Heritage Large Fowl - Phase II

[Arielle]

I want to thank the experienced poultry men and women for sharing their knowledge. Much appreciated.

 

[AletaG]

State vet asked me why did you kill off all your birds I showed him my parrot that means more then the chickens who are sick after treating the chickens your not supposed to eat the eggs , NOW Have any of you asked Why ? Because they have Mg , Out of the box and still reading thanks for posting i am learning as well but also have to state my Opinions

Tammy, my state vets stated it was perfectly fine to eat the eggs, just that the hatch rate *could* be strongly affected. I'm sorry about your chickens. I don't have an expensive, long lived parrot to protect. We all have to make hard choices sometimes.

So unless everyone that kept birds since the beginning of the 20th century (when the symptoms were noted in turkeys) had their birds tested, consistently and repeatedly, there is no way to know exactly how many birds carried MG.

And then you will need to factor in that there were wild birds, who if they weren't originally carriers, could have become carriers via infected poultry flocks and that they have also been spreading MG for the last 100+ yrs since MG symptoms were first seen.
You can't just jump to the conclusion that a disease is more prevalent now simply because it is detected more often.Backyard chicken keepers are more likely to notice a problem than the farmer (today's farmer or "back then" who lets his chickens run free and if some die, oh well, he doesn't do a necropsy or send specimens to the lab to see what the chicken died of. And if one of them looks sick, the farmer uses an axe and gets rid of it not bothering to see why the chicken was looking puny, sneezing, and not eating.

And then with the advent of the internet to share information - of course it seems like there is so much more MG going around than there was 35 years ago.

This whole post. I've run out of Ovations to give at the moment, but

will have to do

I want to thank the experienced poultry men and women for sharing their knowledge. Much appreciated.

 

[3riverschick]

Karen

Do you notice the pullets with cushions have shorter backs than the dame(s)? What about narrower leg set? Width of back?
In my Rocks, I have to cull ruthlessly for these three traits in order to keep cushions out.
I would certainly take the BEST cockerel you have, with the longest back (even if tail set is less than ideal) and widest leg stance and run him back across his mother/aunt

I don't know. Good idea, I will compare the and see. Across the board, tail sets on the cockerels are real nice.
Thank you!
Karen

 

[3riverschick]

Well the neighborhood kids dumped a gallon of whole kernel feed corn on my doorstep last night.
Can I feed it to the chickens? Usually they just throw it at the house, this is much nicer.
Do I have to put it in a blender or crack it or something? Steam up or?
Thanks,
Karen
who's wondering if I should be giving corn to point of lay hens anyway,,,,or if I can excuse
myself by saying it is getting colder at night and the corn will help keep them warmer. .Hum.....

 

[Yard full o' rocks]

Well the neighborhood kids dumped a gallon of whole kernel feed corn on my doorstep last night.
Can I fee it to the chickens? Usually they just throw it at the house, this is much nicer.
Do I have to put it in a blender or crack it or something? Steam up or?
Thanks,
Karen
who's wondering if I should be giving corn to point of lay hens anyway,,,,or if I can excuse
myself by saying it is getting colder at night and the corn will help keep them warmer. .Hum.....

A little isn't gonna hurt....treat it like scratch

My grown girls LOVE it whole kernel, dry, right off the cob. I wouldn't spend a lot of time/energy to do anything to it myself

 

[Arielle]

Well the neighborhood kids dumped a gallon of whole kernel feed corn on my doorstep last night.
Can I fee it to the chickens? Usually they just throw it at the house, this is much nicer.
Do I have to put it in a blender or crack it or something? Steam up or?
Thanks,
Karen
who's wondering if I should be giving corn to point of lay hens anyway,,,,or if I can excuse
myself by saying it is getting colder at night and the corn will help keep them warmer. .Hum.....

Karen , the girls will love the corn. Whole corn is fine. As long as you know it has not been tapered with in a negative way. THey will stuff themselves full of corn, so perhaps just a little each day, a tablespoon each a day if that is what you are comfortable with. I mention 1T as a lot will interfere w ith eating enough pellets with calcium and the shell will be soft if they substitute too much corn over the calium fortified pellets. IF the shell quality is not really an issue, then go for more.

My DH enjoys throwing out handfuls of oats or corn after a long day at work-- and my birds love it.

 

[Beekissed]

That's the only feed my grandma ever supplied to her flock...whole kernel corn shelled right off the cob at feeding time. She kept a metal barrel next to the coop and we kids would go and shell a few ears to the hens and that was the whole of the feeding ritual. The corn cobs, at that point, were stored and used in the outhouse for wiping material, along with old Sears & Roebuck catalogs, which were hung on the wall on a metal hanger so that mice couldn't chew them up.

 

[3riverschick]

That's the only feed my grandma ever supplied to her flock...whole kernel corn shelled right off the cob at feeding time. She kept a metal barrel next to the coop and we kids would go and shell a few ears to the hens and that was the whole of the feeding ritual. The corn cobs, at that point, were stored and used in the outhouse for wiping material, along with old Sears & Roebuck catalogs, which were hung on the wall on a metal hanger so that mice couldn't chew them up.

Thank you all. Believe it or not, I used an old sears catalog when I was a kid on a trip to Mexico. But corn cobs? I am visualizing that..Ouch!
Karen

 

[bnjrob]

That's the only feed my grandma ever supplied to her flock...whole kernel corn shelled right off the cob at feeding time. She kept a metal barrel next to the coop and we kids would go and shell a few ears to the hens and that was the whole of the feeding ritual. The corn cobs, at that point, were stored and used in the outhouse for wiping material, along with old Sears & Roebuck catalogs, which were hung on the wall on a metal hanger so that mice couldn't chew them up.

I love glimpses of "the old days". I think I would have preferred to use the Sears catalog to the corn cobs though.

 

[Beekissed]

You'd be surprised...the old timey field corn had surprisingly soft, red cob leavin's so if you had a particularly dirty job that the slick catalog pages could not handle, the cobs were the best option. The catalog was more for number one than number two, but could be utilized for the fine tuning on the number two. My favorite and the most coveted? The comics section out of the Sunday newspaper...soft, soft paper on those. How's that for a glimpse of the old times?