Louise Waffles
Chirping
- Feb 1, 2017
- 321
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Lol Moose is massive. I'd love to see a height and weight on him when he finally stops growing and filling out! Lol you sure he's not half turkey?!
We are super excited to be getting closer to setting up our breeding pens just need to get more spare cockerals processed and separate them out. We also need to buy chicken saddles still.
We are so glad we enlarged the chick grow out on the back side of the cooler coop for those littles. All of the youngest birds have been pulled from the main flock and from the introduction crate to spend some more time just being babies(The group in the large dog crate included the two youngest silkies, the two EE from our Olive's last eggs, and the little lavender boy that got injured by the rat.) This has also allowed us to give the little lavender boy some much needed physical therapy while knowing he is safe from being trampled on by the adults or picked on for being a younger mature boy. While we had started letting them out during the day I still wasn't comfortable leaving them out all the time because of his previous injuries. I don't know at this point if he will ever fully recover. He is, however, completely healed and can walk. Although sometimes his injured leg doesn't seem to do what he wants it to. We believe and hope that some more exercise will improve his mobility and strength. He's had a long road. Unfortunately I didn't take any pictures of his previous injuries as I was too busy being chicken doctor.
That first night we brought him in(he muct have been attacked the night before) he looked completely normal from the top, except that he wouldn't or couldn't get up. We brought him in and layed him on the dining room table on a towel to examine. Doesn't everybody keep chicken surgical supplies in a cupboard and a towel handy to protect the wood of the table? Lol wow that makes it sound like we're always having injured birds lol some weeks it feels like that but no other than bumble foot and a couple broken toes we've had very minor injuries. A few cuts and scratches from pecking order disputes a couple busted blood feathers(that same quail snapped the same blood feather again last night idk what to do about that- thankfully it wasn't as bad, as we don't know how it's doing it), one English orp cockeral that devoped an abscessed feather follicle, and the one chocolate orp pullet that had the very large infected gash in her side.
Yikes. We've run the mill thankfully nothing horrible. Fingers crossed. Although I would say that the chocolate pullet, Hope, was a severe injury. I still can't believe we never saw any blood or anything when it happened. We believe it was probably a predator.
Most injuries we've had have required nothing more than an application or two of iodine or blue kote. We keep syringes, blood stop, blue kote, gauze, drawing salve, neosporin, gentle iodine, surgical scissors, vet wrap, hemorrhoid cream(for prolapses) and I'm sure there's a few things I've forgotten to include lol. We also have a couple of kinds of antibiotics in case we ever have a problem and can't get to the vet. Of course they're as a last resort and only if we're sure they're needed. Especially since you can't buy them over the counter anymore. Probiotics, electrolytes, Epsom salts, peroxide, corid etc. Etc.
Anyone sorry I got sidetracked. So it wasn't until we brought him inside that we could really get a good look at him. It was then that we confirmed he was injured and to our horror we found bite marks up and down his leg and all over his hock. He had dried blood all over up in his feathers and down his leg. He also had a wound that seemed to be weeping periodically. He also seemed a bit shocky and lethargic. We got him to drink and eat a bit and began cleaning up his leg to get a better look at the injuries. At thos point we were still not sure where the injuries had come from. With how high up the injuries were we decided against dipping him in water not wanting to wet his feathers and chill him. So we got the solution ready and painstakingly washed him up by hand. When we got nearly all of the blood cleaned up(some of it in thick dried clots that had run down his leg) to our horror we discovered that we had seen injuries like this one other time. A month or so before a younger chick had been killed the first night we put in in the grow out run. Something had chewed it's legs and then tried to drag it through a one inch gap under a board. The chick got stuck there and the predator ate the crop and skin off of the chest and neck but left the meat. Due to the small space and the injuries as well as us seeing a rat a few nights later we decided a rat had killed the chick. We blocked off the gap into the run. After the little lavender boy was injured, we moved them that night to another grow out in the cooler coop.
We tried repeatedly over the late summer and fall to fill a hole that something was eating out of the concrete under our porch. Continually filling it with concrete, large rocks, chunks of concrete and metal. The hole kept being eaten back out larger and larger. This went on for a while before the chick was killed and the other injured. Also before we saw the rat. DH2B thought skunks or maybe groundhogs(which we have out back by our wood shed- they're very huge and docile) thinking it was the groundhogs he thought we should get rid of them. Until I saw a rat one night! Lol he didn't believe me. A few days later he saw it too.
In December I discovered much to my horror that the rat had eaten it's way into our laundry room which is also used for storage it had also dug a new escape tunnel out underneath our fuel tank.
We began trying to trap it however before we bought rat traps DH2B again thinking maybe I hadn't seen a rat in the house but an overly large mouse(we do have 5 cats and two dogs in the house- but they're not allowed in the laundry room) set mice traps where we knew it was going. The next day we were to get rat traps. The traps were set off in the morning when we checked but nothing in them. Uh oh. We haven't seen the rat in the house again. We believe that it ran out after being "attacked" now we've been finding some very large holes around our chicken coop. I think the rat is trying to find its way into the coop. We've been setting out traps daily. We caught a mouse once. Yesterday DH2B decided to set mouse traps BC the rat traps have been getting set off but empty so he thought maybe there were more mice. Last night we found the mice traps set off but one of them was dragged down a hole barely visible. I guess tonight we will be setting as many as we can tonight all around the holes both kinds of traps and hopefully we'll catch something. Before they ruin our coop or worse we lose more birds.
Let's just say I've never been bothered by mice but I now hate rats. It's also been stealing the insulation out of the hood of our car too!!!
I'm leery of poison for the obvious reasons, dogs, chickens, wildlife, feral cats, possible gross rotting animal in or under our coop. Anyways sorry just needed to vent and hoping some of you guys might have ideas. This feels like we're never going to get this thing. Or God forbid things!