Chickensecondsins
Hatching
- Feb 21, 2021
- 5
- 1
- 9
Back in january I posted about how 3 of our hens plus our rooster had started having combs similar to those during molting that just didn't go away and how we had thought it was just winter combs due to them acting normal. Until a fourth hen had dropped dead out of nowhere wich led us to giving the entire flock one dose of antibiotics daily for 3 days. By going into way too much detail I accidentally made it a wall of text that got very few responses at the time and that thread and my old profile has since been mysteriously deleted. So I kept putting of writting on here. But at the time one possible lead we got was that our chickens had been fed with a mixture of kitchen scraps, wild bird seeds and garden insects and someone suggested in may be the feed. ("complete" chicken feed is only available in specialty stores in Denmark so it became common practice for people to feed with bird seeds). And I think my last response was we then had some problems getting hold of "complete" chicken feed because of covid and our chickens being too spoiled to eat pellets.
Since then weve switched to a mixture of pellets and complete chicken feed in grain form. We also out of nowhere got hit with the weather warning about the coldest winter in years which meant we had to move our chickens from a spacious stable we had previously used as a coob to a much smaller but also much easier to heat building. We honestly should have done that years ago because the old guesthouse/annex whatever you wanna call it is also significantly easier to keep clean.
The hens perked up and their combs look way better, especially the black one below and no more deaths. But the rooster kept getting worse and worse with his comb and wattles being around half (if not less) of the size they were before all this.
These are the pictures from the original thread (taken December 12)
And this was taken today in the new coop.
The hen on the left is actually the black one above. Talk about improving
The rooster is VERY easily scared and rarely handled so I had to take this from a distance. He has previous injuries from a time we had to enter the stable when it was dark and accidentally startled him so he fell from his (very high up) perch directly onto a concrete floor. He messed up his leg, bent his comb and he couldn't jump up to his perch any more, sleeping in a hay nest we kept adding to. So even before this he was a bit "weak" and we think that might be why whatever this is hit him the hardest. He still acts like a rooster (mating,pecking,etc), but he has a clear limb, is thin and keeps looking worse while the hens keep looking better.
Since then weve switched to a mixture of pellets and complete chicken feed in grain form. We also out of nowhere got hit with the weather warning about the coldest winter in years which meant we had to move our chickens from a spacious stable we had previously used as a coob to a much smaller but also much easier to heat building. We honestly should have done that years ago because the old guesthouse/annex whatever you wanna call it is also significantly easier to keep clean.
The hens perked up and their combs look way better, especially the black one below and no more deaths. But the rooster kept getting worse and worse with his comb and wattles being around half (if not less) of the size they were before all this.
These are the pictures from the original thread (taken December 12)
And this was taken today in the new coop.
The hen on the left is actually the black one above. Talk about improving
The rooster is VERY easily scared and rarely handled so I had to take this from a distance. He has previous injuries from a time we had to enter the stable when it was dark and accidentally startled him so he fell from his (very high up) perch directly onto a concrete floor. He messed up his leg, bent his comb and he couldn't jump up to his perch any more, sleeping in a hay nest we kept adding to. So even before this he was a bit "weak" and we think that might be why whatever this is hit him the hardest. He still acts like a rooster (mating,pecking,etc), but he has a clear limb, is thin and keeps looking worse while the hens keep looking better.
