Fluffy Butt Acres: Stories of our flock

[RoyalChick]

You can buy calcium tablets for humans Bob. The ones I've used you can crush to powder. Make a paste with a bit of water and honey and dip some bread in it , oor whatever and feed it to her.
Bear in mind that a high calcium layers feed is around 4.5%. To make life easy, assume a hen of 2.something kilos will eat 100 grams of feed a day. This means you need 4.5 grams of calcium powder fed during a day.

Exactly - it is a lot of calcium. You can buy it in bulk as a powder both citrate and carbonate and with or without vitamin D.
I have tried it all.
I have found popping the pills easiest if I want to be sure of getting it all in and done fast.

 

[RoyalChick]

It's great as a carrier but Bob would need to get an awful lot of yoghurt down her to make up the 4 to 5 grams of calcium she is missing.

Agree. I use the yoghurt (kefir) as a source of probiotic and a vehicle for calcium or other powders and as a frozen treat. It doesn’t have much if any lactic acid so the chickens are ok with it and they love it especially frozen when it is hot.

 

[micstrachan]

Also - calcium citrate is supposed to be more absorbable, at least in humans, and the D3 helps that too. I think @micstrachan , or maybe @RoyalChick, just pops a pill in. Certainly quicker. Also one of them found there is calcium powder available online. But I also suspect the hens like the fruit flavor of the Tums. At least @Kris5902 found a flavor preference, that's partly why I throw them in.

Yes, I pop a pill. However, I also purchased a mini mortar and pestle for crushing them up and adding them to a little baby bird formula treat, which most, if not all of mine eat readily. The tricky part is getting the bird alone.

 

[RoyalChick]

Wow that is an extended chow session!

I make mash balls of the feed they're eating, so here it is feather fixer or All flock, or sometimes Exact baby bird formula. Mix with some greek yogurt and crushed/ground combined Calcium Citrate w/ D3 and fruit-flavored generic Tums. Let it sit, maybe add more feed to thicken, and mix again to be like putty. The later mixes really smooths it. Then I form balls of various sizes, each hen likes to deal with them differently..

These days I am not putting in the calcium powder but continuing with the mash balls, because they like them, the yogurt might be good for their crops and all, I want to maintain some consistency with foods they like, and I like holding the dish and letting them take them out but I also hand them out, encouraging each one to get some, and especially now I want to make sure Peanut eats some (very concerned for her that she keep eating with this hard molt, she is quite naked. This afternoon she ate only four, and she usually goes to town with them. But this morning she ate some sardines too).

Dose of calcium powder mix: I figure two Citrate+D3 pill = 500~600mg calcium citrate and two Tums (high-strength) is ~2000mg calcium carbonate, and when I took those ratios and ground up a bunch in a small (dedicated) coffee grinder I found in two level teaspoons they were getting that 2500-2600mg total. And that would be 650+ mg per hen assuming they all ate the same amount, which isn't the case of course.

I aim for about 600-800mg per hen per day when they lay soft shell eggs. The Citrical happens to be 400mg so I often give 2 then one but sometimes I give 3 if the hen is cooperating because I am not worried about too much calcium over a short period.

 

[micstrachan]

Sansa Update

The vet and I connected today. The blood work revealed three things.

1. Her calcium is very low. It is low even for a non-laying hen or rooster.
2. Protein electrophoresis has uncovered a low grade infection of some kind that is not causing a temperature.
3. She was dehydrated.

So what to do. The vet reached out to an expert with chickens. She said when I was there that she had not seen this before. I love people who admit they don't know and consult others. They were equally curious as to how all of this is connected. They are certain that her low calcium is having an impact on the feathers. They also believe that the infection, wherever it might be, could also be involved, especially if it is somewhere in the digestive tract where it might be interfering with the absorption of minerals and nutrients.

The vet left it up to me if I wanted to treat the infection or not. At this point I want to attack the situation aggressively so I agree to treat. We are putting her on Trimethoprim Sulfa. A combination therapy that has broad antibacterial bandwidth as well as antiprotozoal capabilities.

In order to dose her we needed her weight. So I went out and tried to catch her in the big run. Frankly, the Cluckle Hut has essentially ended that possibility. It is like she knew. Only her head came out to eat the meal worms the tricky human had used to try and lure her out.

View attachment 2928428

So I waited and plucked her off the roost, and weighed her.

This is really good news. Back on11/15 she was around 3 lbs/1.389 kg. Today, just about a month later after being weighed last, she is a respectable 4.55 lbs/2.064 kg. That is basically a 50% weight gain. She has been on a diet of chick food since 11/23 and it is working. I knew it as soon as I picked her up. This video from 11/30 shows how she has been chowing down and since they have been locked in because of the hawk (silver lining?) she has no other food source. The chick food has worked at least in getting weight back on her.

That leaves us to the conundrum of getting calcium into her. If I switch her to layer that would be the easiest way to increase her calcium intake but it will be at the expense of calories and protein. Additionally, the whole tribe would then be on layer when they are not laying. I am trying not to do this with Lilly as she really doesn't lay any more. I could segregate her in the Cluckle Hut with Phyllis and lock them in with layer feed but I really don't want to give up on the chick feed.

I need to check and see if Nutridrench has significant calcium in it as I could try supplementing in that fashion while I am giving the antibiotic. The vet said that she would look for alternative solutions to get calcium into her diet.

I know that their have been a lot of people on here treating for soft shelled eggs by supplementing calcium. Right now my brain cannot recall any of them. Please reply to this post with what you have done to add calcium to their diets when needed. I feel stupid but I just can't remember any and I know some of you were quite clever.

Bob, I just posted in response to @ChicoryBlue’s post. I use calcium citrate plus D3. Sometimes I pop a tablet into the beak and sometimes I crush it onto a baby bird formula treat. I used to try and crush between two spoons, but have since purchased a little mortar and pestle.

 

[Chicken poppy]

It is very cool. I remember the first time I saw it. Just amazing. I have such respect for these hens.

It seems like it would take so much time and effort to do it.

 

[micstrachan]

Oh it is clear I do not have the emotional resilience to keep chickens.
Diana came up to the roost and was clearly disturbed at seeing Maggie in ‘her’ spot (traditionally it has been Maggie’s spot in fact).
She paced back and forth for several minutes. Kept eyeing the roost across the way where the Roadrunners have established an alternative base camp and ultimately threw Maggie off
It is a sign that Maggie is not well that she was able to do that.
So, it appears Diana with no feathers prefers to roost alone. At least Maggie isn’t injured.

Poor Maggie. While still unstable, is she a little better than before?

 

[RoyalChick]

Poor Maggie. While still unstable, is she a little better than before?

It is really hard to tell. I think pribably about the same.
No worse feels like a good thing right now and also makes some causes less likely I think.

 

[BY Bob]

Yes, I pop a pill. However, I also purchased a mini mortar and pestle for crushing them up and adding them to a little baby bird formula treat, which most, if not all of mine eat readily. The tricky part is getting the bird alone.

That is what I am most concerned about. Sansa has never been hands on. Now she is going to need antibiotics as well. This is going to be rough. Add Lilly to that and no one is ever coming near me again.

 

[BY Bob]

I aim for about 600-800mg per hen per day when they lay soft shell eggs. The Citrical happens to be 400mg so I often give 2 then one but sometimes I give 3 if the hen is cooperating because I am not worried about too much calcium over a short period.

Where did the 600-800 come from?