Silkie thread!

[Fancychooklady]

Yeah I might just stop. What do you normally feed Silkie's that are not in lay?

I mix a free range scratch with a micro pellet game bird grower. The pellet is 22% and only 1.8% calcium, but by mixing 50/50 with the scratch it comes out at roughly 17% protein. Once they are at lay I leave bowls of calcium carbonate in the coop for free take. Purine have a ' flock raiser ' that is suitable for all age groups.

 

[Alex1010]

I mix a free range scratch with a micro pellet game bird grower. The pellet is 22% and only 1.8% calcium, but by mixing 50/50 with the scratch it comes out at roughly 17% protein. Once they are at lay I leave bowls of calcium carbonate in the coop for free take. Purine have a ' flock raiser ' that is suitable for all age groups.

Yeah I'm definitely going to look for the Flock Raiser

 

[QueenMisha]

Corn has very little nutritional value and popcorn may well lead to impacted crop.
I also use chlorsig eye drops in my birds, swollen eyes can be a symptom of mycoplasma and if you have had mycoplasma in your flock any birds that survive are likely to be carriers and can become symptomatic at any time . In saying that sinus problems, blocked nares and scratches or injuries to the eye can cause similar swelling. I would still be quarantining him, just to be on the safe side.

http://www.browneggblueegg.com/Article/CornAndSilkies.html


If you have Terramycin in the powder form you can use that. I can only find the ointment on this site, but the vetrycin is also said to be a good product to hep with relieving the irritation.

http://www.jefferspet.com/categories/cattle/health-wellness/eye-ear-care-1

Interesting. If it has such poor nutritional value why is it used as a main ingredient for so many feeds? Is it just cheap and available? I did read a study saying that it was quite easy for birds to digest compared to some feedstuffs but I would have expected lack of useful nutrition to trump digestability.

My flock is MS and MG tested positive. Since last year. Idiot me didn't quarantine birds from a show. Unfortunately that bars me from selling any birds but I've found symptoms to be mild enough to continue my own personal projects and breedings until I move to my own property and am able to start a disease-free flock of breeders. I have found studies that show Baytril can reduce chances of egg transmission to almost negligible (far into the >0 decimals) so I will eventually be exporting to another growing area some hatching eggs produced from medicated hens but that project is still far in the future. Regardless this male has just not been in my flock long enough to develop symptoms; issue started about week and a half ago, whatever Myco strains my flock has takes usually two and a half to three weeks to show themselves.

Agh didn't get the Terramycin powder from work today and can't find my old stuff. There was a big long mess and my boss was sick so I had to call my other boss to run over and open up the shop so I could get feed... in a heck of a hurry and forgot the Terra. I'll get it tomorrow at work if I have to write it on my hand Sharpie to remember!

Got Vetrycin up at the coop. I'll grab that tonight. Thanks for all your help. Sick birds stress me out more than even predator losses... but heck here I am with three in my room now that my Cornish Bantam gone got himself beat up too, and is now penned up along with the two sickly Silkies. Need to reorganize my pens, too many dang roosters fighting! Sometimes I miss the old days when I had a flock of 15. So few birds but so few problems too... managing 150 individual lives is not easy.

 

[VillaRosaAcres]

I would really like to go to a show! Does anyone know of any popping up in the Midwest. I'm located in Iowa, but we are still under the ban. Thank you!

 

[abbevilleoz]

Our newest members to the flock. Five month old pullets. How do they look? My wife loves them and she not a chicken girl

.

 

[Sylvester017]

Interesting. If it has such poor nutritional value why is it used as a main ingredient for so many feeds? Is it just cheap and available? I did read a study saying that it was quite easy for birds to digest compared to some feedstuffs but I would have expected lack of useful nutrition to trump digestability. Yes, manufacturers are money-hungry and if they can dupe unsuspecting new customers to their cheap crap they will continue selling the junk - whether it's soy, or non-GMO grains, DE, etc etc!!! Education, education, education is our best fight against unscrupulous businesses plus we need to stop buying any of their products. The knowledge gained from BYCers is invaluable. The old-timers are the best - the newbies still have a lot to learn of which I am one!

