Fluffy Butt Acres: Stories of our flock

[Shadrach]

Good evening crew
A quick question for you all:
At what age would one switch from a grower crumble to layer pellets?

Might be a silly question but pullets this young (13 weeks) are new to me and I want to be sure I’m doing it all correctly

As long as the grower crumble isn't medicated you could use that as their regular feed. What it is likely to be missing is sufficient calcium for laying hens. You could provide a dish or two of calcium carbonate to make up for this.
As long as you don't find you're getting thin shelled eggs they should be fine. If you take a picture of the feed analysis and post it, I'll be able to give you a rough idea of what if anything is missing.

 

[BY Bob]

Now we all know my feelings on snow, and considering some of you have white outs and a LOT more snow then I do I should not complain. But I am. Woke up to 2 1/2 inches, still snowing, water hose is froze off so that means packing Buckets outside to water the horses multiple times a day until it unthaws. And cleaning the stalls outside in this garbage. Oh and angry hens, in order to reach the nest area's they prefer to use, they HAVE to venture out in the white stuff. So far only Holly has made the trip to lay her egg, the rest are complaining, loudly. I fear I may be fishing eggs out of the corner of one of the stalls, unless they lay in Russ's. Given a chance, he'll eat a egg, caught him in the act when Butter first started laying and chose to lay the first 3 eggs in his feed trough. While out watering earlier a couple brave souls decided to venture out into the snow for a few minutes, didn't last long and after 5 minutes were back with the horses complaining. They stayed out long enough though so I could get a few pics of chickens in snow.
Butter
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Henrietta
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Bread
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Some of the smart ones
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These are beautiful photos. Even if they hate snow like mine they sure take a great photo!

 

[RoyalChick]

Fascinating. I know it can be used to help protect wounds as well.

Yes - it is good on open wounds.

 

[BY Bob]

Was that mean? Sometimes my old lady brain speaks out loud. And then I wonder, where did that come from?

That was quite fun. Reminded me of @featherhead007

 

[featherhead007]

That was quite fun. Reminded me of @featherhead007

I saw that!

 

[Shadrach]

My older hen has finished laying so this might be the way to go (the shell grit on the side) because Bok won’t need the calcium in layer feed now huh
@LozzyR ill look into the food you suggested, see if my feed store stocks it or something similar. Always just had pellets with the other 2 but happy to try something new is it a more natural type crumble?
Thanks to both of you

One advantage of crumble is you can make a mash with it by adding a bit of warm water. This can have some extra advatages apart from less waste. If they are used to eating mash its easier to bulk worm if necessary and get other medications into them.

 

[Shadrach]

Its very short but backs up the LSU study I found. In order to determine the toxic levels 2 of the ladies did pass. It seems pretty safe to say that lidocaine is not, by its very nature, toxic to chickens.

In summary:

Animals: Eight healthy, female, 55-week-old chickens (Lohman breed) weighing 1.45 ± 0.17 kg (mean ± SD)

Procedure: A loading dose of 2% lidocaine (4 mg/kg) was administered IV, followed by a constant-rate infusion at a dose of 8 mg/kg/min using a syringe pump. Times to onset of convulsion and/or respiratory arrest were recorded and the total toxic dose of lidocaine was determined. Blood sample was withdrawn for lidocaine analysis at the onset of the major signs of intoxication (convulsion or respiratory arrest).

Results: The total toxic dose of lidocaine required to produce systemic toxicity and corresponding serum lidocaine concentration were 28.96 ± 6.21 mg/kg and 38.5 ± 10.4 µg/mL, respectively.

Conclusions and clinical relevance: Based on the results of this study, greater doses of lidocaine are needed to produce toxic manifestations in chickens as compared with mammals.

Lifocaine levels & Symptoms: The doses of lidocaine required to induce the following symptoms.

• Panting: 16.02 +/- 5.13 mg/kg
• Convulsion: 30.86 +/- 6.26 mg/kg
• Respiratory arrest: 27.06 +/- 6.42 mg/kg

Of the 5 chickens that reached the respiratory arrest stage, after stopping the lidocaine, 2 recovered spontaneously, and a third recovered after chest compressions.

Good job Bob. It would be handy to produce and article with this data and any more that can be found.

 

[BY Bob]

Good job Bob. It would be handy to produce and article with this data and any more that can be found.

That is my plan. I have the LSU study as well. I hoping to find some more but if not, I will post these two. We need to puncture that myth.

 

[Shadrach]

I LOVE LOVE LOVE Chlorhexidine!! It kills everything yet is fairly gentle to the tissues. I've used it myself as a gargle for an infected tooth before I could get to the dentist.

Also when I worked for the Vet, I was bit by the cat I was trimming claws on. Kitty was current on vaccines, so no worry for Rabies or anything, but every one said it would get infected. I ran to the sink and made it bleed under running water after that I poured straight Chlorhexidine into the wounds, no burning or stinging and no infection at all! The vet was shocked, they changed the bite protocol after that to included rinsing with Chlorhexidine.

I use it here. It's a bit expensive but worth every cent imo. I have a spray and a drooper bottle.

 

[Shadrach]

Must be getting warmer and it's not likely to rain tonight.