Texas

[tjo804]

Quote: I could be wrong but I am thinking from my experience that if it were a parasite problem you would notice eggs on feathers or reddening of the skin from them scratching the bites.


Edit to add their skin looks healthy

 

[tjo804]

SlipsWife
What a nice facebook page!
You have a beautiful Homestead!

 

[SlipsWife]

WOW do I feel like a slacker,
Mine are 4 weeks and are still in the house it is warm enough outside for them I am sure and Certain from what you have said. I had a few problems with parasites and rats but have that all figured out now. Hopefully they can go out this weekend after we section off part of the large coop for them and put in a kiddie run off the back for them to be next to the layers without getting picked on I am sure we have waited to long for them to just be added without the hens seeing them as competition.

I also should point out we don't have rain in Odessa very often...If it were wet here, I would put a little extra effort into making sure they stay 100% dry.

We might be lucky but we had a pretty easy time adding some of our new guys in with the girls from last year. We have 6 standard size hens and 2 bantams from last year. We had the new guys in a grow out pen next to them where they could see them. At about 5 weeks, I need to go back and see if I documented it, we added them all together, 15 new guys. Again, power in numbers. The younger guys stay away from the older group. The biggest surprise is our mean girls have been calmer with the new guys than the 'calmer' EE bantam! I think she's just happy to have someone smaller than her...little does she know its not going to last long. We then added 4 older pullets and a cockerel to the group. They were also in the grow out pen next to the original group, now with the new younger guys, which is why the younger guys were moved in with the older girls younger than I would have like. We had to end up removing the divider between the pen and the coop because we were afraid the cockerel was going to hurt himself. He was excited to see the other girls and kept jumping up into the sun shade over the pen. The first day they were all together was picture perfect...day 2-5 not so much. Our original girls got a little grumpy but they had a lot of changes with in a few days. It all evened out and has worked out with out to much drama. None of it worked out the way I would have like or had planned but it worked out. I wanted to quarantine the new older group, let the younger ones get closer to the same size as the older, start with free ranging everyone together...they do free range a couple of hours a day and at first were in their own originally groups but now they all mix together.

I think the craziest thing this year is the fact that we might have a feather picker (or 2...or more...) in the youngest group, in their own pen away from our main group. I don't know who it is to remove them. In 'theory' and from observing them, they seem to have plenty of room, there's no obvious culprit.

Everything I planned out didn't work as planned and the one thing I thought would go off without a hitch isn't...did I mention I started my first set of hatching eggs, shipped eggs at that, this past Monday...

 

[magpiesing]

I'm a nightowl so posted this after normal folk with good sense have gone to bed.

From my chicken book...
Electrolyte formula good for chicks and in the summer for all

1 cup water
2 tsp sugar
1/8 tsp salt
1/8 tsp baking soda

To this I added 1 tsp asv
I just made up a couple of quarts at a time.

Started my chicks out on this for the first week. Then i decided to use the sav-a-chick mix plus the asv because the mix has extra vitamins in it. The vinegar is what helps prevent pasty butt. I think it has to do with the PH of the water. My water is well water and very hard, lots of minerals so vinegar makes it more acidic and that's suppose to be good for them.

Also their water source is close to their heat so water is always warm , I think that made a difference too they never had to drink cold water. I've had no problem with pasty butt so what ever I did worked. Still have all 10 we bought, plus the one hatchling (Speedy) and all are doing great.

They are about 3 wks old and are still under heat at night. Area close to the light is about 80 degrees and cooler on the other side. They huddle by the light at night and it's been in the 50s so I can tell it's still cold for them.

Anyway that's what I've done and it's working so far. All my chickens get asv in their water.

Also some good herbs to give them...parsley, mint, basil, thyme, rosemary, oregano and many others.
You can brew them tea using some of these herbs plus a little sugar and offer it to them in addition to the regular water. All these promote good health and bolster the immune system.

