The road less traveled...back to good health! They have lice, mites, scale mites, worms, anemia, gl

[galanie]

One thing I hate about using mineral oil is that it cannot be assimilated by our bodies.  Oil soluble vitamins (A,D,E,K) are drawn into it and leached out of our bodies with mineral oil.  I assume that's the same for chickens and other animals.  (After I understood this, I made a point of never using "baby oil" on my children and always reading labels on hand lotions, etc. and avoiding any that have mineral oil as an ingredient.)

That being said, however, hopefully none of us will need to use Nu Stock or mineral oil in any appreciable quantity that it will be harmful! 

Then use lard or bacon grease instead. I'm not kidding. When I was in my teens and 20's we mixed that sulfur powder with bacon grease to put on horses's wounds and it worked fine but in the heat the bacon grease would melt and run down LOL. Got pretty messy sometimes but no problem, the horse couldn't care less. It got me thinking that maybe they used to put pine tar in stuff like that to make it stay in place.

ETA: Every time someone mentions Baby Oil I think of that old joke. If Peanut Oil comes from peanuts, where does Baby Oil come from?

 

[thedragonlady]

Then use lard or bacon grease instead. I'm not kidding. When I was in my teens and 20's we mixed that sulfur powder with bacon grease to put on horses's wounds and it worked fine but in the heat the bacon grease would melt and run down LOL. Got pretty messy sometimes but no problem, the horse couldn't care less. It got me thinking that maybe they used to put pine tar in stuff like that to make it stay in place.
ETA: Every time someone mentions Baby Oil I think of that old joke. If Peanut Oil comes from peanuts, where does Baby Oil come from?

Galanie, I'm with you on the bacon grease.I've always used it on horses' wounds too, but I wonder how many people know that the amino acids in bacon grease will keep the hair on a wound from coming back in white too.Good stuff!

 

[Miss Lydia]

Galanie, I'm with you on the bacon grease.I've always used it on horses' wounds too, but I wonder how many people know that the amino acids in bacon grease will keep the hair on a wound from coming back in white too.Good stuff!

Lard, I am hearing alot about it lately, okay so instead of mineral oil try lard. I can do that so just guess on amts just making sure the sulphur is ay 75% and lard would be 25% and pine tar oil at 2% anyone care to break that down easier.

or just a pinch of this and a tad of that.

 

[galanie]

 Galanie,  I'm with you on the bacon grease.I've always used it on horses' wounds  too, but I wonder how many people know that the amino acids in bacon grease will keep the hair on a wound from coming back in white too.Good stuff!

I had completely forgotten that part about keeping the hair from coming back in white. It sure does!

 

[galanie]

Lard, I am hearing alot about it lately, okay so instead of mineral oil try lard. I can do that so just guess on amts just making sure the sulphur is ay 75% and lard would be 25% and pine tar oil at 2% anyone care to break that down easier.   or just a pinch of this and a tad of that. 

I do a pinch and a tad. I mix it so that the sulfur is all dissolved just enough. No extra oil or bacon grease floating at the top. After all, in this case the cure part is the sulfur and probably pine tar or oil. The other is just to make it into a goo so you can put it on there. At least, that's my take.

 

[off-grid hen]

Off Grid Hen- Let go, fall into the abyss.... Bee won't steer you wrong. I am as jaded as the next person, but her advice has been sage, and has worked 100% for me.

LOL@ Sage/ACV!

I do not fall or jump into abysses. I lower myself with a strategically placed rappelling line.

I doubt very highly that she'd steer me wrong. I am just one of those types to watch a group of people for a while, then jump in when I have it figured out. I simply haven't time to do the backup reading yet for what she's suggested, so I can see for myself why it works, rather than just taking someone's word for it on the internet. Especially when I have seen people suggest giving vitamins to an obviously deathly ill chicken like it's a cure-all.


I have the links now for the ACV. Doing that one first. I don't know how in-depth this FF stuff is, I hope it's not too time-consuming. I have a lot more reading to do. It's a good thing I like reading.

The thing is, the stuff Bee and others suggest is the type of things that certainly won't hurt. (Unlike some of the other advice I've seen and heard) So it's certainly something I'll give a try at least for a while.

Also- all this talk of bacon grease and lard is making me hungry.

 

[Beekissed]

You explained that well.. Question ?, in my coops I have built, to protect the floor I have very heavy rubber mats. They are about inch thick, is it ok to start the deep litter over that? I am thinking of trying this, I can only learn from my mistakes and truly thought that cleaning and changing shavings weeekly was a good thing.. SO I move forward and learn more..Thanks so much and I will keep you up to date !! Thanks Again Kim

Ditto the post about the vinyl floor...it doesn't matter what surface exactly you have on which to compost litter...think of the barrel composters they sell. The rubber mats sound ideal.

