Castlewood
Songster
Hey community!
For all the years of drought and endless sun beating down on Central Texas, this year has proved to be a wet one (at least for Texas standards). The enclosed run for my flock is around 12'x30'. Nearly half of that is covered stays dry. The remainder however gets pretty mucked up when we get a hard rain (which thanks to early year storms and now hurricanes making landfall seems to be the only kind of rain we get). The uncovered ground is mostly made up of topsoil, hay, and oak leaves that fall into the run naturally. It takes a while to dry out because it's also fairly shaded. It gets plenty of light but not much unobstructed. So on a day like today when we received a good 2 hours of downpour in the morning and another hour in the afternoon - I'm looking at a solid 2 days before things fully dry out.
I go out after the rain stops and rake up the hay into piles which the chickens seem to love. They like scratching through it and redistributing the pile across the run. It also expose a number of bugs that came out due to the rainfall. All of this to finally arrive to my question. I've had what I believe are a few deaths in the flock this year from coccidia. Is a damp run the breeding ground for this villain? Is my flock at additional risk when their run has a couple days of wetness to shake off?
For all the years of drought and endless sun beating down on Central Texas, this year has proved to be a wet one (at least for Texas standards). The enclosed run for my flock is around 12'x30'. Nearly half of that is covered stays dry. The remainder however gets pretty mucked up when we get a hard rain (which thanks to early year storms and now hurricanes making landfall seems to be the only kind of rain we get). The uncovered ground is mostly made up of topsoil, hay, and oak leaves that fall into the run naturally. It takes a while to dry out because it's also fairly shaded. It gets plenty of light but not much unobstructed. So on a day like today when we received a good 2 hours of downpour in the morning and another hour in the afternoon - I'm looking at a solid 2 days before things fully dry out.
I go out after the rain stops and rake up the hay into piles which the chickens seem to love. They like scratching through it and redistributing the pile across the run. It also expose a number of bugs that came out due to the rainfall. All of this to finally arrive to my question. I've had what I believe are a few deaths in the flock this year from coccidia. Is a damp run the breeding ground for this villain? Is my flock at additional risk when their run has a couple days of wetness to shake off?
