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.

Almost time for freedom

While looking up info on ducks we found a great deal on some surplus ducks. The catch was they needed to be picked up soon. That gave me 7 days to get their pen and house built. Of course that is not what was planned for the week, so between work, prior engagements, and rain, I only had 4 days that I could work on this project.

The chickens are already on the one mostly level part of the yard. That meant my project started with making a 10x14 foot level pad to start the base. After doing that I think I know why my house is a split level house. Between the rocks and roots there is not a even a level rectangle that small to be dug out in my yard.

So after 3 evenings, 3 Home Depot stops, and 1 really long day this if the newly occupied duck home.

8x8x8 pen, 4x4 house, 4 ducks, and a real door. I'm quite proud of my door. It's square, it's braced, it swings smooth and level, and it has even clearance all around. The pen is sturdy and stable as I confirmed when I used an extension ladder to climb up the sides to secure the fencing across the top.

The 3 girls, They like to perch on the horizontal poles. They are not ready for hand feeding yet. I tried, and and the darkest one took flight, circled once and landed back on her perch. Thankfully I was not pooped on during the fly over.

Out handsome drake. When I cut out the door I didn't know how big they were going to be so I guessed a little.  At 12 inches at the bottom, 8 inches at the top, and 14 inches tall, the door is just big enough for him to squeeze through.  He does seem to enjoy the small door now. In the morning he will stand in the door  blocking the girls while he surveys the land before walking over to their little pool. And at night he will make sure nothing got inside, then ushers the girls inside, stands in the door way looking smug before going in to snuggle with his little harem for the night.

Though I did not get a picture of it, the secure of the pen was tested my an owl. We were taking the dogs out for their bed time potty run when and owl bounced off the pen. I heard the noise and looked just in time to see a gray colored owl flying off into the trees.

As we understand the process we are supposed to leave the ducks in their pen for a week or 2 to make the recognize the pen as their home. They've been in for week, so something this week we'll let them out and herd them a few feet down to the muddy mosquito breeding pit. Hopefully we are doing it right and we'll still have 4 ducks in the pen that night.

Next up - my new used wood chipper that I was given because it would start and it was just taking up too much space in someones garage.

Hey Ladies!

So the ladies are now about six months old and are producing three eggs a day very consistently.  I let them free range on the days I'm home to save wear and tear on their pasture.  It's also excellent natural bug control.  Just yesterday the ladies discovered and decimated a nest of carpenter ants.  All four of them got super excited when they found the egg chamber and I'm sure I saw one take off with the queen.  They also helped me move some stuff around the property and ate all of the night crawlers I uncovered.  Pretty sure they ate a frog, too.  They're like my little fluffy shadows when I'm working outside.

The downside to letting the ladies out is that they need regular management.  Especially after the fox incident, we want them to stay where we can see them.  We also want them to stay off out of the neighbor's lawn (though she loves them).  The ant nests they've been feasting on are right along the property line and they need to be put away before we let the dogs out or leave.

For me, it's easy.  I've raised them from one day old, they know me.  I call 'Chik-chick-chick' and they come running.  Problem is that Joe can't imitate my call, it's too high pitched.  So now I'm trying to teach them to come running when I call "Hey, ladies!", a la The Beastie Boys.  Mostly because I want to see Joe out there yelling that.



Of course I have to be nice to Joe, he's been working hard.  Our Muscovy ducks are arriving on Saturday and he's getting their pen together.  Three ducks and a drake so hopefully next year we'll have duck to go with the chicken in the freezer.  He also has to get the coop and pen together for the next round of meat birds that are arriving at the end of the month.  I'm not losing my sun room again!  We invested in a nice brooder for the first four weeks, then they're heading outside.

On the left is the start of the Muscovy pen, showing the area where we need them to manage the bug population, and on the right is the start of the meat bird coop, showing the pasture fenced in for them.

We also have four more laying hens on the way.  They're four week old chicks of assorted breeds, we're just waiting to see what we get.  We'll probably end up keeping the two we like the most and selling the other two.  Six hens will get us 4-5 eggs a day.  That's a lot of eggs.  We're already giving some away to our neighbor.  Joe was worried that just four girls in the coop designed for 6-8 will get cold during the winter.

I have my fingers crossed for Cukoo Maran or Silver Laced Wyandotte.  Easter Egger is also on the list of possibilities.  I adore my Barred Rock girls, but I want to try out some other varieties.

Fox in the Hen House

Today we had our first run in with a live Red Fox in the yard. Sorry no pictures.

The chickens were free ranging and feasting on garden critters and I was hauling stuff through the yard to take care of another brush pile. Then this cute adorable looking Red Fox comes rushing up out of the ferns, and through the garden on it's way to steal at least one of my chickens while it was hard at work.

I dropped the wheel barrow can run towards the fox to cut it off. You could see the fox was confused and considering it's life choices. Do I ignore the flailing bi-ped? Do I abort and run away? Maybe I can snatch one and run away with it? And while I'm running at it I'm thinking do I wring it's neck, or do I punt it. The fox decided to try to snatch and run, which meant I couldn't punt it without for sure getting the chicken it also chose.

So I'm flailing and yelling trying to get a grab at the back of it's neck. There was no way it was going to get a free meal off my flock after we just started getting steady eggs from them. The fox decided it wanted to live, and got off the chicken and ran like hell. Turns out foxes bounce. It didn't see the new fencing that was going up and ran right straight into it. He bounce straight back off the fencing and headed back towards me briefly. He decided that wasn't a wise direction either and choose a very wide loop around the back of the yard and slinked up the gully to where I think it's den is.

The poor chicken the fox grabbed is just fine now. She lost a couple of feathers and hid somewhere safe for a couple hours before coming back to join the flock in their run.

This fall fox goes on my menu. I'll be looking forward to breakfasts of fox and eggs, and bow hunting with a nice fox muff.