Our flock adventures

[Bkaye]

Hey guys! Figured I’d start a thread about my flock.

We first got into chickens March of 2022. Our adventure started with 10 chicks (what we were told were Brahmas). We fell victim to instead it being an assortment of bantams. Once we got them home I noticed some had black skin and 5 toes, 2 had clean legs (one chick died the following day). We ended up with 3 silkies, 2 quail d’anvers, 3 golden laced Cochins and a porcelain D’uccle.

We really wanted Brahmas so we ended up ordering 15 from Meyers since it was cheaper to buy 15 instead of 10….the chicken math began.

About 12 weeks into our adventure we lost one of the cochins, we believe she had dwarfism. Then lost our female D’anver to an impacted crop.

That’s where our troubles began.

 

[TwoCrows]

So sorry you've had a rough start. Lots of us have too, myself included.

Do you have any photos of your flock, we'd love to see them!

 

[Bkaye]

I fell in love with the personality of the D’anvers and wanted more. After her passing we were left with a cockerel. So I searched out hatching eggs.

I purchased hatching eggs late august and hatched out 13 beautiful little quail danvers and they did great….until they didn’t. We hatched out 4 boys and 9 females. One female we lost early on not sure what the cause was.

Once they hit about 14 weeks old we started running into a lot of problems. We had one that has sort of eye infection we couldn’t get rid of, we removed puss daily from her eyes, applied terrymacin, put her on ammox and nothing worked. After a few weeks we made the hard decision to cull.

Around the same time we had a round worm infestation. I treated everyone with safe-guard. On my last day of treatment I had a little girl fall off the roosting bar. We was completely lame and couldn’t stand up. We started pushing vitamins thinking the worms caused a deficiency. We brought her in the house made a sling where she resided for the next few weeks. Around the same time we moved the girl inside we had coccidiosis out break. Treated with Corid to no avail. After Corid treatment I switched to a sulfa antibiotic, while on sulfa we lost our D’uccle and 2 of our D’anvers we hatched out in sept. Once the sulfa was done we switched to Endocox which seemed to of solved that problem.

After treating the girl inside with vitamins for a few weeks and seeing no improvements we decided we were going to bring her to our state lab for a necropsy. During our research we learned of a lab in Texas that we could send a blood sample to to test instead. We deduced to do that on the off chance it wasn’t nothing serious. We reached out to the company asked them a few questions and ordered our test. I requested to be tested for mycoplasma, Mareks and luekosis. We overnighted the test back. After a few days our results came in. Much to our fear it was confirmed we were now facing Mareks. Our diagnosis came the end of January.

A couple days before she went lame one of my cochins decided to go broody, we had given her 3 eggs. Of course when I got my diagnosis I felt those babies were doomed and I made the biggest mistake. Those babies hatched out February 5th and are almost 18 weeks old today.

Over the next few months after our diagnosis, one by one we started to lose our baby danvers. They would one by one go lame, get unsteady on their feet and eventually waste a way to the point we had to put them down. We currently only have 2 danvers left out of our September hatch. One Pullet and one cockerel.

Of course I have been devastated over everything and wanted to give up but at the same time wanted to try to breed for resistance and beat this nasty disease. So we started looking again. We found a breeder that bred danvers for resistance to Mareks so we figured we would give it one last shot. We ordered hatching eggs and hatched out 15 beautiful little babies for the Easter HAL. One baby died shortly after, it never fully observer the yolk sac.

In the last couple weeks we lost one baby to what I think was failure to thrive, another to a freak accident where she got stuck in the big girls feeder. Since then everything seemed to be going great!

 

[Bkaye]

I went out to my flock this past Sunday and noticed a lot of intestinal shed. Got them started right away in Endocox. Yesterday was their first full day. Last night I noticed 2 babies with rattling breathing, and wet sounding sneezes. No watering eyes, no facial swelling, no other symptoms.

Went out this morning and found where someone pooped a lot of blood off the roosting bar.


Ughhhh!!!!!

 

[Bkaye]

So sorry you've had a rough start. Lots of us have too, myself included.

Do you have any photos of your flock, we'd love to see them!

I do! Here’s a mix of our Brahmas, our orginial chickens as well as both groups of danvers hatched.

 

[Bkaye]

I forgot to mention we gave away 2 of our silkies really early on before we ever bought our first batch of eggs. So at that point we had our Brahmas, 1 danver, a D’uccle, 2 cochins and a Silkie.

Since our Mareks diagnosis both of our cochins and our Silkie have been great. We haven’t had a single problem with either one. Our cochins go broody monthly. As soon as we break them and they start laying they go brooch again

 

[Bkaye]

So I go out to my flock after work to check on everyone. Everyone seems to be doing better and slowly getting over the coccidosis. I’ve noticed a couple more babies with wet sneezes still no other symptoms other than rales. I’m starting to think that it’s infectious bronchitis.

I noticed one of my boys standing off in the corner looking pretty miserable. He’s started with the wet sounding sneeze too with a little bit of rales going on. I noticed he didn’t have anything in his crop which I thought was odd, all the others that’s had the wet sounding sneezes still have somewhat of an appetite. I started to look him over and opened his mouth. I was shocked with what I found. He had something stuck to the roof of his mouth. I couldn’t tell what it was. I grabbed a pair of tweezers to try to remove it. Doing so half broke off. At that point I decided to take a picture. Below is what broke off and the remaining piece in his mouth.

At this point I could tell he was in a lot of pain. I knew whatever it was needed to be removed. I took the tweezer and grabbed it again. When I did he shook his head and it came off. It was attached right beside the choanal slit.

After my husband got home we grabbed some magnifying glasses and determined an ant had bit him and was still hanging on. You could clearly see the ants face with the magnifying glass.

 

[TwoCrows]

So I go out to my flock after work to check on everyone. Everyone seems to be doing better and slowly getting over the coccidosis. I’ve noticed a couple more babies with wet sneezes still no other symptoms other than rales. I’m starting to think that it’s infectious bronchitis.

I noticed one of my boys standing off in the corner looking pretty miserable. He’s started with the wet sounding sneeze too with a little bit of rales going on. I noticed he didn’t have anything in his crop which I thought was odd, all the others that’s had the wet sounding sneezes still have somewhat of an appetite. I started to look him over and opened his mouth. I was shocked with what I found. He had something stuck to the roof of his mouth. I couldn’t tell what it was. I grabbed a pair of tweezers to try to remove it. Doing so half broke off. At that point I decided to take a picture. Below is what broke off and the remaining piece in his mouth.

View attachment 3531898View attachment 3531899


At this point I could tell he was in a lot of pain. I knew whatever it was needed to be removed. I took the tweezer and grabbed it again. When I did he shook his head and it came off. It was attached right beside the choanal slit.

View attachment 3531902

After my husband got home we grabbed some magnifying glasses and determined an ant had bit him and was still hanging on. You could clearly see the ants face with the magnifying glass.

Oh poor boy! Glad you got the thing out of there! Is he OK now?

 

[Bkaye]

Oh poor boy! Glad you got the thing out of there! Is he OK now?

He seems to be doing good now. He sneezed for a while but then went straight for food.

 

[TwoCrows]

He seems to be doing good now. He sneezed for a while but then went straight for food.

Great! I was concerned because some of these ants sting and release poison. Glad he's ok!