Fluffy Butt Acres: Stories of our flock

[BY Bob]

Nope it does not. I will try and raise it now.

Here you go. It is now 3000 x 2248.

 

[BY Bob]

I am so sorry for your loss, I always find losing chicks to be particularly hard

I missed how many and how old they were, but coccidiosis is nasty business, and once it has a firm hold in a young chick there is usually very little hope. I wouldn’t give up on chickens just yet, but would have a long talk with whoever you got them from, as they likely were already very ill when they came to you. Feel free to skip over this if it is too soon for you, but following is what I have learned from my own experiences with coccidia.

Spoiler: Coccidiosis, no pics, just lots of personal experience info

I personally do not use medicated feed (cannot purchase that here without a vet anymore!) or water though I have a gallon (smallest size available to purchase from a vet) of Amprolium on hand now, I have very rarely had to use it. It’s actually the overload, or sudden exposure to, and not the organism itself that is the killer. If your brooder was clean (and it sounds like these were your first chicks and it should have been fairly uncontaminated, although I haven’t really been keeping up here enough) there shouldn’t have been enough contaminated fecal matter to overload an otherwise healthy chick.

My first chicks I hatched out from eggs and had in a pristinely clean brooder until they were several weeks old, I then purchased some week old chicks from the SAME breeder I got my hatching eggs from. They had been brooded on her farm and exposed to her chickens and the coccidia there, but they were overall healthy and active. I set them up in a brooder somewhat near my older chicks. Cross contamination occurred and my big healthy older chicks got suddenly very ill. The very first sign of sickness was a dead pullet, I believe they were 6 weeks or a little older. The younger chicks that seem to have brought the Coccidia into the environment never suffered more than the occasional pinkish poop from intestinal shed, no truly bloody poo, puffiness, lethargy etc.

I had a very hard time actually getting the Amprolium but with treatment in their water, moving them outside, and daily moving onto new ground, all my other chickens came around and are mostly doing well to this day.
In very young chicks it is quite hard to see the symptoms I find, as they are tiny, fluffy, and don’t have exactly normal postures to begin with. There is also the tendency to eat, drink, eat, flop down and look dead but actually be sleeping and perfectly healthy in very tiny chicks, you don’t see the passed out pancake chick when it’s under mama, but under a heat light or at the edge of a heat plate it’s pretty distressing. Is it sick? Or just sleeping?

Now I am also running meat chickens (in addition to the layers) so I am regularly bringing bulk batches of hatchery stock 40-60 birds at a time, into my overall flock and putting them in the same brooder and running them over the same ground as my layers. I do occasionally lose a chick to coccidiosis, but it will be just one, maybe two out of that many birds. It is always a runt or less healthy looking chick that seems to become ill from it and I believe it is related to another underlying health concern in the individual. When I notice symptoms I directly treat the individual, but often by the time the symptoms manifest the chick is too ill to recover.

I’ve switched my focus from completely sanitizing the brooder environment, to just maintaining general cleanliness, so chicks can adapt and build a resistance to the local coccidia, and so far I haven’t had as many issues. I still clean my incubators with a mind to sanitizing them totally, but the brooders I just focus on temperature, humidity, and keeping the poop levels down, easier in a smaller batch, but with 60 growing chicks it piles up fast, add in the warm environment, our natural humidity and all those little breathing babies... it’s a potential breeding ground for all sorts of nasty bacteria. So lots of ventilation and frequent little changes become imperative

All that said, give yourself some time to heal your grief and then give chickens another chance. I swore off hatching for over a year after a disastrous hatch, but then went on to have several successful ones.

And most of all, Hugs, Hugs, Hugs

Wonderfully said and great advice. Thanks Kris for weighing in.

 

[RebeccaBoyd]

I have an offer to get more from the same seller once they are a few weeks older. What would you all weigh in on that?

I'm so sorry for you bad luck lately and the loss of your 2 newest little ones. I wish you were closer to me. Clover recently weaned her 7 babies and 5 of them are for sure pullets and I'd let you have a couple. As for getting some more once they are older I really don't know. If they are raising them organically without medicated feed then maybe in a few weeks they will have built up their natural tolerance. But I'd be inclined even for just a few short weeks to put them on a medicated feed myself.

 

[Kris5902]

As I use an android phone and tablet, I'm going to throw back at you, why are you paying the same money I do for a phone and getting technology from 4 years ago?

If you are having trouble taking photos with enough pixels for a calendar entry, you might be using dated technology. Just saying.

Apple means yesterday's technology at today's prices.

They are the best marketing company I have ever seen. You are in the "Apple club".



Chicken Tax
View attachment 2717320

Oh, it’s dated alright... lol I’m running a 2011 MacBook Pro (since 2011) and an I phone 7+! Still works well for everything IMO. I eventually got sold on the Apple in 2010 by DH and once I got used to the Operating systems I have found it nearly impossible to Work with the
Samsung. I fully admit it’s me.

Oh it is what we were issued for work. It isn’t that new so I am sure you are right I am on old tech.

Probably still newer than mine! If you have the you tube app on your phone it’s super easy to record a video with the phones camera, upload it directly to your you tube account, and then from there (as long as it’s not a shorts beta video) link it here as media.

and thanks @micstrachan I will retry the post yet again (and wouldn’t have been at all upset if you had just left it up!)

 

[Kris5902]

I have an offer to get more from the same seller once they are a few weeks older. What would you all weigh in on that?

Have you seen their brooder set up? How are they raising their chicks? What sort of set up were you bringing the chicks into compared to theirs? I would personally be a little leery TBH. It could be a different strain of Coccidia in their set up and the chicks not having any resistance to what you have in yours, or it could be an overload of it that the chicks brought with them. How established are their breeding lines and have they had this issue before with other customers? These are all questions I think you should ask them, or possibly yourself, before getting more birds from this source.

I know I’ve probably missed the entire lead up, and the answers to many of these questions while I’ve been offline for a while. I will add to my initial comments that I will Not be buying any more young chicks from the breeder I used, (I also got slightly shafted with cockerels that were just showing their sex in that “unsexed chick” purchase) but I would still potentially consider some hatching eggs from them, maybe. There are other, better established, breeding lines I could source from with different breeds (although my first breeder has great Instagram and FB sites with very pretty pictures)

 

[RoyalChick]

Here you go. It is now 3000 x 2248.

View attachment 2717340

Wow. Thank you!
But how?

 

[Scrambles83]

Both dead

Oh, Blazinga, my heart is breaking for you I’m so sorry...

 

[Scrambles83]

Just testing the beta/shorts link thing, sorry.

https://youtube.com/shorts/u54VwQBVSu0?feature=share

I chose share, then copy link, then pasted it in here

 

[Lady Red]

Just testing the beta/shorts link thing, sorry.

https://youtube.com/shorts/u54VwQBVSu0?feature=share

I chose share, then copy link, then pasted it in here

Edited....worked for me now... so funny how you have to sign into things

Cute video! Now I want to get crickets for my girls!

 

[Lady Red]

As I use an android phone and tablet, I'm going to throw back at you, why are you paying the same money I do for a phone and getting technology from 4 years ago?

If you are having trouble taking photos with enough pixels for a calendar entry, you might be using dated technology. Just saying.

Apple means yesterday's technology at today's prices.

They are the best marketing company I have ever seen. You are in the "Apple club".



Chicken Tax
View attachment 2717320

I think you may have rank with my kids. They abhor iPhones. Personally, when asked why I use an android, my response is that I actually work from my phone