New member in the Chicago area

Date sort Score sort
vjdanko

vjdanko

Chirping
5 Years
Feb 10, 2014
23
1
62
Worth, IL 60482
Hello All!
Glad to be here making my introduction.
My name is VJ and I live in one of the suburbs of Chicago.
I found this awesome site while researching the issue of keeping chicken in urban areas.
I know the Village of Worth allows for two chickens or any other poultry per property but I know that people keep more than that.
I am very excited to plan starting my own little flock this summer although, after browsing the Emergencies section of the forum, I started being a little more hesitant about the idea. I thought that food, water and shelter was all chickens needed but based on the chicken health issues people had, it appears that chickens can be a handful. I remember when my grandparents raised chickens in Poland, I don't think they ever had any health problems with their chickens. Do you guys think that since most chicks in the US come from breeders and there is a lot of inbreeding going on, that this could be causing health issues in chickens?
Anyway, I am willing to give it a try but maybe I'll start with raising quail since I haven't heard of any serious health issues with them.
 
Hi there,
frow.gif
and welcome to BYC!

Don't let the emergency section scare you away from chickens. That is like going to the hospital and watching all the sick people. LOL Yes, chickens get sick. I don't think it has anything to do with inbreeding necessarily. There are a lot of sick chickens out there. But if you practice good hygiene and bio security, be extremely careful when bringing in new birds, (this is where many diseases are brought into the coop) start with health stock, don't over crowd your birds, feed them well and give them a nice airy ventilated coop and run, you won't have too much trouble. Yes, eventually chickens die. But they can live a very long healthy life. It is up to you and how you keep them and whether or not they are healthy to begin with.

So on this note, I wish you all the best in all your adventures in life and I do hope you dive into the chicken biz!!
smile.png
 
welcome to BYC a lot of health problems come from people not knowing the rules so to speak, including myself. if you do your research and it sounds like you are ., you shouldnt have problems. in my case i added new hens to a existing flock without quarantine. so i had a healthy flock and gave them sick chickens .
 
Hello :frow and Welcome To BYC! Good point TwoCrows made, the BYC Emergencies section is like the hospital, it is where all the sick birds are... also many of the BYC members have chickens mostly as pets, so they are more likely to worry about and try to treat problems that our grandparents would have just culled and eaten the birds for, they didn't have the time to or inclination to treat sick or special needs birds. X3, a lot of health problems you see talked about on BYC are related to bio-security, people are a lot more mobile now and more likely/able to get chickens from all over rather than have their own closed a flock and just raise their own chicks for years. There are the birds that are bred for one extreme or another that makes a bird more likely to have problems that you didn't have 50 years ago, size, shape, etc or the commercial hybrids ie they are bred to lay lots of eggs in a relatively short period of time and then be replaced, they aren't bred for longevity, they seem to make up a lot of the birds with reproductive problems you see in the Emergencies forum...
 

If you are concerned about health issues, just vaccinate them for as many diseases that they can be. The only disease I actually wouldn't vaccinate for is ILT because the vaccine causes the disease. But even if you vaccinate, your chickens can get sick, they just won't get the stuff they are vaccinated for. A lot of hatchery chicks are vaccinated for certain diseases.
 

New posts New threads Active threads

Back
Top Bottom