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[Yorkshire Coop]

@Yorkshirecoop My daughter is all well now thanks...she managed the last 2 days without an illness call out. Annoying thing was she was fine, she had a cold and for some reason the excess mucus in her tummy (why she has to snuffle it all down rather than blow her nose, I'll never know!) makes her vomit. She's always had this problem but no...school won't have it.

@rebrascora Yay! Congrats on fiting the car part...good job! Best of luck for the surgery, I admire you giving it a go, I'm not brave enough at all



What a shame to cull 10,000 beautiful pheasants. We have a pheasant farm by me, they're all too often splatted on the road but even then you can see their beauty and what a huge loss of revenue for them too. I feel terrible for the owners of the farm, what with farming being in the state it's currently in, this could not come at a worse time

Have a good weekend all, I have a wonderful little job of a Self Assessment tax return to deal with tomorrow before the deadline is up on Tuesday (nothing like leaving it till the last minute!!)

Sasha xx

Great to hear she is all well again
Both my son and his dad don't blow their noses either, weird isn't it? Ours has been the man flu house for the last couple of weeks I've done quite well though and only felt under the weather Monday and Tuesday but the "man" flu is heading into its third week now!!

It is terrible on the farms that lose all these birds. I'm not sure if they can get insurance for things like this?
Good luck with your tax return! I have a fab accountant who does our business year end, VAT returns and thank goodness our tax returns. All I have to do is the cash book on a spread sheet every three months and send it off to him. At least you have your dad to help you with any queries, I wouldn't know where to start if I had to do it on my own

I definitely read that keeping the external skin wound open by a stitch, or about 1cm if you're using glue, at the bottom of the wound is best to help it drain. But you have to be careful with infection getting in. we'd use gauze and a plaster on a person ... I can't see putting a plaster on a chicken working....
I only had germolene as antiseptic cream, so I filled the wound with it. I expect you can cover/fill what isn't glued with any anti-bacterial cream. And try to keep her clean and dry till the wound scabs over.

Am glad the car is sorted, but sorry you have to operate. Good luck.

You just have to be brave knowing it's better for them if you can get through it, and hoping they're strong enough to recover.

Definitely better than euthanasia.

Impacted crop sounds complicated - more complicated than a clumsy Roo, but not impossible if you're brave enough.

Chickens/chicks and plasters really don't go well together, I tried with a chick who had a gimpy leg and it was a disaster :/

 

[Yorkshire Coop]

Apparently this is me!

Had to laugh at this ~

 

[Rudies Roost]

Yay! Boring tax return done...i got up early to tend to morning animal duties and get the number crunching out of the way. I need a stif G&T now! I'll make do with a cuppa.....at least till later!

@Yorkshirecoop

Love the cartoon pictures

 

[Yorkshire Coop]

Yay! Boring tax return done...i got up early to tend to morning animal duties and get the number crunching out of the way. I need a stif G&T now! I'll make do with a cuppa.....at least till later!

@Yorkshirecoop

Love the cartoon pictures

Well done you for getting it done, always better late than never
Bet the cuppa wet down well

 

[Rudies Roost]

@rebrascora How did the surgery go? Keen to know!!?? Hope all went well?

 

[rebrascora]

Hi Sasha

I've given her another day's reprieve, largely because I've had a more pressing situation to deal with....
Something had been in the bachelor pad overnight and I have 2 cockerels missing and one dead. It's an old wooden shed and there are numerous small gaps/holes but non big enough for a fox to get in and no trail of feathers leading away from it, so I'm somewhat perplexed. I'm thinking maybe a stoat but would have expected the corpses to still be there.....obviously none of the gaps are big enough for a chicken to get out, otherwise they would have escaped long ago, so the missing two must have been dismembered in which case I would have expected to see some sign of that. The dead one was severely battered and bruised which you would associate with a large predator but appears pretty much intact as far as it's a whole chicken with no gaping wounds. The place is covered in feathers though, so there has obviously been a real battle and the survivors are looking ruffled.
I'm not emotionally attached to these guys as they were awaiting a date with the crock pot but it's upsetting to think I didn't protect them sufficiently well and they had a traumatic death and it's worrying when I don't know what I'm dealing with, as my layers could be at risk if it is a small predator like a stoat.

Well done for getting your Tax return sorted. Hope you have treated yourself to that G&T tonight.

Regards

Barbara

 

[Rudies Roost]

Hi Sasha

I've given her another day's reprieve, largely because I've had a more pressing situation to deal with....
Something had been in the bachelor pad overnight and I have 2 cockerels missing and one dead. It's an old wooden shed and there are numerous small gaps/holes but non big enough for a fox to get in and no trail of feathers leading away from it, so I'm somewhat perplexed. I'm thinking maybe a stoat but would have expected the corpses to still be there.....obviously none of the gaps are big enough for a chicken to get out, otherwise they would have escaped long ago, so the missing two must have been dismembered in which case I would have expected to see some sign of that. The dead one was severely battered and bruised which you would associate with a large predator but appears pretty much intact as far as it's a whole chicken with no gaping wounds. The place is covered in feathers though, so there has obviously been a real battle and the survivors are looking ruffled.
I'm not emotionally attached to these guys as they were awaiting a date with the crock pot but it's upsetting to think I didn't protect them sufficiently well and they had a traumatic death and it's worrying when I don't know what I'm dealing with, as my layers could be at risk if it is a small predator like a stoat. 

