Here it is, almost the end of January 2013. Thinking
back I remember the losses of chickens to predators last spring. I hope I am better protected now. All the small pens have small wire that
prevents raccoons from sticking their paws into the pens. Where there was
digging under, wire has been placed on the ground around the outside of the
pens. I have put more secure fasteners on the doors to the pens and that is all
I can think of doing for them.
A red tailed hawk has killed several of my free ranging
orange frizzled roosters. Why it always chose those particular roosters, I
don't know. The red tailed hawk has not been seen for months now.
Lately a big lab mix has been pushing himself under the
wire to the big chicken yard. He is a big dog. It is amazing that he can do
this. I caught him several times and put him out. He doesn't seem focused on
killing chickens although maybe he is thinking of grabbing one and taking it
home. I had some old collapsible
dog fencing and put it up along the part of the fence he pushed under. It seems
to keep him out. He did it again in another location and I added some more
collapsible fencing to that part too. Then this morning he was in my front
yard, but I hadn't let the chickens out yet. So far he is batting zero. He
doesn't act like he is after chickens but who knows?
I lost some chickens to disease too. I had purchased
some Baytril from a pigeon supply. It was pretty expensive, but I thought it
would be helpful in combating any disease a chicken might get. I had
treated Blondie successfully with Baytril purchased from a local vet, although
she has not produced a healthy egg since! But Baytril didn't help Little Lumpy, my mostly white
rooster I used for breeding, and I lost Bug, my very favorite rooster for
breeding smaller chickens. I began to feel that Baytril was killing them, as
they seemed to get better and then died.
A fellow who raises pigeons and bought some chickens
from me told me about Tylin 200. It is an injectable, so when another chicken got
sick I purchased some Tylin 200 and the local vet showed me how to give a shot,
and the vet mentioned Gentamicin, another antibiotic that you can use in steam or
fog, and since I have a fogging device I used that and put some drops of
lavender in the water too as he suggested. That combination seemed to work
miracles on respiratory disease and I felt I could now cure anything.
But then I noticed my best chicken pal Ms. Chocolatte
roosting in a very strange way, with her head pointed skyward, her beak in the
air. I noticed she was coughing. I brought her in the house for the
"miracle" treatment. It helped maybe a little. She no longer extended
her neck to breathe. She looked good though, her feathers were all in good
condition and she was in full feather, but under her feathers she was very
thin. I kept on
taking care of her, offering her the best of whatever she liked to eat, plus
vitamin D, cod liver oil, etc. I felt it would take longer to cure her because
she was sicker than the others.
I got out my chicken health book and found that extension of the
neck and gasping for breath are the signs of infectious laryngotracheitis,
which is a disease caused by a herpes virus which has an intermediate host of a
particular kind of a cockroach which lives in the south. Ms. Choco came from
Lousiana, so I figured she probably carried the herpes virus and when she got
stressed, it took over.
Her eyes started closing and so I washed her eyes and then
read that chickens may go blind, and she apparently did gradually go blind as
she could no longer see the food I was offering. But I figured out a way that
she could eat; she knew I was putting food in a paper tray and so she would
stab at the tray often getting quite a bit of food down. I still thought she
might make it, but she didn't, and one morning I found her dead.
She was a
real pal and always came forward to greet me whenever I showed up. I hope she
enjoyed her life here. I fixed up the patio pen with her in mind, and put in
that nice rock fountain that she enjoyed drinking out of. On warm days I let
the small flock out of the pen to wander around the back yard. The picture on
the home page of by website shows Ms. Choco, Bug, and some of the others
enjoying the garden.
She was
the one who instigated our friendship. Will there be another Ms. Choco some
day? RIP Ms. Choco.
