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What can I say, Peter? When it comes to medicines or other health stuff, I don't take no for an answer. I just put a scalpel to my JG hen's foot last night to work on her bumblefoot, and I have no problem tube feeding, or even giving nebulizer treatments at four in the morning. But baths? Maybe I'm just not that organized at it, but to me it's a big wet sweaty job, so I only do it for birds I'm showing. The rest I keep an eye on, check for lice or other skin stuff, and then leave them alone to be happy in their "non-show-quality" lives.
The drop dead thing? 90% of them are healthy, looking great, eating great, then dead. The others have a bad few hours - puffed up, tired - and then they die. No other symptoms - runny noses, bubbly eyes, coughing, wheezing, diarrhea, swollen faces - nothing, except they're dead. They're usually young, anywhere from 3 to 8 months. Some folks have suggested it's something in my soil or the surrounding areas that the older birds have become immune to, which is the most reasonable explanation. It certainly seems to affect my more expensive birds than my Agway-moment-of-weakness birds. (Naturally!) Once they hit adulthood, I rarely lose one, which is why I generally like to buy older pullets. Like I said, I had a necropsy done on one of them, and the vet found nothing. It also happens only every once in a while, unless I have a lot of young ones. For instance, I got 15 birds of various ages (3 days to 5 months) in May of this year at chickenstock, and have lost three of them to this, but separated by two weeks, and then not again for almost six weeks. No indication anything was wrong with any one of them. In fact, I have siblings of each of those three and they are doing fine. I have tried doing a light course of Terramycin and similar drugs for a week here and a week there, to try and prevent it, but the only thing it did was give everyone the runs, so then I had to fix that. I've looked in every book, on every website I could find, and nowhere does anyone even mention this type of thing. Like I said, most of the people who've been with poultry for forever say it's just a chicken thing.
Hmm I have never had anything like that really usually lose things to predators and thats about it. I have one hen who is super skinny but I have been worming and doing all that so who knows she is fine other wise just won't put weight on. Everyone else is fat and happy.
Henry
What can I say, Peter? When it comes to medicines or other health stuff, I don't take no for an answer. I just put a scalpel to my JG hen's foot last night to work on her bumblefoot, and I have no problem tube feeding, or even giving nebulizer treatments at four in the morning. But baths? Maybe I'm just not that organized at it, but to me it's a big wet sweaty job, so I only do it for birds I'm showing. The rest I keep an eye on, check for lice or other skin stuff, and then leave them alone to be happy in their "non-show-quality" lives.
The drop dead thing? 90% of them are healthy, looking great, eating great, then dead. The others have a bad few hours - puffed up, tired - and then they die. No other symptoms - runny noses, bubbly eyes, coughing, wheezing, diarrhea, swollen faces - nothing, except they're dead. They're usually young, anywhere from 3 to 8 months. Some folks have suggested it's something in my soil or the surrounding areas that the older birds have become immune to, which is the most reasonable explanation. It certainly seems to affect my more expensive birds than my Agway-moment-of-weakness birds. (Naturally!) Once they hit adulthood, I rarely lose one, which is why I generally like to buy older pullets. Like I said, I had a necropsy done on one of them, and the vet found nothing. It also happens only every once in a while, unless I have a lot of young ones. For instance, I got 15 birds of various ages (3 days to 5 months) in May of this year at chickenstock, and have lost three of them to this, but separated by two weeks, and then not again for almost six weeks. No indication anything was wrong with any one of them. In fact, I have siblings of each of those three and they are doing fine. I have tried doing a light course of Terramycin and similar drugs for a week here and a week there, to try and prevent it, but the only thing it did was give everyone the runs, so then I had to fix that. I've looked in every book, on every website I could find, and nowhere does anyone even mention this type of thing. Like I said, most of the people who've been with poultry for forever say it's just a chicken thing.
Hmm I have never had anything like that really usually lose things to predators and thats about it. I have one hen who is super skinny but I have been worming and doing all that so who knows she is fine other wise just won't put weight on. Everyone else is fat and happy.
Henry
