Washingtonians

[Chicken Rustler]

Quote: Don't count on it ! With the new additions today I will be upping security.
I am VERY stealthy!

I just couldn't say that with a straight face!
And that is just another part of why I wear the bandana !

 

[Chicken Rustler]

Today was a good day. Took a little rustling uhm I mean road trip. Made it back across the border un-impeded and we now have 2 Blue Bantam Fav hens, 2 Black Bantam Fav hens and 1 Black Bantam Fav cock. And within a couple hours of getting them settled into their new home we had our first egg!

 

[FirewifeJess]

Today was a good day. Took a little rustling uhm I mean road trip. Made it back across the border un-impeded and we now have 2 Blue Bantam Fav hens, 2 Black Bantam Fav hens and 1 Black Bantam Fav cock. And within a couple hours of getting them settled into their new home we had our first egg!

Wow! That's fast for a new home! How fun I'm just DYING to get our very first eggs ever, gonna be a while still. Our biggest girls are only 13.5 weeks.

 

[ReiMiraa]

random post. i looked close at a chick and noticed something odd. it has two claws on each wing. i have never noticed this on adult birds....

 

[FlyRobinFly]

Today was a good day. Took a little rustling uhm I mean road trip. Made it back across the border un-impeded and we now have 2 Blue Bantam Fav hens, 2 Black Bantam Fav hens and 1 Black Bantam Fav cock. And within a couple hours of getting them settled into their new home we had our first egg!

Sounds great! Would love to see pictures of your newest banties.

 

[drumstick diva]

Rei Miraa - oh spooky. Maybe you should chain the chick up while you are sleeping, in case he is an alien life form. I seem to remember someone else posting the same thing on BYC maybe last year.

 

[FlyRobinFly]

random post. i looked close at a chick and noticed something odd. it has two claws on each wing. i have never noticed this on adult birds....

Wow, that's wild! Rachel, are you secretly raising pterodactyls?

 

[itsren]

Two birthday chickens!

Happy Birthday!

 

[Teva]

What were Princess Buttercup's symptoms again? All my birds are adjusting well (Finally!!) to having Princess around, but they all have watery poops; increasingly watery. NO other symptoms. Currently then whole flock of 10 is on Durvet Vitamins and Electrolytes supplement in their water and about a Tbsp. of yogurt/each once a day. Watery poop seems to be getting worse, but no blood or diarrhea, more like caecal poops + normal poops both with tons of excess water. Should I do the bleach solution too, even though there's no respiratory symptoms?

I first noticed that she was trying to walk out of the coop and kept falling over and using her wing as support. This was on Friday morning. I picked her up and she was stretching her neck out and gasping for breath, and little bit of snot was coming out of her nostrils. When I got her into a box, she would lay on her side and couldn't support herself at all. She was in the box all day and night and didn't poop until Saturday morning. I had to dip her beak into the water (sulmet at the time) and food dishes. I started her on the chlorine solution Friday evening around 10:30 pm, by dipping her beak into it and also her food, for about 15 minutes.

My girlfriend's daugher wants to be a Veterinarian, so she's been really helpful in keeping Buttercup warm, cuddling with her, feeding her and dipping her beak in the water several times over the course of yesterday and today. This morning is when Buttercup finally started to squak and feeling better. She's more alert, can hold her head up and move it around, doesn't stretch her neck out. Whenever Megan would put her down on her pillow and leave the room she would start squaking for her. Pretty cute! Her poops were super watery and a dark mustard color. Her last poop still had water but there was more solid and white to it. And boy is it stinky. She is still squaking - I had to put her out on the porch for tonight because she wasn't letting any of us sleep. I covered up her box with a towel so that it's dark, hopefully she'll go to sleep and get some rest tonight. Her box is next to the peachick brooder, which has the heat lamp on it.

So whenever I held her, I would tuck her feet under her and put them flat on my hand - her toes were always curled up & I would have to manually flatten them out for her to sit on my hand. I noticed that she could put weight on one leg, but whenever I tried to get her weight on the other leg (left), she would lose her balance and drop her wing. When she was sitting on both feet in my hand, both of her wings would droop. HTH FireWifeJess!

 

[itsren]

To all the new peeps...

Teva - I hope Princess Buttercup gets better soon.

ReiMiraa - Those wings are very weird. How old is the chick?

MikeyB - I'm sorry for your losses. I'm glad you have your chickens to enjoy. I'm finding that chickens are such sweet creatures and watching them is very relaxing.

Chicken Rustler - Congrats on successfully rustling another set of birds. Dare I ask what happened to the Bantam RIR?

Tonight my 3 little gals are OUTSIDE in their coop! Yay!!! No pictures yet, it got too dark. I hope I can sleep tonight. I'll be a little worried about them because we didn't get all the hardware cloth attached in all the vent spaces. I'll definitely do that tomorrow. I decided I wanted 1/4" hardware cloth inside the coop itself so I had to run out and buy some. It was late and the girls were wanting to go to sleep so we held off on finishing that part. We're lining the run with 1/2" hardware cloth. They should be OK from any large predators because the openings are small. I'm just worried about small predators - like rats, or whatever can squeeze through about 1".

The Pullet Shut door seems to works great. Since the run isn't done, we had to unplug it tonight to make sure it didn't open at dawn tomorrow.

The chickens spent a few hours this afternoon in the coop. It took a while to get them to walk down the ramp, but they all finally did. Going back in the coop was a different story, they kept going back over to the sliding glass door and waiting for us to take them to the garage. There was lots of complaining going on when they were put into the coop for night.

I think the dog attack has left us feeling a little uneasy with the whole predator thing. Today, DH decided that we will dig the run down, lay in some chicken wire and encase the chicken wire with concrete. Then we'll fit it back in with dirt, and put whatever top layer we want. I'm considering large bark chips. I bought concret mix this evening. Getting the run complete will be a bit more work, but it will be nice knowing we did our best to keep our girls safe.

Well, I better get to bed. I have a feeling I'll be back up in 6 hours to check on the girls and see how they did through their first night.