I love this picture, I can't believe I am on page 50, ya'll need to stop posting so I can catch up. lol I have never enjoyed reading so much before and laughing too. Now I am wanting to make Nu stock so hoping to get exacts soon from Bee unless she has already posted it and I just haven't found it yet.

Gosh didn't realize how close I was to where I came in, whew now I am caught up. So have you made your version of Nu stock yet? Mine will be here tomorrow

I'm waiting on my sulfur powder but have the rest of the ingredients.

Bee, I notice you're using Bag Balm to make the NuStock stick. When you make your own, why not mix in some bag balm as part of the mineral oil component? Wouldn't you then have a mix that would stick and stay in place? So far as I can tell, the mineral oil is "inert" more or less so substituting something else, even petroleum jelly, shouldn't matter to the effectiveness of the mix.

You have a point there, Galanie, but if you wear a hat it won't show at all.....bless yer heart.

Excellent point, I might add and I may just do that very thing. Good +Good= Good...and a better carrier than the goopy mineral oil. That way a person could just have it in a tin and dip into it. Or even mix the bag balm with the mineral oil to make a little thicker solution that will still squirt out of a dispenser for ease of use. Dipping dirty hands into a clean tin after you've rubbed it into a chicken foot...pretty soon you have a dirty tin of stuff. I've found that out with my bag balm...we have the chicken coop bag balm for their feet and such... and the house bag balm for us old ladies and our feet.

And when we are talking about living breathing creatures, I feel I have the responsibility to NOT stumble through it or proceed by trial and error.
You know me a little bit. I have one foot in the past and one in the future. I love some things the old way, but embrace new science too. Old timers have done some pretty stupid things from sheer lack of knowledge, and so have scientists. Both have used and discovered wonderful things. Me personally, I need BOTH common sense AND replicable scientific results in order for something to Be adopted as behavior for me.
So please, if you happen to run across multiple sources other than because "grandma did it that way", it would be great if you could post it. It's not about how MUCH book reading one does, it's about finding the right books.

.
All this conflicting information is extremely frustrating.
Thanks for sharing your wisdom and ways for us to ponder.

Nope...sorry...don't have "multiple" sources of info other than grandma did it that way or that I have tried it and found that it works. Raising chickens is just like raising children....if you read everything about child care from a book because you thought your mama was just old fashioned and couldn't possibly know better than a doctor, scientist or psychiatrist, then you probably had a very hard time being a mother. If you read everything out there you were probably scared to death and jumped at every sniffle, medicated every fever, obsessed over every little behavior and struggled to "get it right" according to what the multiple sources of info all said.

If generations upon generations of actual mothers have figured out how to keep a kid healthy, potty train them on time, feed them so they grew, then it's probably more sound general advice than Dr. Spock. Yeah...I know kids died back in the day...just like they do now, despite all our medical advances...or because of them, who knows?

When it comes down to raising a breathing creature, you cannot escape trial and error because each creature is unique and are not text book cases. At some point you need to determine you will have your own information that you alone "own" and was not given to you from strangers on a forum or in a book. Sure, it helps to know what others have done but you will never know if it works for YOUR creatures unless you actually step out on faith and try it. If you try it and it didn't work, you can process that info and do with it what you will. If you try it and it worked, hallelujah.

When I had my children I didn't read one single childcare book...my mother had managed to raise nine healthy, intelligent children without major illnesses, only one accidental broken bone amongst us all and we are all upstanding members of society~I'm the youngest at 46 yrs and none of us have a single chronic health problem except something caused by injuries at work. Whose advice do you think I followed when it came to babies? Someone's who had actually raised 9 kids, and half of their kids as well. In my mind, she's an expert. Did I tweak her methods and make them my own? Yep, I sure did. I saw where she lacked and tried to change this or that...and the only book I referenced for those changes was the Bible.

What I'm trying to tell you is this: Raising chickens is an art and an instinct. You can learn most of it, but some just comes from your own common sense. If you have none, you cannot obtain it and that cannot be helped. If you are learning most of it, who will you learn it from...scientists who have never kept a chicken except in controlled scientific studies or in studying the commercial poultry industry? Or people who have just quoted scientific studies and only kept birds for a season or two?

Or will you follow those things from people who learned from people who kept chickens for a good part of their life and passed on the knowledge to the next one, who then raised her own chickens for a long time, and passed her own finding along...that one used it, tweaked it and passed THAT info along.

My grandma didn't use ACV or NuStock or even fermented feeds...but I do. Why? Because I have found it to be of value in my own flocks. Would Grandma have been interested in that knowledge? You bet. I'll tell you why....because she would know that I tried it, gave it a good run, found it to pass the test of time~or not, whatever be the case~and formed my own opinion. But the opinion on it is my OWN and I own it. I didn't borrow it from a book or from a person on a forum for long...I actually tried it and made a decision. Grandma would then try it for her own flock if she wanted to be convinced of it's merits...or to find if it had none.

