oh boy, more birds on the way

nwfl

Songster
9 Years
Jan 4, 2011
314
14
103
Northwest Florida
We ordered 20 chicks Sunday that will come in March. The brooder is ready for them. Tuesday a woman asked us if we could take her 22 older chickens, some are roosters, bantams, really mixed flock of interbred mutts and some "showbirds". She lost the chicken bug. I dont know what to think. Anyway we are going to look them over Sunday. I have two isolation pens ready just in case. Most are older birds, some of their offspring. Sigh. You can imagine
 
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I'm glad you plan to quarantine them. While you are at HER place, make sure you thoroughly look them over before bringing them home. Even if you see one bird sneezing, snotty nostrils, bubbly eyes, coughing, look at droppings etc...kindly say "no thank you." Keep in mind that some respiratory diseases can be carried on your clothing/shoes. Ask her questions; have they had external parasites, treated for internal parasites, on any meds, any limping and so on. What are they being fed...,look at their waterers, any algae in them...be observant. Hope this helps. It'll save you time, grief and $$$ in the long run. Good luck.
 
You don't have to promise to keep them forever, do you? Take them, pick through them, and keep the best.

The rest and the unproductive, re-home or butcher.
 
I agree with above poster...when you go see them, put plastic bags on your shoes, so you can throw it away before you bring potential harm home to your flock...same with clothes, make sure you wash it before touching your girls. Check out where they are housed as well..conditions etc...

Good luck, that is a lot of chickens! LOL
 
this woman works at my husband's office. we always throw our shoes into a plastic bag,wash them and put on clean pair after going into other poultry situations. we will have on long sleeved shirts and do the same thing as well. it is interesting to check out other peoples set ups. she is into bredding pigeons now. i spoke with her on phone while in tractor supply getting some feed, a fresh bottle of ivermec and some syringes. we plan on checking out the setup and birds in the evening sunday and pretreating all the birds then picking them up the following weekend. she didnt know about ivermec. from our conversation some of her older birds have a leg/foot issue and i sspect leg scale mites. she had taken them to a vet and he recommended vetrx. we also plan on stopping by our asian customers to see if they need a few more birds in their orders on the way there. i understand most or all of the birds are bantams. i have standards and silkies but have been interested in bantams as a hobby. its always something. in any case, our family can always eat the bantam eggs and i will sell more of my layers eggs.
 
Well, we went out to the womans property today to look at the birds. they looked great! not what i expected at all. nice healthy group of birds. a few older cochins had foot issues but not major. we took all the eggs (41) and they are in my incubator now. she had a nice little setup enclosed, inside a chain link fenced yard in a neighborhood.

here is a small photo of the camera shy group.

75284_2012-01-08_124521.jpg
 
here's the latest. my husband picked up the birds and put them into the coop we had set up for them. he looked them over for some time and after i got got home we discussed future plans for the birds. i personally am not fond of uncontrolled breediing. these birds are a flock of 3 mutt and one bantam rooster some older pure and younger mutt offspring. there was a loss of original pure birds to hawks and coyotes. well im wondering how to organize these birds and we decided to move the black skinned and cochin birds into the silkie flock keep two roosters and divide the hens into 3 groups. standards will go into our layer flock eventually bantams will go into breeding pens with similar looking boys. there are some pretty barred chochin crosses and a buff cross group that will work. i am going to process birds for chinese new year this weekend and will put some culls from this group in the pen for that. although mostly healthy the birds have some goofy qualities that wont work for breeding stock other than meat. several of the small ladies do lay a large egg that will work in my egg sales.
 

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