After 7 months of hatching eggs and then growing babies, I don't have any chicks or ducks in the house! Call me crazy...but I keep looking at hatching eggs on eBay, but I will wait until at least after Christmas to hatch any more.
Why you ask? Why would I want to hatch more cute little fluffy babies? Well, to sell and rotate my stock. A hen lays the best the first two years of her life, they can slow down after that two years. A lot of people around here raise chickens so they can have eggs, and they don't want all the trouble a rooster can cause either, so they have no protection for their flock. Even when you have a rooster they will die protecting their girls, roosters are very protective and if a raccoon or fox, or even a hawk tries to grab one of the girls, he will do his best to fight it off and will sacrifice himself so the hens will live. I have around 30 roosters at the moment. It is the luck of the draw when you hatch eggs, a lot of the time you get about half roosters.
I ordered restraining cones yesterday, it is a device to keep a bird still when you decide it is time to process them. The majority of my Roosters are adult size now, I have a lot of different breeds and will keep at least one Rooster of each. Roosters can get rather aggressive though, they fight for dominance and injuries to other birds can occur, even deaths. I lost two young Roosters that would not back down to the dominant male in the Coop Run...it is set up like a coop now, it has a roof, roosting bars and nest boxes too. It is best to introduce new younger chickens slowly because of the pecking order thing that goes on with chickens, I took a chance and put the largest youngsters out in the Run without much of an introduction. I was working outside on cleaning and building so I kept an eye on them for the day, everything was going pretty well and about a week later I guess the little Roosters decided to take on the bigger Rooster. My husband found a lot of blood one morning when he was feeding, he told me all of the chickens looked OK though, but I might want to check them out. Later when I went out, I found the two dead...so I guess maybe he might have interrupted the fight with feeding and they resumed it afterward. There was no blood on them, but after inspecting some of the other baby Roosters I noticed some cuts and abrasions on their feet and legs.
No, I did not cry. Upset that it happened, yes...and I feel bad about it. I have learned that death is part of raising chickens though, and that is why I don't really name them. My husband does name some of them. I try to keep them all healthy and nurse them when anything happens. I named this one I nursed Diamond the other day, she is a small Dominique hen...one of the favorites of my Easter Egger Rooster my husband calls Mr. Poofy Face. Chickens can be kind of stupid sometimes, when it got cold a few weeks ago, Diamond and her flock stood out in the rain and cold...got soaking wet too. Normally a chickens feathers keeps them plenty warm, she was molting and what made it worse, she was missing feathers in her saddle area. I went out to feed and check on all of them and I could hear her breath from 15 feet away. She was standing in one spot and making raspy gurgling noises. I picked her up and felt so sorry for her...she was still wet, her few feathers were matted to her little body and I could feel the rattling in her chest. I brought her into the house, I have large totes that I use as brooders when I hatch chicks and I had one ready to put her into. I had moved babies to the brooder that I had moved into the storage room with the water heater so I had room. I still had one batch of babies in the bathroom and did not want them sick, so she was kept in the office.
I got the tools of the trade out...VetRx and Electrolytes with Vitamins and Probiotics, got her all set up and warm. Put the VetRx on her and the Vitamins in the water. VetRx works something like Vicks Vaporub on people, it is all natural ingredients and usually helps with any congestion or breathing issues. So she gots some on her head, a drop on her beak, under both wings and some on her chest. She was really sounding bad a half hour later, so I got my Eucalyptus oil, Pepermint oil and Oregano oil out...I put a few drops of Oregano oil into her beak, and a few drops of Pepermint and Eucalyptus on the puppy pad in her tote. I gave her some fermented feed with a couple of drops of Oregano oil in it too. I did this for a few days, when she seem unchanged I added antibiotics to her water and still did the rest...after a week she laid an egg. Diamond still had that sound and gurgling noise in her chest, she never had any discharge from her eyes or nose...but she still sounded bad. I got Duramyacin and started giving her a shot a day...still did the other too. She started walking around more, she even started laying an egg every other day, but still sounded bad. I finally got some Tylan, Tractor Supply had it in the small bottle finally! I gave her a shot of Tylan, then waited another day...discontinued the other stuff so I could tell if it was working, gave her another shot and moved her to a kennel on the back porch for some fresh air. She seemed much better faster after the Tylan injections. I kept her out in the kennel for another week after being in the house for almost a month! Tell me I don't take good care of my chickens...I may just slap you. Lol...anyway, I do the best I can...like I said before, at this time in my life they are like my children. Wouldn't you do everything you could to take care of them?
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