Backyard Chickens (and Other Birds)

Well, it happened. We have a bird with bumblefoot.

So I've been looking at what needs to be done. All the home treatment options are within my skill set from doing human wound care as a nurse's assistant.

But should I do it is still a question. All the online stuff seems to be biased purely in favor of that, and while it seems to be true, I can't help but want to make sure it isn't malarkey.

So, any of you folks have any input? For it, against it, or specific preferences as to which methods to use?

Again, I've handled similar situations with humans, including the removal of deep "kernels" or roots from cysts and abcesses, so I know I can do the job right, I'm just wanting to make sure I should do it myself rather than have the hen dealing with the added stress of travel and the vet visit.

Has anyone had a whiteish mass in their egg before? I looked online and some people said it's intestinal lining some said ovary parts. Not sure, but it looks too big to be the white strandy stuff.

First I want to say hello, I have only 3 lovely chickens to start off with as I learn the ropes.

Secondly, my neighbours son is absolutely obsessed with the chickens. It's really nice, but he is also feeding them huge amounts of wild bird seed and I'm a little worried. There are mounds of the stuff being poured over the fence!

I have spoken to his parents nicely and asked them to stop him doing so, which they understand.

In case this doesn't get resolved quickly, is there any danger that this can cause harm to my chickens?

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They also have a friend

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We lost several chickens this year to predators so no more free roaming. My old run was too small for the flock so I fenced in what used to be our garden and turned it over to the dinosaurs. The old run will accommodate our pullets until they are bigger and can run with the rest of the herd.

Current setup: We have four beautiful hens. We have a small (https://s3.amazonaws.com/images.ecwid.com/images/17432132/1357042818.jpg) metal container right now in our chicken run. It's set up on a small wooden platform that I built, and it sits on top of a water heater that turns on/off via a timer during the cold months (similar to this but different brand/model https://www.picclickimg.com/40EAAOSwewpmTaBO/Chicken-Water-Heater-Heated-Chicken-Waterer.webp). It works, but it's not a great solution.

Problems:

• It is maybe 1.5 years old max, and it already starting to rust along the bottom where they drink from.
• 3 gallons is ok, but we don't have running water out near the chicken run, and so we need to bring this back and forth to the house to fill it up. It's fine in warm months (can fill from the hose), but it sucks in the winter since I need to bring it inside and fill it in the tub in our basement.
• Even 4-5 inches off the ground, they kick a lot of dirt, feathers, and probably chicken shit in here. I spray it out clean with each re-fill.
• The heater barely works to thaw out the bottom so they can drink. It works, but often I find I still need to go out with some warm water to break up the ice a bit.

What I'd like:

• Bigger container
• Doesn't rust
• Rain water collection?

I'm open to any suggestions on products or DIY projects to help improve this for our chickens. Below is a picture of our chicken run so y'all can see what I have to work with.

https://imgur.com/a/D0SmkYn

So, cool chicken-havers of Lemmy... Do you have any suggestions on how I can up my game here? Especially any recommendations on how I can do something to collect rainwater for this. Any guides that may have worked well for you. I'm open to any information.

We got a Tetra hen from a friend who can't keep it anymore yesterday. Fortunately we were looking to get a couple of chickens anyways, so we had purchased a used coop some weeks ago.

To our surprise, our cute new chicken, Clémentine gave us an egg already on the first morning. What a nice surprise.

Don't worry, we won't keep it alone for too long, we're looking to get one or two more friends.

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They are going out to the run in the next week or two, I am building a new run for our older chickens this week so we can keep them separated for now.

We would have had 24 with these guys but we lost a hen last week to a predator so 23 it is (for now). The plan is basically to add 6 (NY minimum for buying chicks) every year and expand the coop as needed.

We just got a batch of ten baby chicks! Two days old and they are already having a blast climbing and jumping off a little rock and sticks. This batch are all females, and are a random variety of "exotic" chickens. When their real feathers grow in it'll be fun to figure out what breeds we got!

They are just in an XL dog crate with foil insulation around the bottom edge, and a red heat lamp hanging from the top of the crate. I don't know if the foil actually helps retain any heat, but it does keep the chicks from escaping. It's a high security henitentiary.

I have 5 hens and 1 hen is bullying all of the other chickens. What are some ways I can prevent this?

Last year my wife and I got 36 American Bresse eggs and hatched them. Out of the ones that hatched we had 2 that have no tail. In fact, when we butchered them their hind end looked like, well, a butt.

Has anyone else ever seen this? Is it a breed thing or maybe an incubation issue? None of the others had any unusual issues.

My wife had to run off to the other end of the country very suddenly yesterday. She had planned to process two boxes of late season tomatoes. It fell to me to get it done. I diced them up and put them in the freezer so that she can make sauce when she gets back.

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The big guy thinks that any time I'm at the butcher block in the morning I must be slicing ham. He loves ham. I told him I was working on tomatoes but he was quite persistent about making sure that I wasn't slicing ham. I even showed him a chunk of tomato and he went away but he came back 5 minutes later to see if I was still not slicing ham.

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Chicken treats = happy chickens and more eggs.

The chickens love the trimmings and rejects. They were very excited when I let them out this morning and they found a bunch of tomatoes in their yard.

Yeah. Exactly.