Another thing we did for them was took a 9x13 cake pan and put sandy dirt from the yard plus bits of weeds and grass in it and put it in the brooder cage, they had a ball playing and scratching and hunting for bugs and stuff.
The dirt is perfect chick grit, the activity keeps them from getting bored and pecking each other plus they get exposed to the ground they will eventually be walking on, that helps them build immunity to pathogens in the soil. .Hope that is helpful. Magpie

 

[tjo804]

Quote:
Thank you for taking the time to explain this to me it makes me feel better about having the grow out pen built.
And I think that happens with all things in life the best laid plans and all.

Congrats on the eggs! I cant wait to see how things go.

Have you tried giving protein treats? I read that feathers are mostly protein (dont remember where) so a picker may just be looking for a dietary supplement. It makes sense to me during a molt but I am not sure about Chicks I do give all of mine scrambled egg with almond milk 2 times a week.

I told DH I wasn't ready for new chicks yet and He insisted our granddaughter needed them! (TSC) I wanted to Choose my next breeds carefully with research not get what the cute boy could rope from the bin. She loves them, He is a hero and I get to worry about all the details so DH will be buying supplies and building this weekend.

Another thing that is confusing me is that I do FF have been for a month. Started with the new chicks. My Ladies love it haven't touched pellets in the coop since I started. However I add the Layer Crumbles right to the FF and I am not sure with a mixed age group how and what to feed them or if I need to separate for feeding?

When they all mix together to free range do they go back to separate houses for the night?

 

[tjo804]

I'm a nightowl so posted this after normal folk with good sense have gone to bed.

From my chicken book...
Electrolyte formula good for chicks and in the summer for all

1 cup water
2 tsp sugar
1/8 tsp salt
1/8 tsp baking soda

To this I added 1 tsp asv
I just made up a couple of quarts at a time.

Started my chicks out on this for the first week. Then i decided to use the sav-a-chick mix plus the asv because the mix has extra vitamins in it. The vinegar is what helps prevent pasty butt. I think it has to do with the PH of the water. My water is well water and very hard, lots of minerals so vinegar makes it more acidic and that's suppose to be good for them.

Also their water source is close to their heat so water is always warm , I think that made a difference too they never had to drink cold water. I've had no problem with pasty butt so what ever I did worked. Still have all 10 we bought, plus the one hatchling (Speedy) and all are doing great.

They are about 3 wks old and are still under heat at night. Area close to the light is about 80 degrees and cooler on the other side. They huddle by the light at night and it's been in the 50s so I can tell it's still cold for them.

Anyway that's what I've done and it's working so far. All my chickens get asv in their water.

Also some good herbs to give them...parsley, mint, basil, thyme, rosemary, oregano and many others.
You can brew them tea using some of these herbs plus a little sugar and offer it to them in addition to the regular water. All these promote good health and bolster the immune system.

Another thing we did for them was took a 9x13 cake pan and put sandy dirt from the yard plus bits of weeds and grass in it and put it in the brooder cage, they had a ball playing and scratching and hunting for bugs and stuff.
The dirt is perfect chick grit, the activity keeps them from getting bored and pecking each other plus they get exposed to the ground they will eventually be walking on, that helps them build immunity to pathogens in the soil. .Hope that is helpful. Magpie

Very much so thank you.

 

[TammyTX]

You can also use a salt substitute to make an electrolyte solution.

Has anyone heard that ACV shouldn't be given in the heat?

 

[bnjrob]

You can also use a salt substitute to make an electrolyte solution.

Has anyone heard that ACV shouldn't be given in the heat?

Yes but I give it year round and don't have a problem. Can't remember what all the details are but has to do with acid/base balancing and what happens when chickens are in the heat, blah blah blah. I read it all at one time and in theory the idea is sound but I can't see there being a problem unless they are getting high doses of ACV. Ours probably end up with a max of a few tablespoons per gallon - not like they are drinking large quantities of ACV directly from the bottle. I think the benefits of dilute ACV far outweigh the risk and with so much crap trying to grow in the watering buckets in summer because of the heat - I'd be having to scrub water buckets every day in the summer if I didn't have the ACV in there.

