Treatment: Day One

Whelp, after a long night of research, some emails, and some phone calls, I think I've got an idea of what's going on.

The four pack of pullets that we got have been healthy and wonderful since we got them, but when we mixed in the meat birds, the meat birds started to get sick.  That makes them sound like carriers but that's not possible if they've never been sick!  I checked with the breeder and he told me their vaccination schedule.  They're vaccinated against Marek's, Newcastle, coccidosis, infectious bronchitis, and bursal.  I didn't even know there were so many vaccines that chickens needed!  But the good news was that they were already immune to most of the bad stuff and it explained why they haven't been sneezing.

Then, while researching infectious bronchitis vaccination schedules, I came across a note in a veterinary journal that birds vaccinated with the live vaccine can occasionally shed the virus for 20 weeks after the fact, just like a bird that's been infected with the full strength virus.  It's a phenomenon I've seen with horses, too.  The four pack was vaccinated 6 - 7 weeks ago.

Well.  Shit.

The flock is looking pretty good today, just some light sneezing/coughing/rattling from three or four birds.  It's hard to tell with the sea of white feathers.  Everyone is active and eating, so no emergencies yet.  No nasty discharge, swollen eyes, or depressed birds.  They're getting tetracycline in their water this week to protect against secondary infections while they're fighting this off.  I hear rattles in the breathing of a few, so there's something up.  I don't want to lose birds to this.  I'm hopeful that they got it from the vaccinated birds which means they'll have a mild form and it will pass quickly with not much more than a chest cold.  I don't like giving antibiotics to my birds, but this could so easily go from minor to birds getting very ill.  Every veterinary journal suggests using antibiotics to prevent a secondary infection in addition to supportive care to get them through the virus.  Most mortality comes from a virus opening the door to additional infections.

The rare chick has been dubbed Rarity (yes, after the My Little Pony) and he managed to escape his pasture and take me on a merry chase this morning. Considering he was one of the ones with rattling breathing, I'm hopeful this means they're not too bad off.  We're pretty sure we have the little trouble maker ID'd as an Easter Egger boy.  If he is, I'm very excited since we have two Easter Egger girls and we could potentially raise some more for our flock in future years.

Rarity

 

Hopefully this will be nothing more than a learning experience.  Once the dust settles, I'll be ordering several vaccines for the layer flock.  How do none of the chicken beginner books mention vaccinations beyond the coccidosis that you get done by the hatchery? 

Just a little sneeze

It had to happen eventually.  If raising livestock was simple and nothing ever went wrong, everyone would do it.

Last night I was flipping the litter in the run where the meat birds, the 8 week old pullets, and the one random rare chick were living.  With 29 birds in one place, maintenance was a twice daily affair.  But it was almost over, the meat coop was done and the birds were going to move into their luxurious new home.  I heard a weird noise.  Took me a couple seconds to figure it out.  A chick sneezed.  Then I heard it from another spot.  Two chicks were sneezing.  They were both fine, running around with the rest, so I didn't think too much about it.  I was tossing hay and straw around, poor things probably got a beak full of dust.

This morning I had to catch all 25 meat birds to get them moved.  This meant that I got a chance to give every bird a hands on check.  Two of them sounded congested when I was carrying them.  A third sneezed.  After the meat birds were moved, I heard the rare chick sneeze.  Since the pullets had rejected him and he was standing all alone with the night closing in, he got scooped up and moved in with the meat birds.  He sounded congested once I put my ear up to him.

I went online, looking to see how to treat a head cold in a chicken.  Turns out chickens don't get head colds.  They get very dangerous viral infections that are contagious as hell.  Like, 100% contagious in the case of infectious bronchitis, which is the one that is most common and matches our symptoms.

Damn it all to hell.

I'm trying to not panic, but the information isn't very reassuring.  Viruses have this funny way of not really going away, making the chickens 'carriers' for life.  That means a closed flock at the very best, having to cull and start over at the worst.  I'm still crossing my fingers that this is bacterial or environmental.  They're no longer on hay or straw, so that should decrease the dust.  But congested breathing doesn't come from dust . . .

If they sound worse in the morning, one of them is going in for a blood test to get an ID on what we're dealing with.  Then I can see if we've got a case of fall colds or some very ugly decisions to make.

Poultry explosion

As I sit here typing, we have:

4 7 month old laying hens (The Ladies)
4 6 week old future laying hens (The 4-Pack)
4 6 month old muscovy ducks (Draco and Harem)
25 2 week old Cornish Rock Cross meat birds (Lunch)
1 mystery chick we got with the meat birds (Pretty Boy)

That's a total of 38 birds.  That's a lot of birds.

