Our introduction to keeping chickens, the high's, the lows and pics of our journey.

Date sort Score sort
Yeah, they give the vacs to chicks, with in the first 36 hours I think it is. They give the turkey strain, and the hope is, it will allow the chicks to develope an immunity should they come into contact with the chicken strain. The thing is now, you need to keep your vac's chicks away from any other birds for the first few months. I forget the suggest amount of time...

I think I have had one case of mareks.. I am not sure. BUT I think that with those wild turkeys always in the yard, may be the reason why I have never had a problem. I hope it is at least. The reason why I say think, is that I had a silkie, pretty little thing, started with what I assumed was a leg injury. I was sure it was a slipped tendon, never had the one leg one way, one leg the other, but after reading mareks info, there are so many manifestations... Maybe it was mareks. i don't know. The only one in two years that I have had birds. All the birds I have here since I started, have never shown symptoms. And that particular silkie was hatched here by one of my hens. None of the other 3 silkies of that hatch had anything... SO, I don't know...
 
Your right, it is a wide arc of symptoms. A breeder we got some eggs from was certain the vets were wrong about our case saying it was respiratory disease, but I am leaning towards a bird vet over the egg lady.

We have began work on our plan. As our last hatch (non vac) works its way down the conga line of brooders and coops we will be able to disinfect ready for the next hatch (vac) that is due soon. That way the two should not meet for the first couple of months.

This give our main coop a break for cleaning and disinfecting over the winter.

In theory, by spring, the coop is hopefully clean and disease free, and our two cycles of hatches are moving in.

I also grabbed a couple of recent shots of our last hatch, just over 3 weeks old now. They are getting some sunshine in the mobile coop. My mate gave me a hard time about putting roll on lawn in there. I explained that the bedding it $39 a block and this was $7.50 a roll. If I shopped around I could get it cheaper. If I was not so worried about then trekking where the old flock had spent time they would go straight onto our normal lawn, but we didn't want to risk it over $15!

An early shot with out two sons.



They are in there, lurking!



Rosie, RIR growing some really nice auburn colour.


Lucky, LS. He was my first assist hatch. Look at those thick legs in action!


Rosie again


Milo, RIR roo. Great nature, going to be a sad day when he starts to crow.


He too is developing a really nice deep red feather.


I didn't think too much of the RIR from google images, but seeing them in real life the colour is really striking. Glad we hatched a couple.
 
Your boys are adorable! And of course so are the little chickies :) I have a rhode island red roo (was suppose to be a female). His feathers have the most beautiful shine to them. He's also the most talkative of all our chickens, chatters almost continually. Not much of a crower though, very rarely compared to the other boys.
 
Can blame her! Can you see about de-crowing? I know thee is a lot of yes/no talk bout it, but it might be an option if you've a vet around who knows how to do it... Safely. I couldn't imagine not having my crowers. Lol. I've an injured one in the garage... Garage is attached. He starts his crap, I mean crowing at 4 AM.
 
Hahahaha. A friend has some land and two roosters, they make a heap of noise to impress 6 hens. My boys say they are confused, because they crow all day long, not just in the morning.

You are the second person that has mentioned de-crowing. I did not take the first seriously, but I may check it out. Sort of seems a bit un natural to me, but Alicia would cough the money up straight away, probably without me knowing!
 
Been reading up on it, seems it might not be something for me.

I have found that there are ways to keep roo's in our situation, but it involves more work and diligence to have a separate enclosure for the lad, one that is muffled and light proof.

We could give that a try and see how we go when the time comes down the track.

Thanks for the idea though.
 

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