My flock is MS and MG tested positive. Since last year. Idiot me didn't quarantine birds from a show. Unfortunately that bars me from selling any birds but I've found symptoms to be mild enough to continue my own personal projects and breedings until I move to my own property and am able to start a disease-free flock of breeders. I have found studies that show Baytril can reduce chances of egg transmission to almost negligible (far into the >0 decimals) so I will eventually be exporting to another growing area some hatching eggs produced from medicated hens but that project is still far in the future. Regardless this male has just not been in my flock long enough to develop symptoms; issue started about week and a half ago, whatever Myco strains my flock has takes usually two and a half to three weeks to show themselves. I have a little Silkie that showed CRD symptoms 2 yrs in a row - one time we sat up with her all night she was wheezing so badly we thought she'd be gone by morning but a Baytril shot at the vet's office saved her and made her feel better almost instantly - she started walking around the office floor like nothing was wrong and going up to the vet to see if he'd give her a treat! Now that we are aware of her proneness to symptoms we know how to monitor her. Rain, cold, damp, windy, overcast, no-sun days, we especially watch her and bring her inside when necessary and so far this year she is symptom-free. But I agree with you that a sick bird stresses me more than predator issues (since we have that one in our control) but illnesses are so unpredictable. I hope you manage a new symptom-free group successfully.

Agh didn't get the Terramycin powder from work today and can't find my old stuff. There was a big long mess and my boss was sick so I had to call my other boss to run over and open up the shop so I could get feed... in a heck of a hurry and forgot the Terra. I'll get it tomorrow at work if I have to write it on my hand Sharpie to remember! I had a supervisor that stapled stick-em notes to the inside of her vest everyday to remind herself of things she needed to do. Dang! if it didn't work for her! She checked her vest every day before she'd leave work - LOL

Got Vetrycin up at the coop. I'll grab that tonight. Thanks for all your help. Sick birds stress me out more than even predator losses... but heck here I am with three in my room now that my Cornish Bantam gone got himself beat up too, and is now penned up along with the two sickly Silkies. Need to reorganize my pens, too many dang roosters fighting! Sometimes I miss the old days when I had a flock of 15. So few birds but so few problems too... managing 150 individual lives is not easy. No, not easy to have animals when you're working - which is why I waited 25 years until retirement before acquiring any birds. I told DH we can have a dog, or a cat, or a couple chickens but not all of them because we retired to a small cottage property. Would you believe? He picked the froo-froo Silkies! Had 'em for 5 yrs and never regretted it! Now the dual-purpose LF we added turned out bullies and we had to re-home them. But we did find a couple of gentle LF that get along well with the 2 Silkies - a Blue Wheaten Ameraucana (my avatar) and a beautiful gentle Blue Breda. The sweet Amer sucks at egg-laying so we won't get any more blue-egg gene layers in future but the lightweight Breda (4-lb) is a great all-round bird and a better egg-layer than we were expecting.

Our two old Silkie hens - the Black Silkie is our CRD symptomatic bird - none of the others ever show symptoms.


The gentle Ameraucana sharing a nipple waterer with one of the Silkies.


Our sweet Blue Breda. They have a little crest where a comb is normally supposed to be - amazing gentle breed.

 

[Sylvester017]

Our newest members to the flock. Five month old pullets. How do they look? My wife loves them and she not a chicken girl

.

NOTHING CAPTURES A HUMAN HEART MORE THAN SILKIE CHICKENS! So glad you are fans! Silkies were my DH's first choice when he never had chickens before. I wanted LF dual-purpose layers but he wanted the Silkies! I'm so glad we got the Silkies -- they are amazingly hardy birds once you understand their maintenance requirements. I had 2 out of 3 purebred Ameraucanas croak even under a vet's care -- but never lost a sick Silkie! I really believe that's due to the diversity of the Silkie gene pool that the little buggers are as hardy as they are.

I never would've bothered with other breeds of chickens at the beginning if I had known what great egg-layers Silkies were in spite of their proneness to broodiness! Silkies lay the largest egg of any bantam breed. Both my old Silkies out-produced our younger 2-yr-old Ameraucana!!!

1st dark egg - Marans, 2nd white egg - White Leghorn, 3rd tinted egg - Buff Leghorn, 4th thru 6th eggs - tinted Silkie eggs (pretty darn good size IMO)

 

[abbevilleoz]

...

NOTHING CAPTURES A HUMAN HEART MORE THAN SILKIE CHICKENS! So glad you are fans! Silkies were my DH's first choice when he never had chickens before. I wanted LF dual-purpose layers but he wanted the Silkies! I'm so glad we got the Silkies -- they are amazingly hardy birds once you understand their maintenance requirements. I had 2 out of 3 purebred Ameraucanas croak even under a vet's care -- but never lost a sick Silkie! I really believe that's due to the diversity of the Silkie gene pool that the little buggers are as hardy as they are. I never would've bothered with other breeds of chickens at the beginning if I had known what great egg-layers Silkies were in spite of their proneness to broodiness! Silkies lay the largest egg of any bantam breed. Both my old Silkies out-produced our younger 2-yr-old Ameraucana!!! 1st dark egg - Marans, 2nd white egg - White Leghorn, 3rd tinted egg - Buff Leghorn, 4th thru 6th eggs - tinted Silkie eggs (pretty darn good size IMO) We've had a little cockrell for a few weeks and he's so full of personality we wanted pullets with him. I can't get over how sweet the girls are. My wife can't wait to do their "hair." I'm glad to hear that about their productivity and the eggs are bigger than I thought

