North Carolina

[DonkeyJac]

The warning includes Surry County, and it is moving very fast

 

[missnu01]

Not trying to hijack anything but I cant seem to get any responses in the other thread--so figured some of my NC ers would help....





well first I noticed Zibby- a pullet about 14 weeks was giving to one side--thought maybe she was injured--No she was fine just wobbles to the left
next day sunday--I find her in the run panting and not moving much- brought her in gave her AC, yogurt and water all day- that evening took her to the run in a large pen so nobody could bother her and she starts walking normal..ok  she's fine,  check again she's on the top roost with all other 11 birds..

Next day go check the chicks and I notice she is alone as usual but kinda hiding under egg box in shade.  She sees me and comes out like the rest waiting for treats and there  it is---my young bantam roo starts chasing her--it looks like he is trying to attack her and I realize maybe he's trying to mate her.

poor girl cant move without him chasing her...   she is hiding from him...some of the larger hens come over and stand there so he cant go under.

what is going on?   mating?  is he thinking she is the weakest and trying to kill her?  why only her if it's mating....I dont even have eggs yet and the young roos started crowing about 2 weeks ago.. average age in the run is 13-14 weeks.. this young roo is smaller than her --shes a wyondette and he's a tiny bantam.   I have 2 other roos one is bantam and othe other a huge barred rock--they aren't actinglike this.  I keep checking on them but I dont know what's going on other than Sassy- the bantem is chasing Zibby and her only   Please help...angie    this is an update----I have seen the large barred rock mount one of the leg horns so I guess it's mating time---I dont think anything made contact but Zibby is still the one getting chased...she doesn't come out much at all.   Last night she was going up in the roost and the big roo ran up there and jumped on her...she laid there like she was dead.   she seems fine this am but still hiding.   do hens signal when they are ready to mate?? or does the roo just do what he feels like??

well sometimes the hens will squat low to the ground and sort of stick their wings out, to allow a rooster to mate with them. But often times roosters do what they want to do. A good rooster won't go after immature hens, but some are dummies that don't care about but one thing...

 

[missnu01]

I collect eggs everyday, but it's super hot.
Has anyone had eggs not being sat on just start developing when it's 95-100 outside?
My only fertile eggs would be duck, but I'd hate to unknowingly give someone a duck egg that had started.
I accidently opened a turkey egg that started in the frying pan, it was awful!

There was a lady who said she left her silkie eggs on the counter with temps over 80- she set them a week later and they hatched a week early....

last year I was lazy about collecting our duck eggs and once August came around you were likely to cracked a duck egg that was all runny yolked...no babies, no veins, just you could tell it had gotten hot. It looked like when you cracked open a clear egg that has been in an incubator for a few days. I never hatched any eggs out from our ducks, but I know that if something disrupts early incubation whatever veining or whatever will disappear. That is why sometimes you think you have a blood ring but there's a lot of veins but when you check again in a week there is on I oust a blood ring and no veins. So I'm thinking they probably were partly incubated, and then in the fridge long enough to totally die, getting rid of the evidence and leaving you with a runny egg mess. Lol. So yeah it can happen. An egg doesn't know where the heat is coming from...it just knows 99 degrees is 99 degrees. Be it a hen, the sun, a lamp, an incubator, a dehydrator, an electric skillet, a bra... etc. Lol.
My friend from sc sent me some bantam eggs from her neighbors flock and they all showed up with what looked like 2-3 day veining. They of course all got blood rings and died... but hot weather will incubate your eggs for you. I wouldn't try to hatch eggs using the power of the sun I don't think. Mighty unreliable. But I bet if you put a clutch of eggs inside a small black rubber maid tote and sat it in the yard in 85-90 degree weather all day everyday then in maybe a month some of the eggs would hatch. I say a month because eggs will still hatch when incubated at a lower temp, just takes longer and it wouldn't be quite hot enough during the night and that would slow things down some... Also would be hard to keep the inside of the tote from getting too hot. Anyway here Is side am rambling on again. I'm obviously feeling chatty today. Maybe someone will call me.

 

[missnu01]

Thanks everyone who have tried helping me with my poor hen. The "egg" we thought we felt was just a hard build up of stool. I had given her several baths and she seemed more relaxed, but no egg. I felt around again today and we felt nothing, but pelvic bone... She is happy, eating with vigor, and drinking plenty of water. We have ruled out Mereks because she has no other symptoms and every other bird is completely normal.. Mereks would spread terribly and she is the only one. Just out of the blue.. 

However we do think we figured out what has possibly happened to her legs. I was not home when this all happened (was at my dad's) but my mom says this hen was the only one missing from the coop the night before and found her in the morning like she was (not being able to move her legs). We think she was attacked by some animal or fell and hurt herself some how. There are no puncture wounds, but that doesn't mean anything. We think she has hurt something and is not able to use her legs... 

She's not in any pain though! (from what we can tell). She isn't jerking or showing normal signs of pain when we have been handling her, and it almost appears as if she couldn't feel it when we were moving her legs and trying to see if she was egg bound. Poor thing.. if she doesn't pass in the next day or so and doesn't get any better, we think we will just have to put her out of her misery.   Its not fair to keep her like this if she isn't in good shape.

also just an fyi mates is super tricky, because you very well might have only one bird show any symptoms of it. A lot of birds carry it and as such are basically immune. Also chickens don't have much of a pain response even if something Is terribly wrong. I had one just about get skinned alive and didn't seem to notice. She recovered and now you can't even tell anything happened, had a good number of buff orps lay their insides along with a huge egg in the nest box (was feeding too much protein - now I know) and they would walk around the yard trailing their innards behind them as if it was a regular day. We of course culled them. Chickens nervous systems seem to be somewhat stunted...or rather perfect for a common prey animal.
When they Caponize roosters they make 2 incisions in their back by their wings, reach in, fish out their testicles and then let them go again. During which the bird doesn't squeal or twitch or anything. I don't say this meaning that birds don't suffer, or feel pain, I don't know what they feel I have never been a bird, but they definitely have little to no reaction of physical pain.