That is what each person must do for themselves. It's perfectly okay with me if no one wants to try these things or think they have merit. But they cannot say without a doubt that they do not work if they do not TRY them on their own. It's called first hand experience and everyone who finally learns this livestock thing has to obtain it, living creature and responsibility or not. That is the nature of all knowledge and experience...it must be applied to actually learn and own the results for your own use. Having someone who has never raised a child tell you how to raise your own is laughable and it's the same with chickens...they can only tell you what they'd do according to what they read somewhere or saw someone else do. But they cannot tell you what they actually DID because they have never done it.

When discussing things like ACV or fermented feeds, which have been around and in use since Methuselah walked the earth, I can't imagine that these items would be the sticking point for me. Medicines or other chemicals of which I do not have a history on except for the past 50 years? And that info was muddled with reports of real bad results in the using of it? Yeah, that would stick in my craw and I might not exactly use those out of fear. I have never heard of the death or ill health of an animal by ACV or feeding fermented feeds down through history, so I feel I'm pretty much in the realm of safe practices there that will fulfill my responsibility to my animals.

That's the beauty of the information I share here...I do not mind if others use it or not. It's a take or leave it prospect and there is a beautiful freedom in that. I just offer it up for consideration and can give first hand experience on it. After that? Folks can use it or discard it, get their own take on it and post what they found, etc. I would never get mad at anyone who didn't use my methods..that would be silly. Now, I would give a shake of the head and a roll of the eyes when those same people are crying for "help!" on the forum and begging for a cure for something that has been covered here. That's pretty much a given...that's what us old-timers do. We just shake our heads and move along...you can lead a horse to water but you cannot make him drink.

Let's add another horsey grandma-ism to the mix: The one about looking a gift horse in the mouth....especially if you really, really need a horse. If he turns out to be no help, then you've lost nothing in the transaction because he was a gift~you can then just take him on the back forty and shoot him in the head. But he could turn out to be just what you needed and he was totally free. A gift. What a blessing!

 

[Pullet Surprise]

I just want to run this by everyone and get your thoughts. I ended up with 2 roos. Both are excellent boys, not a human aggressive bone in their bodies, both have different qualities, both are fine birds. They were the best of buddies until a couple of weeks ago when all heck broke lose (I KNEW it would...was just hoping I had a little more time) They really got into it and I reacted and separated them. Combs were bloodied and I fixed that. So it was time for each to have his own flock. Got 5 more girls from the friend that we got the original flock from a few months ago, built a second coop etc. Quarenteen did not last but I'm not worried about that as they all come from the same "Stock" etc. It just happened. Frank likes his new girls just fine, they had enough time to get a good look at him and have accepted him well and they have started laying again right after the move. So far I have not let the new flock free range, but they have a large 'pen", just wanted them to aclimate to nests, coop, Frank and surroundings etc. The new girls have been to visit the original girls, everyone is getting on well. New flock has established its order etc. Original flock free ranges for a good part of the day I would like to get both flocks free ranging. So when Frank and Chunk Morris meet again without a wire fence between them................I suspect there is going to be a fight because I intervened and didn't let them settle it the first time. How far do you let it go? I would rather act than react...I have learned my lesson. Each flock consists of 5 girls & one roo and we have about two acres (although I would rather they stay away from one side of the house , the neighbor's fence has gaps under it that they can sure scoot under if they wanted to and I don't want them going over there. Any tips on getting the two flocks out and about at the same time? the reason I didn't get rid of one of the roos is that, well, they were both so good I would not begin to beable to figure out which one was "best" yet.

 

[7L Farm]

HMMM!! I have three flocks & three coops. One coop has 10 hens no roo. Coop two has 15 pullets two cocks. Coop three has 16 hens & one roo.I let them all out & the two cocks know that the roo is in charge he's never hurt the cocks but he lets them know that hey boys I'm the leader here. The roo has his way with the flock. He's a great roo never ever bothered me & lets me handle the ladies when I want. The cocks are still young but seem ok thus far. I get rid of any boy that shows aggression towards me. I've never been able to fixs stupid boys. Not much help but your just gonna half to let them work it out. Just keep an eye on them. I'm sure its their way of finding out who's in charge. You also only have 10 hens . But this should work I would think. Are they all hens are pullets ? How old is everbody ?

 

[Pullet Surprise]

Everybody is in their first year...all the girls are laying,and have been for three months about; the 2 boys (I guess they are still cockrels?) are the same age and have good sized spur bumps, but nothing sharp there yet. I don't want to add any more girls until spring, hoping five will do them each. I also suspect there may be some "I like you better" swapping around between the girls. And at least one if not both boys is fertile and doing his job.