Update On Our Sick Cochin

Our Cochin hen is doing fine. Still confined to the 'sick ward', but hopefully in the direction to a quick mend. I'm just thankful to finally wake up to a hen that is better off than she was the day before (for Fanny, it was the other way around). We armed ourselves yesterday with a little bit of knowledge and a remedy recommended from Guy the chicken guy we met at tractor supply a few weeks ago. We were told that he is one of the top chicken judges around the area and is ridiculously knowledgeable in poultry. I think I need to get to know this guy better. He diagnosed our bird with Coryza, a common infectious poultry bacterium (Avibacterium paragallinarum - sorry, I'm a microbiologist, so I have to throw that in!) that is, for the bird, the equivalent to the human cold. Apparently once the birds have it, they become carriers. You're options? Cull the whole flock and start over, inoculate the new comers, or treat them as they get sick. Since we have a small flock of chickens with which we are 'attached' to, culling is out. I'm sure that this will travel through all of the recent additions until everyone has had it, so we will treat as necessary. Perhaps in the future, I will research and try inoculating any other new additions. Fortunately those who have already had this should not have a reoccurrence, and the potential for death is low.

Treatment? Guy recommended penicillin in a pill form. We couldn't locate any penicillin safe for them yesterday, so we are using Colloidal Silver. There's not a lot of information out there about using silver in poults but it's what we found worked best in during the last outbreak. We use it for ourselves and it works wonders. If anyone has information otherwise, as always, please pass it along. The bacteria is apparently showing resistance to Terramycin and Erythromycin (this would explain why the Terramycin didn't do a lick of good the last time). He also recommended VetRx (the orange/yellow box above), which is like Vicks for chickens. It looks to be all natural with the main active ingredient being Camphor (like in Vicks). And while we were picking it up at Agway yesterday, I found The Chicken Health Handbook by Gail Damerow, which I've been looking for; I picked that up too.

So that's that! Blue Cochin is on the mend, and hopefully we can treat any other infections that pop up quickly. I'll keep you posted...

Some Days You Win, Some Days You Lose...

And the past two days, I've lost. Fanny, our only Jersey Giant finally past. Sadly, with a little help. It was a tough decision, but se was literally down to feathers, skin, and bones. It was so sad. I felt so bad watching her get worse each day. We tried hard for the past week, but it just got to be too much for her and I felt guilty watching her suffer. She was a good ole hen and will be sorely missed.

A new hen has now replaced her on the front porch sick chicken ward. One of our new Blue Cochins has come down with the same thing that our other chickens had last November: bubbley eyes (literally, bubbles coming from the eyes) and snot. Anyone have any ideas?? We searched high and low for info last year, and never really came up with a definitive answer. It went through all of our chickens. All recovered but one old hen. So we're hoping that this will pass with her too and that none of our others will come down with it again.

And if all that wasn't bad enough, I come out to the rabbit hutch yesterday morning to find a dead male bunny. They boys and girls were separated about three weeks ago. I had 3 boys and two girls. Apparently, boys of 3 months old come into their male hormones and will fight (really? 3 months?). I feel so bad. This was all my fault. Nothing that I have read, or any info that has come through other rabbit owners expressed that this would happen SO early. So, I am banking this as yet 'another' lesson learned. Next time I will be smarter. Of the two males that were left yesterday, one found a new home. Everyone else is fine. Onward...

Second sunny day in a row and the temperature has been in the 30s during the day and teens at night. Could someone please send spring? I'm not sure I'm ever going to thaw. I've been trying to get all my bunnies plucked, but I don't want to pluck them when the nights are in the teens. I spun a bit of angora last weekend (hopefully I will finish a skein this weekend), and boy is it ever nice. All I can say, if you are a spinner and want to start to raise your own fiber animals, angora rabbits are a good place to start.

Frontier House

A Sleepy Sheepdog and His Hippo

I really love my dog! Truthfully, he is just one of the cutest things to walk on four legs. This is him sleeping on 'his' couch with his most favorite toy: Hippo. Kenai is not one of those destructive dogs that chews and shreds his stuffed toys (thankfully). Instead, he sort of mouths them with an occasional lick or two. One of his draws to Hippo is the beans that fill his feet. My guess is that it is analogous to a a child's thumb. They both get gratification from sucking on them (or in Kenai's case, chewing). He has two other toys that run a close second and third to Hippo, and they are Kiwi and Pelican, which are both Beanie Babies. Kenai also has many other cute and useful traits: he gives me my socks when I get up in the morning (no seriously! check out the picture below)...

As a matter of fact, he picks up anything I drop. This really comes in handy when I'm knitting, sewing, or working on any other project around the house (don't worry, no needles folks); this includes handing me hangers when I'm hanging up clothes. He rings a bell in order to tell us that he needs to potty (and of course when he just wants to go outside and play); he brings you his towel after he drinks to wipe his face; slide down the sliding board at the playground (he loves that); dives off the dock like a labrador (he loves to swim!), and of course all the other basic dog commands. He's also great with the chickens and bunnies, which I'm grateful for. Occasionally, when the chickens are all in a group, he gets the fire in him to run through and scatter them (some sheepdog, huh?), but he never hurts them. I feel lucky to have a dog like him.

Fanny the sour crop hen is doing okay. Her crop finally seems to be emptying, and we've started to give her some baby food vegetables and fruits, which she happily ate. Her color is pretty poor, though. I'm hoping that it will return with some real nourishment. She must not mind her confinement to the front porch though. As soon as we set her down on the ground after flushing her crop, she waddles right for the cage door and waits for us to open it so she can return to perching on her nestbox. What a good girl! By no means are we out of the water yet, but I'm sure hoping to see her back to normal soon.