My laying hens are awesome.  They give us three eggs a day, regular as clockwork, and have proven invaluable for processing old leaf litter.  I have to fence off the driveway before we forage them again, they've decided the neighbor has the best bugs in town.

 The Ladies, hard at work right after I mowed the lawn

The ducks are loving life as free range birds.  They spend all day hunting bugs and nibbling on the lawn.  The first couple days we had some trouble convincing the girls to not spend the night roosting on the roof of the garage, but now they've settled into a pattern.  They get their feeding of layer crumbles and treats at night and the drake helps herd them into the pen.  We ended up naming them since we expect to have them for years.  The drake is Draco and the girls are Spot, Speckles, and Hershey.  We are the least creative owners ever.

Spot and Speckles on the roof, at least they're safe from foxes

 The ducks and the chicks hanging out, L to R it's Speckles, Hershey, Spot, and Draco

Draco and his ladies (L to R, Spot, Hershey, Speckles)

As for the chickens, we have four 6 week old girls to expand our laying flock.  There's two Red Stars and two Easter Eggers.  We have them in a run next to the laying flock so they can get used to seeing each other without the big girls getting a chance to beat the little girls up.  When they're about three months old we plan to combine the two flocks.

The new girls on the block

And then there's our meat birds.  We decided to try the commercial line of birds instead of the heritage type broilers for this batch.  They grow faster, have more breast meat, and I got them for a lower price per bird, but they can't reproduce on their own and are prone to leg problems.  Sure enough, we have one with a leg problem that I spotted just today.  They also eat like starved raptors and poop a shocking amount.  Since they'll be at processing weight at 10 weeks old, they have a lot of growing to do.

We're trying to raise them as naturally as possible and give them the same quality of life we gave the Rangers.  Today was their first foray outside while I cleaned out their brooder.

The meat birds doing some maintenance in my pepper garden

I don't think I'll get these guys again, they're just not the same as the Rangers.  The Rangers were chickens that happen to grow faster than the dual purpose birds.  These birds are bred for exactly one purpose and they're not as much fun to raise.  Next time I'll get the birds that take a couple more weeks to grow but behave normally.  But it made me happy to see them out pecking and scratching like any other chicken.  They uncovered some sort of nest and had a feeding frenzy before being tucked back under their heater.

Don't my peppers look awesome?  That's my habaneros in front, bell peppers and ascents in back, and purple jalapenos on the right.  The big pot in the back is lemongrass.  I've had quite a good year with the peppers and I'll be repeating all of these peppers next year.

38 birds is a lot.  I'm spending quite a bit of time cleaning up pens and runs right now.  Of course we'll be at a laying flock of 8 and a duck flock of 4 come November, but in the meantime, our compost heap is getting a lot of material.  Should be some awesome compost next spring with the manure, straw, wood chips, and leaves going in.  It's the silver lining I have to look for when cleaning out the brooder for 26 chicks.  Ew. Raising chickens is not for the squeamish. 

New Used Wood Chipper

It's a Kemp K6CH 5HP wood chipper/shredder/mulcher and it's pretty awesome and terrifying. The machine is pretty old. The engine is from about 1980 according to it's production date. I thought my electric chipper was pretty slick with its ability to gobble up 2 inch diameter branches and turn large piles of trimmings into wheel barrows full of chips. Well this beast puts the electric unit to shame. The heavy hardened steel tree devouring drum in it's belly doesn't even notice a 3 inch diameter branch being shoved into it's gaping mouth.

The catch to me getting this beast is that I had pick it up and it didn't start. It was put away years ago and forgotten in the corner of a garage full of fuel and stabilizer. Over the years it collected dust, the fuel evaporated out leaving a dusty machine and a gummed up carburetor, and was cluttering up a garage.  So a little research and some elbow grease I got the machine figured out and running like a champ.

I could have skipped removing the carburetor from the engine had I had a little more experience, but it was a good chance to learn some more about my new device.

I could have just pulled the muffler and that little cap in the red box to get the whole thing working. Under that cap is some milled channels and a rubber gasket that was frozen up with some old gelatinous fuel stabilizer. 

This was the other problem spot. The vertical rod in the picture is the throttle arm and it was missing the throttle knob. Down is idle, up is run, and gravity kept it in the idle position. Clamping in in the run position made it purr like a large hungry lion with a fresh kill.

After a about 3 hours of cleaning, fiddling, and an oil change I have another pretty awesome yard tool that I can use at any location on the property. I should hit some spots with a wire wheel and a can of spray paint  to take care of some rust on the belt cover, but that is a project for another lazy weekend.