Well done for getting your Tax return sorted. Hope you have treated yourself to that G&T tonight.

Regards

Barbara

Hi Barbara,

Yeah...I treated myself to the G&T and a few cocktails this evening. Oh my gosh.....so sorry to hear about the devastation. Maybe mink? I hear they attack and leave little left. Absolutely awful. I've lost far too many to predators the last 12 months it drives me mad and really upsets me. I could swear massively but BYC blocks it!

 

[Yorkshire Coop]

@rebrascora

Hi Barbara,
Sorry to hear about your attack on the cockerels Its just awful to find things like that. Have you discovered who the culprit is yet? How big are the gaps? I watched a very interesting vid on a fox getting through some netting and I mean small netting. If I'd not seen it with my own eyes I would never have believed it, will try and find it or get the other half to send me it as it was on his Facebook and I don't Facebook.
How's the Pekin doing? Better I hope and that you have not had to intervene with her

Even though I should have done I've not ridden this weekend, don't think I would have risked it this morning anyway as the drive out of the farm was super icy and just like glass. I didn't think it was that cold last night really but it sure was when I got out in it this morning, brrr....

 

[rebrascora]

Hi Guys

Just to update you. The patient was refusing to eat or drink this morning and her comb was looking very dry and pale and crop was huge and squishy again and she was refluxing. Decided it was "do or die" time. Got everything sterilised and ready this afternoon and prepped the patient by cutting her feathers back to the skin, then swabbed the area with hibiscrub and with my able assistant holding her, I took the plunge. The first cut was really scary! You could see all the little blood vessels under the skin and I tried to avoid them but there was still a little more blood than I was expecting. In reality, probably only about a quarter of a teaspoon but still scary! Unfortunately she struggled and refluxed just as I made the incision and whilst I tried to position her head for safe drainage, I think she may have aspirated. Ian thought she was going to die and there was one point when she went very still and I thought perhaps she had, but she was just resting. Apart from the first cut and a couple of minor struggles, she was very quiet. I got an huge amount of fibrous straw like material out of her crop, irrigated with saline, was trying to clean it up to get it stuck back together and then noticed that there was still more inside which I managed to tease out with tweezers. Irrigated again and then dabbed it as dry as I could and stuck the incision in the crop with super glue. The hole was barely a cm long and I kept it as high up as possible so that it shouldn't leak. The outer skin incision is only slightly bigget and I've just left that open and packed it with Germolene ,so I can check on it, to make sure there is no leakage.
She is now significantly less than half the weight she was and has eaten a little bit of bread soaked in warm water almost immediately afterwards. Unfortunately her breathing is a little snotty/rattly which suggests she has aspirated, but she has a chance of survival which would not have been possible if I had not opened her up and removed all that rubbish.

This is the mass of fibre I removed


Amazingly it didn't smell bad at all , so either I'm nose blind or her system is otherwise quite healthy ie no sour crop/yeast infection.

Unfortunately she is showing interest in the wound site so I am having to keep her in the dark when she isn't eating, but amazingly she doesn't seem to be traumatised at all....unlike me who now needs a stiff drink!!. Of course, she is extremely emaciated and may end up with a respiratory infection from aspirating, so not out of the woods, but at least there is hope and I feel vindicated in doing the surgery. Just wondering if I can pull a bit of nylon stocking over her body to hold a dressing in place to stop her messing with it.

Anyway, off to do evening stables so that I can then have a large rum and coke when I'm finished.

Hope everyone had a good weekend. Pleased to report I didn't lose any more cockerels overnight and I've blocked up as many holes as I can, so hopefully that will stop whatever it was, for now at least.
Please keep your fingers crossed for my little patient.

Regards

Barbara

 

[rebrascora]

@Yorkshire Coop

Hi Kim

I see you posted whilst I was documenting my afternoon surgery.
Yes it was very icy here too this morning and took till well after lunch to give, so not good conditions for riding even if I had been free to do so.
Ian is convinced that it was a fox and we found a hole that he thinks is big enough for a fox to get in but there was no sign of feathers anywhere outside the shed apart from one pigeon feather at the bottom of the paddock. Having had a better look at the dead one, Ian is confident it is a fox or a dog. In some respects it is better if it is a larger predator as it would be nigh on impossible to secure all my pens against a stoat and very difficult to trap too I would imagine. Anyway, fingers crossed I've plugged the gaps.

Must head off and get all my other chores for the night sorted and tuck my patient in before I head off to bed.

Have a good night

Barbara