Blue Tamago

Yesterday we made the decision to have a hormone implanted into Spot. This decision was made because she had very thin, wrinkly shelled eggs that no amount of calcium supplementation was able to fix. Spot ran the risk of having an egg break inside of her during laying, which could lead to a fatal infection.  I had heard of a hormone implant that would stop her from laying eggs, which would allow her body to recover (she has pretty much laid non stop for about 2.5 years). With a vet examining her eggs and confirming that she would benefit with the implant, we went ahead. I had posed this question on the Chicken Instagram community and received a lot of questions about it. So I thought I would share what I have learned and the vet's comments. What is Suprelorin? Suprelorin is the trade name given to the hormone implant. Proud to say that this implant is an Australian invention! Manufactured by Peptech Animal Health in NSW, the patent was granted in 2002. Looking through the p...

So on some chicken forums I've heard that people are using Ivermectin "off-label" to treat their poultry for parasites (such as mites and lice) and they recommend an egg witholding period of 7 days. It's off-label as there have been very few studies looking at the metabolism of this drug through avians. In December last year, there has been one scientific study done on Ivermectin and poultry. So is there a clear answer to it's safety in poultry and more importantly, how long before you can eat the eggs?

"Pant pant. It's sooo hot!" We are sitting through this heatwave and waiting for it to pass with agonizing slowness. We've been sweltering through 4 days of over 40C with a final trump card from nature delivered to us today. Each time I look at the weather forecast, the top temperature for today has been hiked UP. It's currently going to have a top of 44C with a cool change predicted for late afternoon. We've pretty much been lying under the fan all day (we don't have A/C in the house) but for our chickens, we've hatched out new cooling strategies.

I bet not many of you can't boast that you gave chickens a bath on the weekend! I had, by far, the best answer to "what did you get up to this weekend?" at work today. Anyway, let's wind back a bit. It was a gloriously hot spring weekend and it was time for me to get on top of the poultry lice on my chickens. I've been regularly dusting them with poultry dust, but it wasn't having much of an effect. So when a hot weekend was forecast, it was time for a two pronged attack. Bathe the chickens to get rid of the lice and a spring clean of the coop.

Summer is supposed to be the season for creepy crawlies, but one of my chickens have picked up leg mites in the middle of winter. Scaly leg mites are little mites that live under the scales on the chicken legs. It's irritating to them and can cause the scales to lift up. Like on Effie's legs above. Effie brought leg mites back with her from the place that we bought her from. We treated it successfully but now it is Flopsy's turn.

Moult season is over for DumDum and she has nice fluffy feathers to keep her warm throughout winter. The only problem is that she has a nice head of feathers that seems to be obscuring her vision. For a normal chicken, this probably wouldn't be too much of an issue, her sister DeeDee has a much larger pom pom head and has no problem. But this is our special DumDum chicken who takes problems like this to a whole new level.

Good news! Pippy is back from the vet, where she apparently responded very well to antibiotics and devoured crickets and mealworms.

Unfortunately our little Pippy has fallen ill. This week we noticed that she had a bit of trouble breathing and this morning was gasping each breath. So it was a quick visit to the vet and the initial prognosis is a bacterial infection.

"My Chicken Drinks Funny" That's what I put into Google when we first got DumDum. Why you say?

You know when it's cold when you go out to greet your chickens in the morning and you get a chicken wanting to be picked up and cuddled. Buffy decided that being held by a warm human was such a good idea that he really snuggled down. His rested his head back to such an extent that he was having trouble breathing! No thanks at all to the human holding him, shielding him from the wind -__- This made me realise that I had better start preparing their coops for winter. I've read on many forums that chickens can brave sub-zero temperatures and they will be fine in the much milder Adelaide winters. But it's hard to think that when you go out in the morning, it's 7 degrees and Penguin and Buffy both want to be picked up because they are shivering. These are a few things that I did to keep their coops warmer at night.

Checked the chickens in the morning, all was fine, gave them their treats, cleaned up their poo etc. etc. Came home to find a headless chicken. RIP little Ash.

