Southern NY, Dutchess county and below

[Sallysec]

There is a fair (read chickens!) there next month, a must go to!
Sept 21-22.

Oh Poop! I am headed to the Mother Earth News fair in PA that weekend. I bought tickets last year. Is it an annual show or do they have it in the spring as well?

 

[Imprfctme]

Morning all,
Happy summer Carolyn glad you're back.

Mammo, good morning, I feel terrible for you I'm very concerned about your other girls.Iknow this might come off as harsh but I now have to add my two cents.
I would return her. it has only been a little over a week and you have invested a lot of money on drugs and a great deal of time. I would tell them that you spoke with or brought her to a vet . That she is ill and is in deplorable condition. That you have kept her isolated from the rest of your flock and can not risk wide spread infection.
Unless you are changing your clothes and scrubbing down after you handle her, you are at risk of contaminating your other girls.
It is sad that these people are keeping chickens like this and worse selling them. You could tell them that if the chicken dies and you send it to a lab to be necropsied there could be an investigation. It won't go this far. I always think of the extreme.
As I'm writing this I still don't know whether I should. If you need my help let me know. Carol

I am going to chime in here with my $.02 and say return her. Chances are, they will make excuses as to why you can't; I bet they knew darn well what they were selling you. I am a bigger softie than most but it is too big a risk to your other hens to keep this one on property. If they refuse to take her back see if you can't put the hen on another piece of property altogether like your friend's yard while you treat it.

 

[lalany]

You have done so much for that little girl! Hopefully it will not get any worse, but you did so much.

 

[mammo6]

I whole heartedly thank you all. Tomorrow I will begin treatment with the Duramycin-10 tetracycline hydrochloride. It says to use for 10-14 days. She stopped laying for over a week so eating the eggs isn't a problem. This is my last ditch effort and I am calling Raleigh farms tomorrow to inform them of the sick bird they gave me. I am sure they may deny it, but the day I picked her up they had 3 other birds in boxes for people coming to pick them up...I wonder if they to were sick and riddled with bugs??
All I know is my girls have always been and still are bug free and at this point showing no signs or symptoms. I only feel bad for the new girl because she went from being around a whole bunch of friends to being put in solitary. On the positive side, though the sneezing continues, her comb and waddles have gotten darker red from the pale they were and a new shine has come to her feathers. Maybe with the antibiotic she will recover fully...I just can't give up on her and cross my fingers the others don't catch it in the air.
Take care all.

 

[littlecritters]

I whole heartedly thank you all. Tomorrow I will begin treatment with the Duramycin-10 tetracycline hydrochloride. It says to use for 10-14 days. She stopped laying for over a week so eating the eggs isn't a problem. This is my last ditch effort and I am calling Raleigh farms tomorrow to inform them of the sick bird they gave me. I am sure they may deny it, but the day I picked her up they had 3 other birds in boxes for people coming to pick them up...I wonder if they to were sick and riddled with bugs??
All I know is my girls have always been and still are bug free and at this point showing no signs or symptoms. I only feel bad for the new girl because she went from being around a whole bunch of friends to being put in solitary. On the positive side, though the sneezing continues, her comb and waddles have gotten darker red from the pale they were and a new shine has come to her feathers. Maybe with the antibiotic she will recover fully...I just can't give up on her and cross my fingers the others don't catch it in the air.
Take care all.

I want to share that I have been through this mite/lice/illness situation several times with purchased birds and am very empathetic to you. We are at the point of "closing our flock" to adult birds and considering only purchasing hatching eggs.

I have no experience with Duramycin, but I believe that Doc Brown has told me it is a weaker version of Oxytetracycline (ie less effective). We had one purchased rooster with a respiratory issue that did not respond to the Oxytet. While waiting for Doc to ship a stronger antibiotic, I went ahead and tried LA-200 which was recommend by a vet in Sweden who owns chickens. He cleared up right away. That was such a relief. Rather than put it in the drinking water, it is administered via a needless syringe. To me this was assuring that I knew exactly how much of the medicine our rooster was receiving. I will PM you my cell number in case you wish to try this. You will need specific dosing... Tina

 

[mammo6]

Good morning all. I don't know if it means anything but I did in fact begin Rosie on antibiotics yesterday and after a week and a half of not laying, this morning she left us an egg. I'm going to take it as a thank you for caring for me...lol
However, figures...just started on the medicine so can't eat it. Oh well, there will be time for that after she's better

 

[CarolinaIsland]

Chiming in with a quick question here:

Since I'm new to chicken husbandry I'm still getting accustomed to all of their clucks and noises. My kids and I have been waiting eagerly for the "egg song" and the other day we heard it! We went running to the backyard searching for the hen announcing her egg (the first egg) only to find Vinny emphatically belting out the egg song? What the freak? I thought that was a female thing!
So he sings the egg song and crows whenever he hears my voice. We love it because he's small and not too loud but is this the norm or do I have a musical roo? This guy thinks he's in Westside Story!

 

[Biologrady]

Glad Rosie is perking up!

Ok neighbors, seeking wisdom from you all...

I'm about to try to integrate my 4 new girls, now about 18 weeks, with the 3 1.5 year olds. Will keep them in adjacent pens by day and in same coop, separate cage, at night...it's tight, but doable for a short time. They've all met briefly before. There was some accidental mixing of old and new before, where one old got in with the youngsters. There was an interested peck or two, but no outright violence. Would putting each old girl in with the youngsters one at a time help speed the process?
Any guesses on the timeline here? I've got about 3 1/2 days to watch them, then I have to come back to LI and leave my mom to referee them.

 

[littlecritters]

We have two pet quality silkie chicks up for adoption and possibly a third. These are adorable, young and hatched from top breeders eggs. These are too young to sex or even take guesses. We are asking an $10 adoption fee to help offset the cost of feed. Please PM if you are interested. Pickup in 12601 only, no shipping. I am having trouble creating classifieds on my computer, there are known problems with BYC using Internet Explorer, which is why I posted here.

 

[foamspoon]

Hello everyone I harvested one of my roosters for the first time this week. As with most of us out here I did not grow up on a farm growing up on Long Island but when one of chicks I bought as a future hen turned into a rooster and was blowing up the neighborhood all day I knew I had to do something. It was not a pleasant experience but went pretty well for the first time. To be honest it went just like the videos that are all over the internet. I have two more Roos that I will have to take care of soon. It will be good practice for my meat birds I am raising for the end of September. Anyone else have first time stories?