 

[bnjrob]

What she said

Seriously, mine have NEVER had a problem. Though right now my older birds just decided to molt. You should see Foghorn Leghorn, he looks like a fuzzy cottonball without his saddle feathers!

Figured that chemist in you would know what I was talking about. So if Foghorn doesn't have saddle feathers, maybe he is more of a cotton swab than a cotton ball.

 

[jajeanpierre]

Ok, is this normal, slow feather growth, pecking at each other or maybe mites? There's a number of the group with feathering similar to this but most of the group looks great. They are a month old. It was a hatchery surprise so I don't know their breeds but most of the chicks that look like this appear to be old English or old English game bantams...maybe...

There's also one cochin that looks like this, and the frizzle looks almost naked! I haven't seen any signs of them pecking, I haven't noticed any signs of mites either so I'm leaning towards weird/awkward feathering in...

ETA: I'm almost embarrassed for the poor guy...

They all look normal except the frizzle. Feathers grow in tracts, with completely bald areas between the tracts of feathers. Pick up a fully feathered bird and separate the feathers and you will see maybe half, a third of the bird has bare skin. That's normal. They also molt and grow the feathers in that tract as a group. The back feathers seem to me to be the last to feather out in chicks.

Your frizzle looks like it has a double copy of the gene for frizzling. I hope I'm wrong. The frizzle gene is an incompletely dominant gene. One copy of the gene paired with a normal feathering gene makes that beautiful frizzle with a wide feather curling away from the body. Two copies of the gene produce a "frazzle" or "curlie" which has a thin, weak, brittle feathers very susceptible to mechanical damage. Often all that will be left of the feather is the hard wiry shaft. Their feathers will look dull, oily and matted. If you handle them, feather parts will break off. They have a lot of trouble surviving because they have very little protection from the cold.

Frizzle birds should never be bred to frizzle birds unless whoever is doing the breeding is prepared to deal with the resulting 25% frazzle birds. Serious breeders will do it and cull the frazzles. I know hatcheries are doing it because their catalogs advertise that their chicks will be 75% frizzled and 25% will be smooth. The only way to get that ratio of frizzles is to be breeding frizzle to frizzle.

A proper frizzle breeding will have one normal frizzle parent (genetically Ff, with "F" being the gene for frizzle and "f" being the gene for smooth, normal feathering) and a smooth (ff with two copies of the smooth feathering gene "f"). With that breeding half will be frizzle (Ff) and the other half will be smooth (ff). If you breed frizzle (Ff) to frizzle (Ff) you get 25% smooth (ff), 50% frizzle (Ff) and 25% frazzle (FF). If someone doesn't understand how I got these ratios, I will be happy to try to explain.

I have two hatchery frazzles. They spent the winter in my house, the most naked one in my kitchen where she laid an egg almost every day. I had her out with a flock of only pullets when one day my Silkie and (frazzled) Cochin cockerels escaped from their bachelor pen. Everyone was so happy, I left them all together. I put an apron on the frazzled pullet and thought that would be enough protection for her. I was wrong. Between the cockerels grabbing the back of her neck and the apron wearing off her feathers, she ended up basically naked. She is just starting to molt her broken feathers. She is kept in the house at night and in the day is out with my Ameraucana chicks in the parrot aviary. Here are some pictures of her:



Before the cockerels and the protective apron broke all her feathers off:


I will breed (artificial insemination) this frazzled pullet to my show quality smooth feathered Cochin and get 100% frizzled birds. It has been a struggle and quite an inconvenience to keep my two frazzled birds alive this winter.

I hope I am wrong about your frizzle. Can you send some better pictures? The dull, oily looking feathers are what is worrying me the most. Chicks, frizzles included, should have healthy, bright shiny feathers. Frazzles don't. Do the feathers seem to break easily? If you pick the chick up and look at it's feathers, do you have bits of broken feathers on your lap? I really hope I'm wrong.