Adelaide is due for another heatwave and today the temperature is forecast to be 41 degrees! Chicken owners all know the signs of heat stress, wings out from the body and panting.  When there is a heatwave forecast, these are the things I do to try and prevent my chickens from getting heat stress, like poor Penguin above panting in the heat.

Aaah! Time flies and it's been so hectic recently. Still trying to get the old house ready for rental and bring all the bits and pieces still left there up to the new house. Plus trying to get the new house into some sort of livable state. Hmmm...looks like chickens DO have some sort of teeth like projections at the back of their beak? Speaking of beaks, Buffy managed to break the tip off his beak. Probably from fighting through the fence with Penguin. Intact beak Broken tip At least it was just the tip of the beak and nothing further back. This tip should grow back in time. I think of beaks like a fingernail, with your nail bed and the hard nail growing out of it. Buffy broke the nail, but I've heard of chickens breaking the beak further back and it leads to bleeding and potential infection. Buffy has a large amount of scabs on his wattles and comb. He doesn't get that he will always lose a fight with Penguin and Penguin has no wattles ad his comb is a lot...

We bought a property consisting of 5 acres, pretty much on top of the highest hill above Adelaide. A bit of a change from being at the foothills to the top of the hill. The 5 acres was so we could expand our chicken numbers and fortunately the new place had an existing chicken coop. We can see the coop from our bedroom window, similar to our old place. There are a few problems with this new place, firstly, fencing is quite poor and being next to a main road, we didn't want the chickens walking willy nilly into oncoming traffic, plus, this area is known for foxes. Secondly, the previous owners left the coop as it was, with all the dry litter. All this litter had to be removed. We didn't want our chickens catching any diseases from the previous chickens.  Unfortunately, the litter depth was about a foot deep! That was a lot of digging! Not to mention dusty, I had to put on a face mask to stop breathing in all the dust.  See that rust mark on the wall? ...

What a gruesome sight to come home to! Met the boys at the back when we came home from work and found Buffy like this! I couldn't tell where the cut was, whether it was on his head or on his comb. After cleaning it with just warm water, I couldn't find any injury to his head, so I suspect it was his comb that got cut and it bled A LOT! Combs have a very good vascular system, which would mean that it would bleed quite a bit when cut. The cleanup Now we had to try and work out what happened, it didn't take us long to find the prime suspect... Arrow pointing to the blood under his beak Blood on his feathers They still spent the night together, but I did notice that Buffy did not crow as much in the morning. Generally Penguin starts crowing and Buffy joins in. This morning, it was Penguin crowing most of the time, with Buffy only crowing once or twice. When I let them out, Buffy was definitely wary of Penguin, and kept his distance, which confirme...

Our little ISA brown started moulting late this year. Pretty much right in the middle of winter. In the lead up to this she was laying funny shaped eggs that were massive. They were very thin shelled and when we cracked them open, the whites were very runny. She has been incredibly reliable with her laying, pretty much every day. So I was hoping that she would take a break with her laying while she was moulting. It seems that ISA browns are hardwired to try and lay, even when they are moulting. We found quite a few broken soft shell eggs under the roost. We had to remove them straight away as the greedy Australorp would try to eat it. Until one day we found her wandering around the garden with bits of yolk stuck to her vent. I could only think of one thing, the egg broke whilst inside her. There were already flies out and about (yes flies even in winter in Adelaide!) and we didn't want her to get flystruck. So off to the bathroom with her to wash off the mess. Washed ...

Finally a sunny day this August. All the chickens were out enjoying the sunshine and sunbathing. The warm weather though signals the onset of bugs. Sure enough, when I picked up Penguin and checked under his tail. Poultry lice were seen. So what are they? They are little brown insects that you see running on the skin when you part the feathers. Apparently they don't like the light, so you see them scurrying away to hide under feathers. Penguin also had some eggs, they look like fluffy balls stuck to the base of the feathers. WHAT I USE AS TREATMENT Online resources tell me that chickens need to dust bathe to prevent lice, but our free ranging chickens have picked numerous places around the garden to dust bathe, so you may find your chickens with lice too. So I dust the chickens with David Grays Poultry Dust. Readily available at grain stores. As you can see from the photo, it cost $19.50 from the Magill Grain Store for 400g. Probably a lot che...