart gets sold out of stuff really fast because everyone goes right after church to shop. You should see the shelves by evening in there, it's ridiculous. When all the festival people get to town it will be even worse to find some things. I'll bet some of the people already here are glad they weren't allowed yet down in the Pecan & Walnut Grove areas or they might have been moving camp really fast. Well I guess I'll survey the damage out there in the morning. I'm really tired now after all of that. My GP pups were so soaking wet & it was still pouring when I got birds moved, so I fed them in the garage & then made them go back outside & they weren't happy about it. They got in a huge fight over the front porch since it has a roof & they were really going at it. They knocked over my big ceramic planter, I didn't look & see if they broke it, but I had to pound on the front door to get them to stop fighting. Those two get in some pretty big fights for sisters.