Fluffy Butt Acres: Stories of our flock

[featherhead007]

Night flight for me tonight. I wish you all well! ( my chickens are all safe and will be awaiting my return in the morning. I will nap tomorrow to catch up with sleep, if I can remember what that is!

 

[LaFemmeKatia]

Night flight for me tonight. I wish you all well! ( my chickens are all safe and will be awaiting my return in the morning. I will nap tomorrow to catch up with sleep, if I can remember what that is!

Good luck, be safe!

 

[Cynthia12]

Kris, I just put all my healthy thriving Chooks to bed. I’m thinking there is a very big difference between pets and just poultry! I know if I ever called my Jaffar “just poultry” ,I’m sure that he would bite me until I died from my wounds. Ps. Here’s a pic of Coco for the night.View attachment 2729208

When should they start laying?

 

[fuentemoon]

We have our first pumpkin!

A last minute Monday mug between some oxalis and melon plants.

We had an unseasonably hot day today, mid 90s. The ladies stayed up very late, finally going to bed around 9pm, too busy eating once it cooled off.

 

[Shadrach]

I have not. How does this work? I have one of seven having issues. Any recommendations how to get Naenae what she needs without over "medicating" (using this term very loosely) the rest?

Just about any medication can be given by crushing the pill in the case of solids, emptying a capsule, or adding liquid drops to make a solution of sorts.
A liquid vitamin supplement is what I've used usually.

You only need a few drops, enough to ensure that the medication/additive can be made into a paste.

An eggcup makes a good container to mix in.

Once you have a paste you can soak it/wipe it up with small pieces of bread, or even push it into a grape.

I try this method as a fist stop solution. Most of the time it works. If not, then the options range from forcing the beak open and firing the pill down the throat to tube feeding. Plenty of article on BYC about tube feeding.

 

[Shadrach]

To the heat! My gosh! That's terrible.

It is terrible especially when one considers that 108 degrees is just over 42 centigrade which is only one degree above a chickens core body temperature.
If one lives in a region that reaches such temperatures, then if your chickens are dying from the heat I would suggest that not enough care has been taken to ensure they have suitable adequate shade.
It's no good blaming the weather; it's the fault of the keeper.

Just saying.

 

[Marie2020]

I found this, hopefully that helps!View attachment 2728990

Edit to add pic

Thanks yet again

 

[Marie2020]

Just about any medication can be given by crushing the pill in the case of solids, emptying a capsule, or adding liquid drops to make a solution of sorts.
A liquid vitamin supplement is what I've used usually.

You only need a few drops, enough to ensure that the medication/additive can be made into a paste.

An eggcup makes a good container to mix in.

Once you have a paste you can soak it/wipe it up with small pieces of bread, or even push it into a grape.

I try this method as a fist stop solution. Most of the time it works. If not, then the options range from forcing the beak open and firing the pill down the throat to tube feeding. Plenty of article on BYC about tube feeding.

It's really difficult to force feed them. I've been trying with amber, luckily she's back too eating again but I know this will be become problematic again when it gets hot.

I saw a clip on feeding baby chicks they syringed the food too the side off their beak that seemed to work pretty well.

 

[Shadrach]

They are all young yet. The oldest are a year old and the youngest will be a year the end of July. I am just trying to keep on top of things. My understanding of the situation with production hens is that they burn out at a young age. I don’t know how one can fight genetics, but I figure food is the first line of defense. I can only imagine the loss of nutrients from the body from laying eggs every single day.
I have made it my mission to at least TRY to get all the important nutrients into them every day. Once or twice a week I add probiotics to their water.

I can only imagine the loss of nutrients from the body from laying eggs every single day.

Here's an egg weight guide.

https://weightofstuff.com/how-much-does-an-egg-weigh/

Here's a rough nutritional analysis of an egg.

https://www.egginfo.co.uk/egg-nutrition-and-health/egg-nutrition-information

Taking a rounded up average of 50 grams for a medium egg, this leaves 70 grams for the hens nutrition.

Roughly,one third of a hens food intake goes towards making the egg when she's laying.

You can, with some research, work out very accurately how much of a particular nutrient a hen needs to make an egg. This is unfortunately how commercial feed producers work out what to put in their feeds.

However, there are for example many ways to ingest the various amino acids required to make a complete protien. A free range hen, assuming adequate forage opportunities, makes up the essential amino acids from a much wider range of foods than a contained hen. This leaves extra amino acids in many cases and recently there has been some interest in the role these extra amino acids and various other nutrients, play in the overall health of the hen.

Some chicken keepers will have noticed a hens reluctance to eat commercial feed when they are moulting. This is a time when one might expect a hen to eat as much as she can to promote feather growth. It seems form my experience that hens require nutrients other than those provided by the commercail feed and take quite alarminng risks to forage for what they believe they need.

There was an experiment done by a man who lived on McDonald's for some months. He got ill. Keeping chickens contained and just feeding them commercial feed I believe produces similar results.

A varied and balanced diet is what nutritionists recommend for humans. Chickens, being omnivores, benefit from the same type of diet.

Short version: free range your chickens on natural ground as much as possible.

 

[Marie2020]

It is terrible especially when one considers that 108 degrees is just over 42 centigrade which is only one degree above a chickens core body temperature.
If one lives in a region that reaches such temperatures, then if your chickens are dying from the heat I would suggest that not enough care has been taken to ensure they have suitable adequate shade.
It's no good blaming the weather; it's the fault of the keeper.

Just saying.

Not always, personally speaking I'm doing everything possible too keep my girls cool. I have four shady covers for them and another being built.
I can't arrange electricity in position of my garden which is daunting. But I go about all day taking out cool water and various cold fruit. In the winter I add warmed pads underneath their straw.