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Same here...veggies will ferment all on their own laying out on the ground, so I just toss and let the birds figure it out. I have all the FF I need in that bucket!
This could also help a person determine what stock they wish to keep out of all the sick and non sick birds. I've brought sick birds into my flock~I never, ever quarantine or use "biosecurity" which is a joke when having backyard flocks~ but rather depend on the good immune systems of my flock to bear up under the introduction of possible pathogens. And it's sort of like providing a natural culling...any birds that get the illness are culled. I wouldn't want them in my flock anyhoo...any new birds that don't clear up their symptoms within a week or so under my husbandry methods are culled as birds whose immune systems cannot recover under good care.
I don't even start thinking of meds to "help" them...that's a slippery slope when it comes to natural husbandry and can spoil the whole system and goals for your flock. Having the assurances that your flock can resist whatever comes into the flock under your husbandry methods is key and the whole goal, otherwise you are flinching every time a bird flies by.
I would give them a week or so of good FF, clean water, deep litter and sunshine on clean soils. Any bird not showing any signs of improvement with that..even a little improvement...would be culled. The bird with her head in the corner I would give 3 days to show signs of perking up...then cull. That's a lot of money to pay for sick stock...even a lot to pay for healthy stock in my area and I've never paid more than $8 per bird...but it's a cheap price for learning a valuable lesson.
I would call the man and explain that the flock is more than suffering from a cold virus and let him offer to buy them back...if he doesn't offer, I wouldn't push it and I'd keep them but remember this~any honest man would not only apologize profusely but would insist on buying them back. No honest man sells sick livestock. I got the same excuses once when I bought a few birds~Oh, they are missing feathers because of the rooster~and just like you, I felt too sorry for the birds to walk away. Then I kept them for a week or so and killed them all. Lost only $35 in the process but learned soooooooo much about learning to say "no" and also opening my mouth as to WHY I was saying NO.
The most recent batch of FF lasted ~ 5 weeks before I mis-estimated how much my growing chicks would eat in a day, and had very little "starter" left in the bucket. (Usually I leave two inches of glop in the bottom of the bucket to stir in with the fresh powdery feed and well water.) Most of the time it smells like sourdough starter, or rising bread dough made with non-wheat flours. My feed does have fish meal in it, which probably adds to the nastiness when it is "off" and my husband gags every time I bring the bucket out from under the sink (even on the good days), but he is a sensitive little hot-house flower when it comes to smellsIn my previous career, I learned I had a relatively strong stomach when I helped work on decomposing bodies in the local morgue. I don't say that to brag on myself, just to let you know that if I thought the smell was intolerable at arm's length, it was really bad.
Regarding castor oil as a wormer, do you think one eyedropper is an okay dose for a juvenile chicken, or should I decrease the dose for a smaller bird? I accidentally bought castor oil when I had cod liver oil on the brain, but will keep the castor oil now that I have a good use for it. I don't mind worming my flock if they actually need it, but don't want to eat those chemicals in my meat, and don't want to worm on a schedule, without regard to the bird's parasite status. That's how we got drench-resistant worms in the USA sheep and goat flocks. And how we got multi-drug resistant pathogens in the humans, but don't get me started on THAT topic!
Thanks for the reminder about NuStock. I have the tea tree oil and powdered sulfur at home, but I still need to render some lard, weigh the active ingredients, and mix the whole thing together.
I gave a dropper full to a 2 mo. old bird with no ill effects. The recommended dose~not sure who figured that out but you can bet it wasn't a vet~is 1.5 cc per bird, so there is a lot of leeway there when using a regular medicine dropper..they only hold about 1 cc, if that.
Remember about the NS mix...don't mix it too thick. I think it was the lard in mine that made it so darn sticky and thick, so next time I make it I will not be making it thicker but more runny and oily than greasy in nature. The greasy would stay on other maladies better but the scale mites really needed that thinner viscosity to move up under the scales instead of just sealing off the spaces between the scales.
It's on the Road Less Traveled thread but you know me...I don't really measure things.
All the ingredients were super cheap and came to a mere fraction of the original cost of the NS, plus you can make a bigger quantity than they sell. It's a win/win and if I still had other livestock, I'd keep a big batch at all times sealed up in fruit jars.
