When to NOT eat eggs and meat?

[AmpersatChick]

We are new to chickens and our chickens just started laying reliably a week ago. We were planning on eating some of their eggs this weekend but three of them started showing health issues yesterday that made me wonder if this is safe? When should eggs not be eaten, can sicknesses get into eggs? and what about meat, the rooster was one we were planning on sending to freezer camp because we have two roos in our little flock? Thanks for the help!

 

[ChickenCanoe]

Very few diseases are a risk to humans and cooking will solve most of the rest.
One exception I know of is eating meat contaminated with pullorum but that is very rare in the US.

Eating undercooked eggs or meat can give one salmonella, campylobacter , staph, clostridium.

Depending on the disease, unsanitary handling of the meat during and after processing can cause problems like staph food poisoning.

 

[lazy gardener]

What kind of health issues are you talking about? IMO, you can't do anything to your flock that will make it less safe than what you are currently bringing home from the grocery store. If you haven't recently wormed or otherwise given your pullets a med that they take in through their digestive system, the eggs are perfectly fine, starting with the first one. If you've applied a topical miticide or wormer, there is a withdrawal period for eggs, and I would assume meat as well. Do a thread search re: the med involved in that case. Enjoy those eggs and also enjoy that rooster in the crock pot! You've worked hard to get them to this point, now enjoy!!!

 

[AmpersatChick]

Thank you for the advice! And lazy gardener for the encouragement! We are feeling exactly that, we've worked too hard to just waste eggs and birds...but want to make sure we're being safe too, we've never done this before. We haven't used any medications on them yet. Yesterday the one roo and 2 hens got very lethargic, barely moving, not eating or drinking, runny white poop. We quarantined the three, gave them Nutri-drench. This morning one of them looks much better, she was standing, moving around, eating and drinking. The roo and the other hen are hard to tell, they are still laying down and I'm waiting for my husband to get home so we can drag them out and look at them again. Maybe give more Nutridrench.

 

[ChickenCanoe]

How's the ventilation? They need lots of fresh air 24/7

 

[AmpersatChick]

I've been wondering if we have adequate ventilation. When it got chilly we closed some of the vent doors because we were worried about cold air blowing right down on them. This is our coop, you can see the small vent hole in the taller part of the coop, there is one like it on the other side, those stay open and that is where the nesting boxes are. on the flat-roofed side is where the roosts are and they go right up to where the birds can peak out the vent windows. We lowered those flaps when it got chilly but we didn't latch them down so they do stand away from the opening some. Is this enough?

 

[AmpersatChick]

In this picture all of the vents are completely open.

 

[ChickenCanoe]

They need at least a square foot of opening per bird all the time, especially at night. Leave them open all the time. If you don't have that amount of ventilation, you should consider more openings.

If you think about it, when they come out of the coop in the morning is the coldest time of day. If they were kept warm at night and then walk out into a brisk breeze, that's much more stressful than allowing them to acclimate to winter.

Chickens need fresh air - not heat. People in Minnesota, Canada and Alaska don't give them heat.

It's a lot colder here than AR. One of my friends has a nice coop and predator proof covered run with roosts in both. Her chickens slept on the roosts in the run last winter, not choosing to sleep in the coop one night.

 

[bobbi-j]

I agree with ChickenCanoe - open all the vents. I live in MN, it's getting into the 20's at night and I still haven't put the windows back in the coops yet. Lots of cool, fresh air blowing in day and night. I'll put the windows in before snow flies, just to keep the bedding dry.

 

[AmpersatChick]

Thanks so much for the advice! I will definitely open those back up and see if we need to put in more.