French fries and homemade roasted turkey gravy topped with our own roasted Bronze Orlopp turkey, homemade bread dressing, and fried eggs from our backyard chickens.

Thanksgiving poutine!

Yum!

We had a bit of rain these few days. 110ish mm over the last 14 days, 25 of which decided to check in on us yesterday. So our run got flooded.

Not having the space for a truck load of woodchips, nor the time to spare, I got a couple of 23kg bales of sawdust. BTW .6USD pr kg for sawdust, what's wrong with the world?

The chickens were quite perplexed as to the bale when it arrived, and definitely not sold on it either when I had spread it out, pic in comments. I'm going to see how it works before spreading another one.

Usually I don't have to pump water from this area before November, but I guess that life ain't fair and the world is mean, so we started the pump this morning. Next 5 months (we'll I guess it'll be 6 months if luck be) we'll be pumping about 26m^3 from this area daily.

There's a Danish children's song that starts with something like "The farmer is always busy on his farm" and then lists the chores. I wonder why I that was stuck in my head as I wandered about the hardware store looking for bedding material.

Just casually came across this. We are getting chickens next week. Never had them before. So anything I should know going in ?

And I'm a noob with chickens.

So far, we have a fairly reliable outside temp above 50 up until January, through February, where the temps here in the uplands can get freezing or below.

We have an indoor enclosure for our girl (soon to be girls, dammit), but she isn't fond of it tbh. Raises a ruckus when in it overnight due to fowl weather

So, I'm hoping to get some advice for what kind of temp ranges I should be keeping her inside, or otherwise with more than just the coop's protection from the elements.

Thanks in advance, valar morgallus

We ordered broilers from a different hatchery this year. I don't think we got what we expected to get.

He and the six heaviest girls will be sticking around to keep us in meat chickens. I've really enjoyed raising these guys.

"Clucking Chickens And A Crowing Rooster" https://files.catbox.moe/ic316p.mp3

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Various Animal Sounds https://923000.blogspot.com/2023/09/various-animal-sounds.html

Watermelon is their fruit of preference 😄

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ca/post/4413694

These Cornish X meat birds arrived on our farm on August 3. That makes them 30 days old today. We ordered 40 and got 45 (the hatcheries always give you extra in case there are any losses during or immediately after transport.) We have lost only one so there are 44 out there now.

My wife has Chicken Day on the calendar as September 30. They will be 59 days old at that point and should average between 6 and 7 pounds dressed.

We had a confluence of events that resulted in our cancelling our original order for 60 birds with one hatchery and ordering 40 birds from another hatchery for delivery a week earlier. That means that we lost our slot at the abattoir. We normally have half of the birds done at an abattoir and do half ourselves. We can't sell the birds we do ourselves so we eat those ones. With the situation this summer we decided not to grow any birds for anyone else this fall and will do all 40 of the birds here on the farm for ourselves.

Butchering day is NOT my favorite day of the year but it is part of farming livestock and it has to be done. We're likely going to offer a workshop for anyone local who wants to learn how to process chickens on their own property.

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I gave their bedding a toss this morning.

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Our meaties always have access to outdoors from the time they're about 3 weeks old. They will continue to go outside right up until the day before they are processed.

At list a few chickens to raccoons early in the season. They were taken outside. When you improve security raccoons can get more aggressive so I beefed up the summer door on the house.

He was hatched on our farm and went out to a friend whose family wanted a few laying hens. They named him Chloe. When he turned out to be a cockerel he came back and we told her kids that he would live on our farm as a roster, not a meat birds. He turned into a pretty bird.

These 8 nesting boxes, in two banks of 4, are most than 10 years old. They have worked very well. We have somewhere between 40 and 50 hens in the laying flock right now.

EDIT: 45 hens and 3 roosters. I counted this morning.

Mine go crazy for mealworms.

Sesame, our chicken, is spoiled rotten.

I usually chill with her in the mornings, then walk with her in the evening while I'm pretending to do yard work. She follows me around, I drop the occasional peanut, she drops the occasional chicken refuse.

Well, my family has been giving her mealworms this week while I was handling other things, so this afternoon, I paid her a visit with sone peanuts thinking we would just hunker down and bake in the southern heat together, avoiding the sun under some trees.

I walk out the door and got greeted with the most furious t-rex scolding I have ever heard.

I sit my chair down and shes just a squalling and squawking at me. I hold out a peanut, and she gives me that side-eye go to hell look and flips the thing out of my hand, then stomps around me looking at the cup we measure out treats in.

This little monster kept up a nigh constant scolding that I did not have worms for her. She finally settled down enough to catch this pic, but hopped up on my foot and glared at me right after.

She has us trained now.

Our fall batch of Cornish X meaties arrived this morning. We do a batch in the spring and a batch in the fall. We had 60 birds ordered for two weeks from now but I have to be in Atlanta and my wife and daughter will be in Toronto. We moved the delivery earlier but couldn't get an earlier date at the abattoir so we reduced the order to 40 (they always send extra) just what we need and will process them ourselves.

A couple of farts yesterday.

When I saw these I started talking out loud about my recent efforts to prefect a homemade naan recipe to go with my favorite butter chicken recipe. We'll see whether that had any impact today.

The naan is coming along nicely. I'm going to make another batch today.

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