Shadrach's Ex Battery and Rescued chickens thread.

[Shadrach]

Cooler today at 21C with a shower or two this morning and again after I had left the field. Odd to say this after the rain we've had so far this year, but the ground could do with rain.
Three hours today with the person from the flats with me again.
Fret is either healing or she's learning to cope better. She ran today. A bit ungainly but she used both feet. She also scratched out a dust bath for herself. I gave her a half dose of Ibuprofene this afternoon.

 

[Sally PB]

How did your friend enjoy the outing?

 

[MrsNorthie]

Yes I was so bruised and bleeding trying all the tricks to get the toms to behave. Every time my back was turned, wham both feet.

Yes, we want to avoid that. Turkeys legs must be really powerful and can do a fair bit of damage if they are motivated.

They are a wild bunch at only a few days old, they started jumping up on the heater day 1, so different than chicks.

 

[MrsNorthie]

Good morning! We have 7 chicks and one egg I will be leaving until the evening.

Congratulations! They are so cute! Moms look well and pleased with their chicks. (edited to remove an errant apostrophe..LOL)

 

[MrsNorthie]

Yes hopefully! If I'm lucky they'll co raise them because they kept trying to sit on one nest together. They get along really well so fingers crossed.

I have 2 doing that now. They were only sitting during the day, but they have started staying over night the last 2 nights, with one in the nest box next to them. I am going to have to separate them tomorrow night, but we decided to let them hatch and deal with it by doubling their space, again. They only have 10 eggs between the 3 of them. After this lot, though, we will be breaking any broody cycles for a year or 2.

 

[HiEverybirdy]

On arthritis: AGC went from cute and wobbly to alarmingly unsteady earlier this year. He started rocking back on his hocks occasionally and roosting on the coop floor.

He had zero foot abrasions, hot joints, obesity, or neuro, digestive, or respiratory symptoms. He had no trouble getting up, walking, running, dancing, jumping, or standing on one foot to scratch his head. He just had posterior balance issues.

After hours of research, observation, and homegrown diagnostics (including testing his knees with support sleeves sized for a chihuahua), I concluded it was his hips, possibly dysplasia/faulty connective tissue.

We began the following regimen, and while I wasn't feeling optimistic about his future, it was a wonderful surprise how much stability he regained within days of starting the glucosamine.

• In the morning, he knows to hang back for his special tablespoon of scratch dribbled with 0.5 ML of glucosamine/MSM/turmeric (sorry to link to stupid AMZN but couldn’t find the brand elsewhere).
  • I tried adding salmon oil for omegas, but he didn’t like it.
• When he’s stiff (about once a month), he gets a 3-5-day course of aspirin, which is 1/6 of a 325mg aspirin rolled into a raisin.
  • Ideally it's in the a.m. and p.m., but it’s harder to get him alone in the evenings, and he’ll give the raisins away in a heartbeat, so often he'll only have aspirin in the a.m.
• I made adaptive upgrades to his coop: he now sleeps on a gymnastics mat, and the feeder & waterer are on shelves so he doesn’t have to bend down as much.

• He gets some warm epsom-salt soaks, since he’s very comfortable being handled, though the soaks are mostly for relief from leg-feather issues.

Here's an additional link on arthritis I found helpful:
http://scottsdaleveterinaryclinic.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/5/2016/07/AvianArthritis.doc.pdf

 

[HiEverybirdy]

On mystery limps:

We once had a pullet, Yolko, go lame with no obvious injuries or tender joints. However, she did have other symptoms I didn’t take seriously as a novice chicken keeper: a couple soft-shell eggs kicked off diarrhea around the time she became lame.

She grew progressively more lame and passed away 2 weeks later. If I had it to do over, I might treat with antibiotics early and aggressively, since one of the suspected culprits was an internal infection pressing on nerves to make her limp.

Her symptoms also followed the path of poisoning, which would be easy to link to the only green thing popping up at the time, Star of Bethlehem. She had an adventurous palate, and Star of Bethlehem looks just like grass. It was her first spring, and as a brooder baby, she wasn't a very experienced forager.

After her death, I dug every Star of Bethlehem corm out of the ground in the chickens’ range and stopped taking any chicken poop problems lightly, as that’s often the first sign you have of a chicken feeling ill. They can fake-eat skillfully, but the poop doesn’t lie.

A favorite photo of Yolko. She passed at just 9 months. She was the head hen of her group, and while 2nd-in-line Lorraine stepped in, we all still miss Yolko.

 

[Perris]

After this lot, though, we will be breaking any broody cycles for a year or 2.

good luck with that

 

[fluffycrow]

Genetics play their part. What is quite apparent that a bad dad doesn't necessarily produce bad sons and the son's sons haven't been bad either in my experience. It works the other way to. There may well be inherited qualities and for many physical characteristics someone with a good knowledge of the subject a good breeder for example will know what the chicks will look like, weight,shape and plumage, just from the parents.

The environment is everything else, no matter how one proportions it. The environment includes the keeper of course. What the envronment can do is provide a solution.

Mums and Dads for reasons unknown don't expect to have their 40 year old son living with them and having sex with the sisters, or even with mum. Most creatures seem to know this. You get the kids up to fighting weight, pack them a bag and show them the door.
Jungle fowl still do this as did the feral Fayumies my friend kept in Catalonia. Showing them the door isn't going to work if there's no where else to live. We humans have discovered this. Showing them the door with nowhere to live and no others of their species to mate with tends to produce rogue cockerels. One definitely doesn't want that in a back yard.

One has to have realistic expectations and a plan of action for when things go wrong.
Free ranging, nature helps sort these problems out with deaths assistance.
I got to the point where I appreciated this. I've had two and three males in a clutch and they formed a gang and were a complete pain in the arse for everyone. The Goshawk, or weasel, sorted most of these problems out and I might be left with one rather more sober prospective rooster.
Not everyone feels comfortable with the nature option or doesn't keep their chickens in conditions that enable nature to operate in the normal fashion.
I'm in this position currently with the two juvenile males and the probability is they'll get eaten.

I've never had a chick attack me, chick being any age until mother finishes raising them. I've had very few juvenile males attack me. It's mostly been full grown roosters and not many. People tell me I'm exceptionally calm around the animals and that makes a lot of difference. The right clothing at all times makes a lot of difference (very few people I know get this as a habit) The really difficult thing is to never, never completely trust any of them. Do not bend down to them as if you might when stroking a cat oblivious to the surroundings. Always be aware and concentrated on what you are doing.

Could you go a bit more into detail about appropriate clothing? That is not something I do when observing and sitting with the chickens.

My behaviour with every group differs. The main free range group, I'm the most mindful of, and follow most of what you say. With Big Red, however, I'm relatively careless. I'd be lying if I said I don't trust him completely, which goes both ways, since he comes to me for wattle scratches, and flies to my arm to preen

 

[Perris]

That is not something I do when observing and sitting with the chickens.

me neither. I wore something last week that really freaked them out for no reason visible to me (they have better/different eyesight than/ from us) but otherwise they seem to recognize me whatever I'm wearing, from PJs to winter hibernation gear - as long as my head is visible. They recognize one another by comb size and shape so I imagine headgear could make a difference; I rarely wear any.