***OKIES in the BYC III ***

[Kassaundra]

I'm so sorry Robin, you have had a tough chicken year.

 

[BetsyOK]

Sorry for your loss. You work so hard to take care of your flock, it's hard to lose them--especially the favorites.

 

[Poco Pollo]

hi everyone- lost my beautiful porthos yesterday to pox- so now am looking into pox vaccine for the flock- it only comes in doses for 1000??? so once i order it, i only have 50 birds, if anyone will want the remainder?


this was porthos- RIP

I'm so sorry to hear your news. Was the abscess on his shoulder part of the pox?

 

[artsyrobin]

i don't know on the abscess, but i have read that pox can be on other parts of the body besides the face- i think the poor guy was just immune system deprived- he was such a beautiful guy, someone suggested the abscess may have been a tumor also

Thanks Kassandra- it has been a heck of a year- too many losses

 

[NanaKat]

hi everyone- lost my beautiful porthos yesterday to pox- so now am looking into pox vaccine for the flock- it only comes in doses for 1000??? so once i order it, i only have 50 birds, if anyone will want the remainder? this was porthos- RIP

(((Robin))) sure hate it when we lose a favorite. Seems you have had more losses of your favorites this year.

 

[artsyrobin]

Quote: sadly i don't think any are not favoirtes. ... LOL! i lose my heart to every darn one of them! :/

 

[Poco Pollo]

I brought a Cream Brabanter hen into the house last night. She was having heat-related problems, and I didn't think I could save her if she slept in the coop. I put her in a bucket/nest box with some towels and surrounded her with blankets and pillows in the living rom. I was trying to disguise the fact that she was there. She didn't make any noise, so I thought I'd fooled DH. Around 10:30 last night he said, "Honey. I think there's a chicken in the living room." I told him he was correct, and kept loading the dishwasher. This morning, she was well enough to go into an open-bottom cage on a shady grassy spot in the yard.

 

[NanaKat]

Lost a juvenile chick to a coyote last night. The bird was roosting in the barn instead of the brooder room. I miscounted when I shut the door. The young coyote came into the barn thru a stall gate , marked territory and caught his meal and ate it behind the barn. There was scat in the barn and on the road in front of the barn. The boys saw him down by the new pond this morning. They barracaded up the bottom of the gate with a 4x8 sheet of plywood and used a chain link panel across the top. That will allow air flow in the barn, yet prevent another raid. Looks like we will set some snap traps too.
Like Betsy, I use deep litter in the coops. It keeps the coops warmer in winter as the compost "cooks". Then in summer the finished litter goes to good use in the garden. The process starts over again.
This morning beginning at 6:30 am, I was shoveling chicken compost into 5 gallon buckets and dumping into the wheel barrow to haul it to the garden beds and on an area I want to set with shade grass. Each load was 5 five gallon buckets and I made 8 trips = 40 five gallon buckets! That's a lot of compost.
Finished up by 10:30 and made tacos for lunch. The chickens got frozen bags of shredded pea hulls as a cool snack.

 

[Ironsights]

NanaKat is there another name for hookers Hawks? I tried to look it up and as you can imagine, I found "hookers" and I found "hawks", but no hookers hawks.

 

[NanaKat]

NanaKat is there another name for hookers Hawks? I tried to look it up and as you can imagine, I found "hookers" and I found "hawks", but no hookers hawks.

Yes, It is a Harrier Hawk. This site has photos and a map showing the distribution. Oklahoma is the southern range of it's breeding habitat.
They are bigger than the Red-tailed. We have a pair in trees on the west 40 acres near two ponds.
http://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Northern_Harrier/id

and here is the Red-tailed info from Oklahoma...Info says her wing span is 56 inches.
http://oklahomabirdsandbutterflies.com/cat/3/5

Both have visited our pens.