 

[missnu01]

 
Thanks everyone who have tried helping me with my poor hen. The "egg" we thought we felt was just a hard build up of stool. I had given her several baths and she seemed more relaxed, but no egg. I felt around again today and we felt nothing, but pelvic bone... She is happy, eating with vigor, and drinking plenty of water. We have ruled out Mereks because she has no other symptoms and every other bird is completely normal.. Mereks would spread terribly and she is the only one. Just out of the blue.. 

However we do think we figured out what has possibly happened to her legs. I was not home when this all happened (was at my dad's) but my mom says this hen was the only one missing from the coop the night before and found her in the morning like she was (not being able to move her legs). We think she was attacked by some animal or fell and hurt herself some how. There are no puncture wounds, but that doesn't mean anything. We think she has hurt something and is not able to use her legs... 

She's not in any pain though! (from what we can tell). She isn't jerking or showing normal signs of pain when we have been handling her, and it almost appears as if she couldn't feel it when we were moving her legs and trying to see if she was egg bound. Poor thing.. if she doesn't pass in the next day or so and doesn't get any better, we think we will just have to put her out of her misery.   Its not fair to keep her like this if she isn't in good shape.

it might be some toxin she found while free ranging or the feed might have had mold. 

mold toxicity also causes the birds to become paralyzed. I had 2 of my first chickens end up following the mareks symptoms, but have had over 100 birds since and never seen one sign...turned out the bottom of the feeder was moldy when I finally let it run out. I used to be an overworried chicken keeper. Feeder always filled, etc... but it's good to let It run out every once in awhile because in summer things can go bad fast...lol. They were hatch mates I had bought with their broody. They were all feathered but she was saying game bantam mix and as such wanted to mother them forever. 8 chick's and the mom and 1 of the chicks started off limping...and limped for weeks...then started to seem to get better and then another one started limping, and re they were both limping, just on one leg, then they got to where they couldn't even hop around, then they went scissor legged and couldn't control their heads. We culled them and have never seen anything like It again. I was sure It was mareks. ..but was not going to send them off to find out. So right after culling those 2 I found they mold... then got 40 some chick's and hoped for the best. Haven't lost another chick to anything except predation since.
So mareks isn't always the answer especially when there are numerous poultry issues and diseases that all have the exact same symptoms. Basically you have to send the carcass off for a necropsy, and even then most adult chickens will test positive for mareks, even if that wasn't what killed. I read an article that said most chickens have been exposed to mareks by the time they reach adulthood and will test positive, but that does nothing except skew the statistics, because you still don't know if this was one of a billion chickens living with the disease or one of a billion that has succumbed to the disease. Nobody really seems to know. But if there are area billion chickens walking around live healthy happy and infected makes me think it isn't the killer it is sometimes portrayed to be. So even a necropsy showing positive for mareks doesn't mean that mareks was the issue...

 

[missnu01]

You're going to have to separate the Roos for a while. Some of them choose a favorite hen and just "attack" them. I don't let roosters get to any of my pullets until they start laying eggs and have a good body size.


She may have gotten a sprained leg while getting mounted. They can also get crushed while mating.

sounds like I need to build a separate coop and run----uuggghhhhh

or you can tether your roosters like game fowl and let the hens pick who they are going to go with. I've though about that myself. Filling my field with roosters tethered to barrels and just seeing how It all turns out. I would be afraid to leave hens just nesting on the ground in barrels though... maybe game fowl are way tougher and chase off whatever comes to eat their hens...not sure though. Don't know that much about it. But I see it a lot and it always makes me wonder.

 

[starlingdaly]

Yeah, I'm pretty sure it's a Silver Spangled Hamburg.  The comb is throwing me off because it's totally flat, but I guess it will stick up the top as it grows?  I have a hunch it's going to be a male, we will see.
The cockerel I was stuck on is a Delaware roo.

Hamburgs should have rose combs so it sounds spot on!

 

[ramirezframing]

Quote: or you can tether your roosters like game fowl and let the hens pick who they are going to go with. I've though about that myself. Filling my field with roosters tethered to barrels and just seeing how It all turns out. I would be afraid to leave hens just nesting on the ground in barrels though... maybe game fowl are way tougher and chase off whatever comes to eat their hens...not sure though. Don't know that much about it. But I see it a lot and it always makes me wonder.

Had a friend lose several of his game roosters to this very method. The birds couldn't get away from the predator, since they were tied in a spot.

 

[paintedChix]

1 black frizzle EE- 2 yr - looks scruffy from the rooster
1 blue rumpless EE- 2 yr -
2 Golden Lakenvelders- 2 yr- white egg-
1 Golden Lakenvelder- pullet- white egg-
1 black Sumatra- pullet- white/cream egg-
1 splash- pullet- OE-
1 black/red pullet- brown egg-
1 red EE- blue/aqua egg-
1 blue EE pullet- light green egg-
1 black EE pullet- light green egg-
1 small black pullet- brown egg-
1 black Bandy pullet- white egg-

I will also do package deals if you buy 3 or more. PM me if interested.

I would be interested in some - the blue rumpless EE, splash pullet - 0E, red EE, blk EE - lt grn egg...

And WHAT is a Bandy pullet?

 

[bantambury]

@Coop Scoop Boogie im VERY interested in your 2 golden lakenvelder hens. how often do they lay? they are such a pretty breed!