 

[Fancychooklady]

Interesting. If it has such poor nutritional value why is it used as a main ingredient for so many feeds? Is it just cheap and available? I did read a study saying that it was quite easy for birds to digest compared to some feedstuffs but I would have expected lack of useful nutrition to trump digestability.

My flock is MS and MG tested positive. Since last year. Idiot me didn't quarantine birds from a show. Unfortunately that bars me from selling any birds but I've found symptoms to be mild enough to continue my own personal projects and breedings until I move to my own property and am able to start a disease-free flock of breeders. I have found studies that show Baytril can reduce chances of egg transmission to almost negligible (far into the >0 decimals) so I will eventually be exporting to another growing area some hatching eggs produced from medicated hens but that project is still far in the future. Regardless this male has just not been in my flock long enough to develop symptoms; issue started about week and a half ago, whatever Myco strains my flock has takes usually two and a half to three weeks to show themselves.

Agh didn't get the Terramycin powder from work today and can't find my old stuff. There was a big long mess and my boss was sick so I had to call my other boss to run over and open up the shop so I could get feed... in a heck of a hurry and forgot the Terra. I'll get it tomorrow at work if I have to write it on my hand Sharpie to remember!

Got Vetrycin up at the coop. I'll grab that tonight. Thanks for all your help. Sick birds stress me out more than even predator losses... but heck here I am with three in my room now that my Cornish Bantam gone got himself beat up too, and is now penned up along with the two sickly Silkies. Need to reorganize my pens, too many dang roosters fighting! Sometimes I miss the old days when I had a flock of 15. So few birds but so few problems too... managing 150 individual lives is not easy.

I probably should have worded that better. Corn is more of a fattening feed and is a little harder for the birds to metabolize. If you feed lots of corn then it is necessary to increase the selenium silkies in particular seem to have issues with selenium , so feeding corn isn't recommended. Corn or maize fed birds risk obesity, and obese birds don't mKe very good breeders or layers.
A good quality pellet is scientifically formulated to contain the essential vitamins ,minerals and amino acids. Scratch is like ' crack ' for chickens, they all want it but it isn't necessarily good for them. That is why I mix mine with a good micro pellet, my silkies refuse to eat regular sized pellets, but are happy with the more manageable micro sized pellets.

http://www.merckvetmanual.com/mvm/p...ltry/nutritional_requirements_of_poultry.html

As for baytril , I'm VRE so I wouldn't even consider using this drug, but each to their own.
It has actually been banned in your country for use in food or egg producing birds.
It is also believed to be a more effective treatment when used in conjunction with calcium.

https://sites.google.com/a/poultrypedia.com/poultrypedia/medicine-chart/baytril-for-birds

 

[QueenMisha]

I probably should have worded that better. Corn is more of a fattening feed and is a little harder for the birds to metabolize. If you feed lots of corn then it is necessary to increase the selenium silkies in particular seem to have issues with selenium , so feeding corn isn't recommended. Corn or maize fed birds risk obesity, and obese birds don't mKe very good breeders or layers.
A good quality pellet is scientifically formulated to contain the essential vitamins ,minerals and amino acids. Scratch is like ' crack ' for chickens, they all want it but it isn't necessarily good for them. That is why I mix mine with a good micro pellet, my silkies refuse to eat regular sized pellets, but are happy with the more manageable micro sized pellets.

http://www.merckvetmanual.com/mvm/p...ltry/nutritional_requirements_of_poultry.html

Ah. I see. Good thing I feed a scratch with whole corn. The turkeys gobble that all up edited the chickens can and I don't mind them fat!

I had been switching my bantam pen to a corn-based feed recently but I might put them back on the wheat-based, for the Silkie's sake.

I loooove mini-pellets. Less waste than a crumble, but easy for them to eat and good for bantams too!

I mix my scratch with feed too! Easier than throwing it out on the ground. I use Bar Ale's Rojo Grande mix for the sake of variety, it's got like ten different grains plus a 16% protein mini-pellet thrown in. I wish it wasn't so expensive, but Ah well. Although I can't help but wonder if it might not be cheaper to use a pigeon feed for scratch instead. Almost identical ingredients aside from the mini-pellet, but it's like $8 cheaper.