Mahonri's 2nd Annual BYC EASTER HATCH. Post pics of your chicks!

[kvmommy]

Don't chickens eat ticks up too? I had one in my daughters head a couple weeks ago and always found some on my dog. Well, since the chicekns have been free rangeing haven't seen one in weeks.

 

[Rathbone]

OMGoodness Mahonri - those chicks I hatched out from your eggs are into EVERYTHING. They seem so much smarter than my own and want to go walk-about all the time. I keep finding them out of the chicken pen and in the pumpkin patch digging up my garden! Their redeeming feature is that each time I find them out there, I can walk right up and put my hand down and they come to me. So returning them to their area is not hard at all. Little stinkers!

 

[SteveH]

Quote:

I had an Easter chick out myself today; it jumped out the door of the waist high hutch and was so shocked to be out it froze there untill I scooped it up. Then a cockeral in the big pen walked through my legs as I was stepping through the gate to gather eggs. I had already gathered a bunch from the other pens. I sat the basket down so hard, trying to hurry around him to herd him back in, that I broke five eggs from the basket, and another I had in my pocket [I know, it was stupid to carry eggs in my pocket, but I was keeping them seperate there so I would not get the Ameraucanas mixed with the EEs]................................ four of which were for hatching.

 

[Rathbone]

Quote:

I had an Easter chick out myself today; it jumped out the door of the waist high hutch and was so shocked to be out it froze there untill I scooped it up. Then a cockeral in the big pen walked through my legs as I was stepping through the gate to gather eggs. I had already gathered a bunch from the other pens. I sat the basket down so hard, trying to hurry around him to herd him back in, that I broke five eggs from the basket, and another I had in my pocket [I know, it was stupid to carry eggs in my pocket, but I was keeping them seperate there so I would not get the Ameraucanas mixed with the EEs]................................ four of which were for hatching.

I think we all still carry eggs in our pockets - and for very good reasons - which later don't seem like such good reasons.

 

[SteveH]

Quote:
I've always heard that guineas eat ticks like candy but never heard if chickens eat ticks or not. I can't free range my birds anyway due to the land owner's dog; plus predators. Everyone who ever told me that free ranging guineas will roost too high in trees, and get too wild to get caught by predators, lost their own eventually.

I'm not sure why, but I'm the only one the ticks around here are attracted to; I've been in the timber with other people and they get none, I'll find 5 or 6 on me when I get back. My dogs are on Ivermectin but have not had flea and tick drops this year; they aren't getting ticks either. My doctor says I can't take Ivermectin myself.

That one deer tick bite did form a half halo around the earlier rash last night; I guess it's good I started the antibiotics.

 

[thebirdguy]

Quote:
I've always heard that guineas eat ticks like candy but never heard if chickens eat ticks or not. I can't free range my birds anyway due to the land owner's dog; plus predators. Everyone who ever told me that free ranging guineas will roost too high in trees, and get too wild to get caught by predators, lost their own eventually.

I'm not sure why, but I'm the only one the ticks around here are attracted to; I've been in the timber with other people and they get none, I'll find 5 or 6 on me when I get back. My dogs are on Ivermectin but have not had flea and tick drops this year; they aren't getting ticks either. My doctor says I can't take Ivermectin myself.

That one deer tick bite did form a half halo around the earlier rash last night; I guess it's good I started the antibiotics.

Didn't you see the memo about the great eats on SteveH in the "Ticks Guide to Rural America" ?

 

[Cydney83]

 

[SteveH]

Quote:
I've always heard that guineas eat ticks like candy but never heard if chickens eat ticks or not. I can't free range my birds anyway due to the land owner's dog; plus predators. Everyone who ever told me that free ranging guineas will roost too high in trees, and get too wild to get caught by predators, lost their own eventually.

I'm not sure why, but I'm the only one the ticks around here are attracted to; I've been in the timber with other people and they get none, I'll find 5 or 6 on me when I get back. My dogs are on Ivermectin but have not had flea and tick drops this year; they aren't getting ticks either. My doctor says I can't take Ivermectin myself.

That one deer tick bite did form a half halo around the earlier rash last night; I guess it's good I started the antibiotics.

Didn't you see the memo about the great eats on SteveH in the "Ticks Guide to Rural America" ?

May the bird of paradise fly up your nose. [JK]

 

[SteveH]

This has not been the best couple of months in my life, though I've had worse. Today I lost my entire Easter hatch. I took three birds, from pens widely seperated, and the Easter chicks never near any other bird. to the state lab for necropsies..

It'll be a few days before I hear from the lab, but it was buffalo gnats. Since we traded some chickens, I called my neighbor to warn him I was having problems. He called back to report the buffalo gnats were driving his brooder chicks crazy and two or three were dead; and that people in this area have lost entire flocks to them before. He said they crawl in their beaks though the nostrils and get in their airways. He was putting up a fan to blow the gnats clear of the brooder. Another aquaintence called his cousin, who reported previous problems and claimed chlorine bleach spayed in the coop repels them. I saw them on my dead and dieing, but thought they had gathered on them after they went down.

Of 52 birds, I lost 45, including every pure bred. I'm left with 2 EE hens, 4 ISA Brown hens, and a white Ameraucana/CX pullet; one ISA is not healthy. I've dusted the survivor's bodies with Sevin, and hung glass containers of chlorine with holes punched in the lids in the coop and breeding pen/tractor.

I do have 14 chicks inside that hatched last week, and 42 eggs in the bator.

 

[gryeyes]

O. M. G. Steve!

I am speechless.