Red Rum .... I mean ..... Red Bum

[darkbrahmamama]

I've been putting the blu-kote on her about twice a week. Even though I haven't seen any bugs on them nor signs of bugs, & she's the only one with a bald & red bum, EVERYONE got dusted with Permethrin. - figured why not. I seriously think that chicken dusting should be an Olympic sport! I even treated their stall & the nesting boxes for bugs with the UltraShield .... AGAIN & freshened up their dust bath area with more DE. There hasn't been any change yet ....

In my searching for trying to figure out what could be doing it, I happened to find this http://heedleyshens.wordpress.com/2012/01/29/guess-what-chicken-butt/

Looks pretty much exactly the same. I have also been thru all of the possibilities. I know that she mentioned that sometimes the feathers can go "haywire", & I wonder if that might be a possibility for LG? Could it be, that between the molt everyone when thru, & the very cold & long winter here in the North East, that when it started warming up her "feathers got confused"? The only other thing I'm learning at is that there's a hen in the mixture that thinks her butt feathers, & hers alone, taste really, really good .... :-/

I'm thinking when the blu-kote is gone .... I'll try some bag balm & see what happens ........

 

[subhanalah]

Update?

 

[darkbrahmamama]

It's no longer red, it's now purple, as well as are a couple pair of jeans! I've never understood why it's called Blu-Kote, should be Purpl-Kote! Still bald, no change really.

Yesterday I found a soft shelled egg that looked exactly like the one in this post:

https://www.backyardchickens.com/t/758141/really-really-deformed-eggs

When I first saw it in the nesting box my heart started racing & I thought it was either an extremely large worm, or worse, somehow part of a chicken. I put on a pair of gloves, pulled it out, & realized it was a soft shelled egg, the whites were still with it, the yolk was broken in the nesting box. No clue which one of the 13 hens that are laying did it for sure. I don't think that it was from one of the 8 that are 3 months old ..... brahma's usually don't start laying until 6 to 8 months of age. Being the fact that when she first started laying last year, she started at least a month before the others, she layed a good amount of soft shelled eggs, some days she'd lay 2 eggs, & she was a little gimpy (as if crampy), I think that it was her.

She's been like this for around 6 months now ..... the only odd behavior is once in a while, when I give them their BOSS/meaties/scratch mix at night to get them in, she'll take off running out of the stall before I get everyone in & get the door locked, & she runs as if she has a mission. No clue why, or where she plans on going, but it's just a little odd.

 

[subhanalah]

Have you checked the roosts at night about an hour after the chickens go to bed? Have you removed the nesting material and looked for bugs crawling around?
Some mites don't live on the birds, but in the coop/nest boxes and feed at night.

ETA: she sounds very stressed out.

 

[darkbrahmamama]

I clean the stall twice a week. Having worked with horses for about 10 years, & owned them for 18, I'm use to cleaning stalls a lot. Right now they're in one of the extra horse stalls, 10 x 10, 17 nesting boxes, a lot of roosting bars, very open with a lot of air so it's never wet. A few times a year I clean it well & spray everything down with the UltraShield EX fly spray. I'd say as soon as it warms up, once in the summer, & once before I gets cold. I rotate the bedding when I clean the stall as well. I'll start by cleaning their dusting area - it always has DE earth in it, & it now has some permethrin dust in it as well. I'll move the bedding into that area as I'm cleaning, & put the fresh bedding (which is pine shavings) down at the opposite area.

Most of the time she acts fine. Happily eating & hanging out with the others. It's only once in a while she takes off running out of the stall. But usually she goes right in with the others. Her behavior isn't as if she's stressed or anything .... except for she's not all that happy when I paint her butt purple!

I know pure cedar bedding is bad for chickens, should it be OK if I mix a little in with the pine shavings? & I usually add the safeguard goat de-wormer in their water. Is there another de-wormer that I should use for them? With my horse, I deworm him once in the summer with Quest, & once in the winter with a double does of strongid for tapeworms. His fecal tests have always come back clean. I didn't know if something like that should be done for the chickens as well? Is it recommended to ever double dose them? Maybe, in everything I'm doing, I'm missing something simple.

 

[casportpony]

I don't think your fly spray has enough of the active ingredients to be effective on mites. On the bird, maybe, but not the stall and nesting boxes.

-Kathy

 

[casportpony]

As for the egg, I think you should give the hen that laid that extra calcium orally. Of course one should always have free choice oyster shell, but sometimes that's not enough. You asked about worming... I worm with Safeguard liquid for goats at .2ml to .5ml per 2.2 pound 3-5 days in a row (5 days at the higher dose if I suspect capillary worms). One could also use Safeguard or Panacur paste, the dose is the same as the liquid.

-Kathy

 

[subhanalah]

Can you try neem oil on the stall and roosts?

 

[WthrLady]

It looks like a prolapsed vent to me although I can't see the picture well. Is the red tissue hanging out of the vent? Please look at this thread to see if it is what you are seeing: https://www.backyardchickens.com/t/...of-possible-prolapsed-rectum/20#post_13829772

If this is not the same it could be a tumor, but a better pic might help.

Ditto that

 

[darkbrahmamama]

I guess I'm pretty confident with the UltraShield EX. Last year there was a nest of starlings in our blue bird condo. I'm not a fan of starlings, so I kicked them out. When I went to clean the house it was filled with mites. Since we use the UltraShield on the hunting dogs before they go out, I grabbed it & sprayed the bird house with it. It killed everything & I was able to clean the house out. It's listed for lice. That's why I use it a few times a year in their stall, roosting bars, & nesting boxes. I don't directly spray them, not to the point where it soaks them, but they often get lightly misted when I'm spraying the horses.

I also use Poultry Protector, far more often than the UltraShield EX. I buy the concentrate, mix it to the strongest recommendation, & spray their stall, nesting box, & them with that. I spray them quite well with that.

I don't want to sound like "I do everything I can & there's nothing left to do when it comes to bugs" or anything, but being the fact that the chickens coop is actually a stall that's in the barn with the horses, I make sure I stay on top of the parasite issue because the last thing that I want is to have to treat 8 horses, & 2 minis for lice & mites. There's always more that can be done, no matter what you do.

I can get neem oil from work, pretty much everything I get for the chickens I get from work. I know it's toxic to cats & dogs, how safe is it for chickens?

They do have chicken grit & oyster shells available at all times. I have 4 feeders, 2 with Hearty Hen pellets, 2 with Southern States lay crumbles, & each feeder sits on a bucket & has a small dish attached to it .... 2 have grit, the other 2 have oyster shells. If I was 100% sure what one of the 13 older hens layed the soft shelled egg, I'd give her more calcium. But there have only been 2, maybe 3 eggs max, that were soft shelled this year. One being the oddly shaped one. They were found in the nesting boxes, no chickens around. I just know who it wasn't, Thelma the broody & Sweetie the one recovering from a broken leg (they're together in their own stall with the 5 chicks).

I put 3 CC safeguard pr gallon of water. Again, with them being with the horses & pooping where the horses graze, I don't want them to spread anything. I guess I could do the same for them as I do for my horse, & rotate with another de-wormer .........