Coccidiosis In Chickens

This video gives an overview of coccidiosis in chickens and shows how devastating just one bird with coccidiosis can be to an unprotected flock. While coccidiosis can occur at any age the greatest danger of infection is in chicks from four to eight weeks old. It takes around 6 days for the disease to run its course. Often there are no visible symptoms until the third and fourth days. This video does include some archival footage of chicks with coccidiosis and shows some of the symptoms of the disease as it progresses which may be upsetting to some.

Bumblefoot Chicken

Bumblefoot in Chickens

The symptoms of bumblefoot are limping and a large soft swelling on bottom of foot. Usually bumblefoot is due to bruises or small wounds. Some possible causes are jumping from perches that are too high; jumping on a hard surface from the perch or other high spot; long periods on hard floors or runs; extremely narrow perches. I am not a vet but from what I have read it seems to me that the main consensus of all the methods I have seen is that mild cases may go away if the blumblefoot is cleaned up and kept clean, and more serious cases will need the ‘bumble’ part removing and then the wound kept clean until healed (there are many different variations of antiseptic and antibiotics available)

Mild Cases of Bumblefoot

In mild cases of bumblefoot the bottom of the foot is swollen and is inflamed and noticeably painful.

Treatment (as recommended in the Success With Poultry book) : Washing in warm water and applying boric acid ointment (to make boric acid ointment add one part boric acid to five parts vaseline).

Method :

1. Hold the foot in warm water for about ten minutes
2. Apply boric acid ointment
3. Repeat this once each day for three days, keeping the bird confined on soft earth or in a coop with some sort of soft bedding.

Below is a video of a rooster being treated for a mild case of bumblefoot.



In aggravated cases, abscesses form and the ‘bumble’ will need to be removed and the wound cleaned (I will list the basic method below, but it may be something you would prefer your vet to do):

1. Soak the foot in warm water for about ten minutes
2. Then with a very sharp knife or scalpel try to work around the ‘bumble’ pulling back the edges of the scab (the trademark bumblefoot black scab may be like a plug hiding puss at a deeper level).
3. Remove all the puss and clean the wound thoroughly with lukewarm water. You should be left with a clean hole.
4. The Success With Poultry book then suggests dusting it with iodoform and applying the boric acid ointment – an alternative to this step 4 would be to fill the hole with an antibiotic cream such as Neosporin.
5. Bandage the foot with cotton or use vetrap (or similar)and dress it daily as (4) above

Caring For Ex Battery Chickens

When you first get your ex-battery hens home you may find that they look like they are in a pretty poorly state - most hens that survive their life in a battery farm will have up to two thirds of their feathers missing. Their beaks will have been trimmed to prevent them pecking at each other. Legs will be lumpy and bumpy. Toe claws are usually long and their combs will probably be quite large and pale. Happily, most issues will be aesthetic and resolved relatively quickly with a few weeks of 'the good life'!

© Photo By Andy Pike

Re-homing ex battery hens is not just about putting them into a big enough space with shelter, food and water and hoping they are going to be okay. They will need a little supervision and guidance to become a 'real' chicken again. Food and water dishes may need to be a little deeper to allow for their trimmed beaks. It will probably take a few days (even weeks) for them to get used to having space to move around in and fresh air to breathe. You may find that they hardly move at all to begin with, and they might even surprise you by wanting to stay inside the coop!

When you consider the life that the battery hen has become used to (in fact the only one she has ever known), it is easy to see how her new life outside of the cage may seem quite bewildering to her. It will be the first time she has walked about, pecked for bugs, seen the sky, felt grass (or straw or mud) under her feet, dust bathed and even roosted. Everything will be new - and probably scary. This may result in a very timid bird, or it could even cause her to be a little aggressive. She could 'flop around,' as if unsure how to use her limbs. She may not want to move about a lot, and it can take a little bit of time before she will be ready to explore. In fact, in many ways, ex-battery hens may not act like 'normal' chickens at all, but be patient; a transformation is taking place.

You will need to make sure you have some kind of layers feed available for your new hens. They will most likely have been fed a layers mash at the farm (you can double check that with the farmer / rehoming organisation), so if you can continue with the food format they are used to, at least for the first few weeks, then that should also help them settle in quicker. Additionally, a poultry vitamin / nutrient supplement can also help give them an extra little boost.

Where there is already an existing flock it is best to keep the two groups separate, at least until the 'new girls' have built up their strength and confidence. Whenever two flocks are mixed, whatever the situation, a quarantine period of at least 30 days is always advisable. Each flock will have built up its own immunities to their own particular environment. Couple that with the stress of a move, and/or the upset new additions can bring and even seemingly healthy flocks can 'catch' something if mixed in together straight away. With battery hens you have the additional consideration of their appearance - bare and sore patches are often an invitation for others to peck (surprisingly this can happen even amongst themselves). There is also a good probability that they will already be at less than full strength and confidence, which can sometimes prevent them approaching the feeder and waterer if other more confident chickens are around. All in all, a separate safe area for them to get used to things is likely to be very beneficial. As can be expected with any flock of chickens once they have settled in a little there will probably be the usual squabbles as they sort out a pecking order between themselves.

Their new home should be a sturdy, comfortable, draft free place that offers good protection from predators. These hens might not be physically very strong due to a lifetime of inactivity, so you may wish to make sure that they have a ramp up to their roosts or nest boxes, or perhaps even start them off with a nest box or bedding on the floor. As they probably have never roosted before they are likely to huddle on the floor at night initially and so it must be safe for them to do so. Despite having reached the end of their commercial egg laying life, you will probably find that they will still continue to lay a few eggs. They might take a few weeks to get back into the swing of things, and don't expect them to always lay in the nestboxes - some hens will lay eggs as they are walking around. Do not worry though as most hens eventually do start laying in the comfort of the nest box. Golf balls or other 'pretend' eggs left in the nests can sometimes help give your new hens a nudge in the right direction.

