Learning More Medical

I have never had any experience with doctoring on animals other than dogs and cats after surgery, but having over 100 chickens...that is changing quickly.  I have a book on chicken care, but it doesn't cover every situation.  I have a rooster with what I believe may be an eye worm.  From what I have read, it can be transmitted through fecal matter of roaches...or a chicken eating a roach?  We have had a good amount of rain lately and I have not seen any roaches, but you don't always see them outside.

This morning, I have to work on my rooster...and I need to check the rest of their eyes for it.  It actually makes the tear duct swell and a white blob about the size of a small marble comes up, sometimes you can see the worms on the surface of the eye itself.  I do not see any worms, but it has to be early stage eye worm infestation.  I have to remove the lump of gunk from his eye and give him a shot of penicillin.  This rooster is not very nice, he bit me twice yesterday...I have a couple of bruises on my hand from him, so I need to wear gloves and long sleeves for sure.  I was told to put VetRx on the roof of his mouth and it will make the worm vacate.  I hope I can do this...

I have been working on trying to get breeding pens set up.  I am building on to the run too.  I need to separate out all of the roosters from the hens for at least three weeks before I start trying to breed any purebred chickens.  I put in an order for female geese for our two ganders, and ordered some chicks too.  I need a replacement rooster, a Silver Laced Wyandotte and a Dominique Rooster, plus I ordered a few females for our Polish Rooster and the Gold Laced Wyandotte.  I am going to hatch some eggs too, I have my Dominiques separated for over a month now, so I am going to hatch some too...I am not positive my Dominique rooster is fertile...but, it never hurts to try.

I am gathering more eggs every day, yesterday I got 35!  We had several days in a row that were just gorgeous...highs in the 60's and bright sunshine filled days, today it is pouring rain.