LOL at the 3 a.m. wake-up call.
I'm glad to hear that he's feeling a bit better at least. He probably isn't 100A% because these things take a while to fix. Sometimes they actually take a while to build up, but birds are remarkable at masking symptoms as a survival mechanism.
Good onthe yogurt - that really does help their digestive tract. All probiotics do. Yogurt is just the most easy to get, and has some nutrition attached.
The organic apple cider vinegar does help keep algea and "biofilm" out of the water (that clear bacterial slime that develops on the side of waterers).
For your birds, if you haven't wormed, I'd do Wazine first - in the water. Wazine is a narrow-range but effective wormer. In 2-4 weeks, you either repeat the wazine, or follow up with a broad-spectrum wormer like the ivermectin (that's the one that is 1-6 drops on the bird). Buy I wouldn't necessarily recommend using it first especially in a flock that had some losses.
I'll post the reasoning below in a little article-like bit that I had written to explain the reasoning for the wazine first.
It also has dosages, etc.
Your temperature-acclimation plan sounds great.
And so does the cooling plan. I suspect it wasn't as much the algae in the water as perhaps issues with the biofilm, the bacteria that can grow in the water when it gets to where algae can grow.
GOOD on the improvement from dark to red. The darkening of the comb is either stress or can be (also from stress or another cause) a reduction of oxygen in the system. In this case. There are some different darkenings (external) caused by things on top of the skin of the comb, but the stress/oxygen issue is the actual comb color in red combed birds.
It's also a common sign in heat exhaustion and dehydration.
liloredhead, I had chickens as a kid, too, and even though we had a poultry health book at home (which I read as a kid oddly) we didn't really use it. We didn't treat the birds. I didn't when I first got them, but then I started to get attached to them.
And since I had parrots all of my life, I started to think "why do the parrots get preferential treatment and the birds outside don't " and started to look at chickens differently.
Sometimes I almost wish I were of the old style mind again - but it's not in my nature.
Oh and nice in Tyler! Ohhh how I'd love to live there! I actually live in Houston, here on the coast (Lord help me heheh). I would love to cut my place out of the earth and move it up there around Tyler, Henderson - where my grandparents lived. And my boyfriend's parents are from up around there - Longview, etc. /sigh Thank you for the comments on my place. It's literally right in the middle of the city, so I feel quite lucky to have found it. I get my chickens crowing to wake me up, my horses, and yet there's a Starbucks right down the road, a good hospital, etc.
Can I move up next to you, though? /wink
I'm glad to hear that he's feeling a bit better at least. He probably isn't 100A% because these things take a while to fix. Sometimes they actually take a while to build up, but birds are remarkable at masking symptoms as a survival mechanism.
Good onthe yogurt - that really does help their digestive tract. All probiotics do. Yogurt is just the most easy to get, and has some nutrition attached.
The organic apple cider vinegar does help keep algea and "biofilm" out of the water (that clear bacterial slime that develops on the side of waterers).
For your birds, if you haven't wormed, I'd do Wazine first - in the water. Wazine is a narrow-range but effective wormer. In 2-4 weeks, you either repeat the wazine, or follow up with a broad-spectrum wormer like the ivermectin (that's the one that is 1-6 drops on the bird). Buy I wouldn't necessarily recommend using it first especially in a flock that had some losses.
I'll post the reasoning below in a little article-like bit that I had written to explain the reasoning for the wazine first.
Your temperature-acclimation plan sounds great.
GOOD on the improvement from dark to red. The darkening of the comb is either stress or can be (also from stress or another cause) a reduction of oxygen in the system. In this case. There are some different darkenings (external) caused by things on top of the skin of the comb, but the stress/oxygen issue is the actual comb color in red combed birds.
It's also a common sign in heat exhaustion and dehydration.
liloredhead, I had chickens as a kid, too, and even though we had a poultry health book at home (which I read as a kid oddly) we didn't really use it. We didn't treat the birds. I didn't when I first got them, but then I started to get attached to them.
Sometimes I almost wish I were of the old style mind again - but it's not in my nature.
Oh and nice in Tyler! Ohhh how I'd love to live there! I actually live in Houston, here on the coast (Lord help me heheh). I would love to cut my place out of the earth and move it up there around Tyler, Henderson - where my grandparents lived. And my boyfriend's parents are from up around there - Longview, etc. /sigh Thank you for the comments on my place. It's literally right in the middle of the city, so I feel quite lucky to have found it. I get my chickens crowing to wake me up, my horses, and yet there's a Starbucks right down the road, a good hospital, etc.
Can I move up next to you, though? /wink