The satisfaction that you will receive from watching each of these hens become more like a normal healthy chicken is beyond words. They will show you how much they appreciate this second chance, not just by the amount of eggs they lay, but in the life that you can see being injected back in to them!



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There is more about caring for ex-battery chickens in the July 08 Newsletter, including several subscriber stories and photos of their own ex-batts. You can subscribe to the Keeping Chickens Newsletter at the top right-hand corner of this blog, for access to the current and past issues.

Sexing Chickens

(The free online chicken magazine mentioned in the above video can also be subscribed to by entering your name and email address in the box at the top right hand corner of this blog).

Tips To Keep Your Chickens Cool

Some Ways To Keep Your Chickens Cool

• Shaded areas
• Electrolytes in their water (if they are panting / drinking a lot) will help replace the electrolytes they are losing.
• Fresh water throughout the day (water left out in the sun will soon be warmed, so it is nice to replace it with new cool water every now and then if you can). A few ice cubes in the water can help keep it cooler for longer. They will probably be drinking more than normal so it should be checked on to ensure that it does not run out.

Cool fruits such as water melon, can help cool and
refresh your chickens on a hot summers day.

• Ventilation in the coop
• Frozen ice packs - freeze 2 litre plastic bottles of water (or similar) as something cool that can be hung or laid on the floor of the coop or in a shaded area of the run for them to sit by or perch on if they want to (if you can place the bottles in something like a zip-lock bag then they should be kept clean so that they can go back into the freezer ready for another hot day).
• Cool fruits such as watermelon (straight from the fridge for extra coolness!) will help cool and hydrate your chickens.
• A fan in the coop. A well ventilated coop may not need a fan, but in very hot weather if there is no air circulation the heat they expel from their own bodies can increase the temperature even further.
  

Chicken Coop - Pen Construction

Thanks to Amy Finley for sending in photos of the first phase of her coop construction.

"I didn't want anything to do with my husband's grand plan to grow chicken... but oh well, that's how it goes. He is a custodian at a grade school that was hatching chicks for the spring term. He came home one day with 8 fuzzy little chicks and grand plans to eat free eggs. Thank you so much for the chicken coop plans you sent. After careful consideration we decided to start with a small temporary and easily movable pen so that we could take our time building a larger permanent coop. I knew the plan was in trouble when Mike, my husband, insisted on starting with 6 foot 4x4's. Nothing temporary or portable about that. $300 some dollars later I am sending you pictures of phase one of the chicken coop. They shouldn't start laying eggs until late fall, so we will build the rest later. For now home is a large dog house. They really seem to like it."

Famous Chicken Breeds : The Rhode Island Red

The Rhode Island Red was originally bred in Adamsville, a small village which is part of Little Compton, Rhode Island. Apart from black in the flight feathers, their colour is a dark mahogany red. They are bred both for meat and for eggs and produce up to 250 to 300 large, light brown eggs per year.

Know Your Enemy : Rats

Here is a little introduction to Rats (and a few ideas of how to get rid of them).

Rats are primarily nocturnal animals, so if you are regularly seeing them in the day, it probably means that you have a lot of them. They are not interested in your chickens as such, but they are interested in the food that your chickens are eating. Having said that, they will attack (and kill) chicks, and they will take your eggs if they get a chance to. A rat might attack a chicken, but an angry chicken can be a mighty foe, and it is not unknown for chickens to kill (and eat) rats.

What attracts rats: Food!
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* Make sure you only feed your chickens what they need, to avoid attracting vermin.
* Keep your chicken area clean.
* Collect any eggs as often as possible (as rats will try to steal them).
* If you have a compost bin, don't put any cooked food in it.

How they are likely to get in if they are attracted:
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Rats have razor sharp teeth and have been known to nibble through wire, but they are most likely to try and burrow in, or nibble away at the chicken house itself (if they can get to it).

One solution is to use weld mesh instead of chicken wire, as weld mesh is far stronger and cannot be pulled out of shape or bitten through as easily as chicken wire can be. For added security you could continue the wire fencing down another 12 inches (or more) buried into the ground and then turn it outward 6 inches to help prevent burrowing underneath.

Some people also recommend making sure there's at least a 4" gap between the floor of the shed and the ground as apparently rats can't stand upright and chew.

Getting rid of rats if you have them:
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Some cats and dogs will catch rats for you.
Poison and Traps (available at diy store etc.) - Poison is not a good idea around the chickens if they are likely to find the dead rat or the poison (as they will eat them).

Two old-fashioned methods you might like to try:

1. Mix equal parts of corn meal and plaster of paris and place it in the rat holes. The plaster of paris hardens in the stomach of the rat and is sure death.

2. Old-Fashioned Rat Trap

* Dig a hole and bury a large fruit jug or jar.
* The top part of the jar should be left uncovered, and a hole should be broken in it just above the ground.
*Place some shelled corn in the bottom, put a board on top, and weigh it down.

Check it every few days

(an illustration of the above trap can be found here http://www.self-sufficient-life.com/u.php?6)

Rat Facts:
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A female can produce up to twelve litters of twenty rats a year.
It is estimated that one-fifth of the world's total food output is eaten, spoiled or destroyed by rats. Around 26% of all electrical cable breaks are caused by rats, and they are thought to be responsible for around 25% of all unexplained fires.