Quote: Since you checked for mites and lice and didn't find any, the next bet would probably be to get their endocrinal systems functioning better, since that controls moulting. Kelp's the easiest, safest and cheapest endocrinal regulator. It can start non-layers going again and ought to correct the hormonal imbalance or lack of function if that is the cause of the feather holding.
Quote: That's because garlic and ACV encourage and feed good bacteria. Not all bacteria are equal, some are bad, some are good. That's one reason man made antibiotics are so harmful, they kill the good bacteria as well as the bad and guess which one repopulates quickest... lol.
We are reliant on good bacteria to live.
Quote: Yes, it is funny. Until you're dealing with an egg thief, lol. Funny that the dog didn't get into the egg though, looking at those tiny marks it must be a tiny dog! Recently I was helping my landlord with his Pilgrim geese on their first clutch, his first geese to boot. Eggs kept vanishing. Found his cattledog cross was wating till people were busy, then sneaking under the house to the geese nests and stealing from the nicest goose. Not so funny when eagerly awaited hatchlings are being devoured...
Quote: This website would have the information somewhere. Females can have neck feathers like males too, pointed and fringed and shiny and basically identical, the better bet to tell them apart is the sickles and saddle and shoulder feathers. I believe it's a hormonal reaction that triggers males to grow the male type feathers, they grow into them as they're growing out of their baby feathers. It might be at the end of the juvenile moult from what some people say but I haven't seen any such clearly defined moult, only a continual replacing of baby feathers with bigger proper feathers until the bird hits adult size.
Quote: One of my turkey hens liked to get into scuffles with the roosters whenever she had mated with the tom. So I ended up having to separate her as 10 out of 15 eggs on average were 'starred' badly. Most you couldn't see without 'torching' them (lol, candling)... But they'd break if she tried to brood them. She did this for three clutches in a row though, most of her eggs were cracked and resealed internally.
Quote: I agree about fresh water being good to have available as a choice, and respect it's just your two cent's worth, but I have a few questions concerning your statements that continual large amounts of garlic/ ACV/ oregano/ cayenne prevent you from digesting certain things and have potential to cause malnutrition. What do you mean by 'large amounts?' Did that information by any chance come from a scientific study where it was all the animals were fed, or around 50% or more of their total feed? I don't think anyone giving these items continually has ever given it as more than 10%, average maximum, and nobody I know has had any problems with them impeding feed uptake/ synthesizing/ digestion. If it was the majority of what you ate or what you fed your birds, that'd be an unbalanced diet, it goes without saying. But who does that?
I've fed an average of a clove of garlic per chook per day in their feed for all their lives, over hundreds of chooks, over years of chook keeping, without any problems. Often the chooks prefer to have an average of five whole cloves each, which would be over 30% of their daily feed ration. I don't know about cayenne or oregano as I don't use either often as they're potent, but garlic's never given me any issues, in fact it's dealt with the majority of issues that commonly crop up seasonally with my neighbour's and friend's chooks. Or I assume it's dealt with them as I never see them despite practicing quite lax bio-security and bringing in birds with those issues without trouble.
(Not recommending lax biosecurity, I'm going to tighten up my quarantine rules just in case, but generally garlic knocks everything I bring in on the head without me treating specially). I don't believe garlic (or oregano or cayenne or ACV) given long term (in as large an amount as the birds want to consume) causes malnutrition, but I'm open to any new information that seems well founded. I can imagine if you feed cayenne continuously and a chicken gets an injury internally the cayenne could kill it but many people feed it nonstop without problems, same with oregano, same with ACV, same with garlic.