The Time Change and a Sour Crop

This time change has really been a hard one this year. I'm not sure why. Usually after the first night's sleep I've got it down, but every day I wake up, I still feel like I've lost an hour. Oh to be a chicken (or any other farm animal), not bound by these biannual constraints. They still get up at the same time and follow suit with their night time rituals. The extra hour of light (can't say 'sunlight' as we haven't seen much of that, though it IS sunny today) is nice, but I was really enjoying waking up with the dawn. Now it's dark. I realize that will change, I'm just extremely ready for spring. This winter has been holding on for so long.

On another note, one of our hens seems to have come down with some sort of sour or impacted crop. We've lost a hen to this before when we first started out. I'm hoping to save this girl. She's our only Jersey Giant and such a good hen. We did some research online to find some treatments; the information was varied. So we gave her olive oil a few times, and are now giving her saline; massaging her crop each time we treat her. She was taken off of solid food and is now eating some plain yogurt. Her crop is still full. Not as big as it was when we started but it just doesn't seem to want to empty. This concerns me. She is pooing a bit, which gives me some hope, but I'd feel better if that crop would empty. That's her pictured above.

New Chickens

Additions to the Flock

(one of our new Blue Laced Red Wyandottes - picture doesn't do her justice)

Sorry I've been MIA lately. I caught some nasty virus which put me down for quite awhile. I even had to take off 4 days of work. That's a rarity. Fortunately I'm feeling much better, and except for a bit of a lingering cough, feel back to my normal self.

Yesterday we added to our flock of chickens, taking our grand total up to 28! And what a variety we have. The funny thing about all this is that it was my husband, of all people, that initiated this addition. Why is that funny, you might ask? Well, two falls ago, when we first got our chickens (initiated by me) he about had a heart attack when I brought home our initial 12 chickens. I got the lecture of, "I thought you only wanted 3 or 4!?" It wasn't long after that that we picked up 3 or 4 more hens to get us through the winter egg-wise. It wasn't a very prosperous fist winter. If we got one egg a day, we were lucky. In the chickens defense, it was cold and snowy, and they were still pretty young. My husband didn't see it that way. He wanted eggs.

(new Blue Cochin)

Once spring came, half our hens went broody. It was our landlord (we have amazing landlords) that told us to 'let'em set'. So we did. We had 3 hens setting on a menagerie of eggs in the spring. We had no idea what would hatch out as we have always went with a variety of hens and had a Americauna and a Silkie rooster. It was our Silkie hen that first went broody followed by the others. By late spring we had chicks scurrying all over the farm. We also had the addition of a 4 hand raised chicks that came in the mail: 2 Easter Eggers (they lay green eggs) and 2 chocolate egg layers (no people, not REAL chocolate - but wouldn't that be nice?)

(some of the new silkie hens - one might be a rooster)

I prefer to let the mamma hens raise the young. There are many benefits. One: you don't have the mess or stink in your house, and boy can they be messy! Two: you don't have the increase in your electric bill from running the heat lamps and lights all the time. Three: the chicks get inoculated with the naturally occurring good bacteria in their gut and are less likely to grow the bad ones that we worry about making us sick. Four: who knows better how to raise those babies than a hen? And she can be a fierce protector of her chicks. I've seen my little silkies take out some of my largest hens if they come too close. And it's amazing to watch the hens teach her chicks how to eat and drink. She will regurgitate a bit of predigested food for them to eat until they have figured it out on their own.

(another pretty little silkie hen)

This doesn't mean that letting the hens raise the chicks doesn't have its downfalls too. I have lost chicks to hawks and other predatory animals, and I have even had one drown in a bucket of water. Raising a straight run also means you have a 50/50 chance of getting roosters. The sad thing to learn about chickens is that too many roosters causes problems in the flock. They fight and they can ..er.. exhaust the hens. Still, for me anyway, the pros out weigh the cons. And I suppose the benefit to the roosters is...you can eat them. Sorry if that offends anyone, but this is the reality. It's not easy, believe me. We cooked one rooster last year and I couldn't eat him. He sure did smell good, but it was the first rooster we'd ever cooked and I was still green to this whole reality. My dog, however, was very grateful. I'll try again this year. Killing is not something we like to do, it's just the way nature works. I can say this: it sure does make you appreciate your food more.

(Blue Laced Red Wyandotte Roo - napping)

It's another rainy day on the farm. Everyone is locked up in the coop and cage for the next couple of days to get acquainted with their new living arrangements. There's been a little bit of bickering, but overall they seem to be integrating well. I can't wait for that sunny day when I can watch them peruse the farm yard looking for goodies. Hopefully I can get some more colorful pictures of them at that time. For now, this was the best I could do.

(another Blue Cochin - aren't they pretty?)

My hope this summer is to hatch out some Silkie, Americauna, and Wyandotte chicks seeing how we have roosters for each. I'm not sure how we'll do it yet. We'll have to do some research to figure out how to separate them long enough to get a clutch. Maybe we'll have to construct a mini coop and run so we can ensure that the right rooster fertilizes the right hens. It's a learning experience. Until then, they will all just free range together.

(another new Blue Laced Red Wyandotte)

So our new additions consist of: 2 Blue Laced Red Wyandotte hens and one roo; 2 Blue Cochins; and six silkie hens (one who might turn out to be a roo). I'm looking forward to watching Chicken TV this summer! =) Hope you are all well.