Post by chowdownsilkiefarm on Oct 28, 2013 0:20:30 GMT -6
There hasn't been much going on here at WTPC besides show dates. I'm sure everybody is busy but take a break, sit down and chat a bit. How was your day? What are your winter plans? Working on any particular breeds?
I'll get it started.
I'm working on my Porcelain silkie pen. I bought 6 chicks hoping to get a few girls for my roo. If any of the boys turn out better than my current roo he may get replaced. I'll see about that one later. One of the chicks that is looking more lavender than porcelain got sick and nearly died on me. I started it on Sulmet and had to tube feed it for 2 weeks. It just started eating on it's own tonight thank goodness. Once it got well from what I think was a form of cocci I put a chick in with it that is smallest to copy from to get the porcelain one to eat on it's own. It finally worked. Took 4 days, stubborn little thing.
I have 3 developing eggs from my paints I got from Travis back in the spring. I hope to get some girls from them. A boy that has lots of spots would be good too. The paint pullet laid 4 eggs then stopped laying so I got 3 out of the 4 due to hatch on Halloween.
I've got a bunch of guinea keets growing out and will have to move to a larger pen probably in the dead of winter. I have 24 I think.
I lost my lavender orp hen to a snake bite that later got into the house and I caught it in a mouse sticky trap in my kitchen. I walked in there one morning to see the sticky trap upside down in the floor with what looked like a coiled up rope stuck to it but I had a feeling it wasn't. I turned on the light to see my worst nightmare. A cotton mouth in the house. After I recovered from freaking out I got a pair of the long handled limb trimmers and picked it up and put it in a bucket to take it outside. I kept my kitchen light on for months after that. I have a terrible fear of snakes. Seeing one outside is one thing but having one in the house is a completely different story.
Gavin didn't get a deer this weekend. He's so hyper he couldn't sit still long enough. We got alot of good pics on the game cam of lots of doe and one good sized buck. Along with a bobcat taking a bathroom break, a fox and a skunk and an armadillo and lots and lots of coons. With all the howling we hear I'm surprised there where no coyote. The person that lived here before us swore that Bigfood lived in the woods behind this house. We haven't seen him either. I want Bobby to put the game cam in the yard facing the garden so I can find out what the dog barks at all night long. I'm guessing deer eating from whats left of the garden. I know there are rabbits living in the brush, it could be that too. She drives me crazy with all the barking.
Let me see, what else......... I traded all my quail for 3 bags of feed. I was tired of having to buy so much feed. They all would have been processed by this month but the cost of feeding them compared to the amount of meat just wasn't worth it.
Egg sales is down but not stopped. I did have to use my last resort tactic and put them on ebay. Freckles still isn't breeding. Somebody suggested that I try artificial insemination because he has such beautiful feathering. I've never done it but have seen how it's done. I saw it done with turkeys on Dirty Jobs. I think I'll use an eye dropper instead of their method. It's just one chicken not a commercial turkey barn.
I purchased a large amount of pipettes for the use of tube feeding chicks. They won't arrive till sometimes next month but if anybody needs any in a hurry ask your local vet. Thats how I got some when I had to have some in a hurry. They just gave me some. The ones I bought where very cheap. They are .5ml in size and a bag of 100 of them for $1.89 on ebay. It's the easiest way to tube feed chicks if you have the need for it. I've lost too many chicks because they wouldn't eat due to an illness and I couldn't get them to eat.
I ground up chick feed to a powder then soaked a couple of teaspoons in the sulmet water till it thickened up enough to go into the pipette. If your giving something else for medicine for whatever the ilness is you can use that water instead. I did snip off the end o the pipette so the opening was larger. Depending on the size of chick on how much you prepare. As the crop fills up you can feel when it's full and time to stop. They fight the tube so this is what I did to contain it.
What I did is I wrapped it in a kitchen towel so only it's head poked out and folded the back of the towel over the chicks back so it couldn't back away. This way it was trapped. I pried it's beak open and put the tube down it's throat on it's right side and squeezed it in real fast but not to fast.
make sure the area your feeding it at doesn't have anything not washable around. The chick will shake it's head and get drops of feed on stuff. I kept a baby wipe handy so I could clean the beak off to avoid that issue. And most likely if you have to hand feed one it's gonna have poop issues from whatever is wrong with it in the first place. The baby wipes are handy for this also. When your done feeding your chick use baby wipes to clean it's fanny because most likely it's gonna be nasty. Don't bathe a sick chick. You'll make matters worse. Wait till it's not sick anymore and use a blow dryer to dry it afterwards. To avoid it getting a chill even if you have a heat lamp on it, it can still get a chill.
Well, I guess I'm all out of whats going on poultry wise around here and I hope the info on tube feeding may help if somebody gets any sick chicks. The tube feeding can also be done on adult chickens as well but I would use a larger pipette. aquarium tubing works as well. You just have to figure out how to get the feed into the tube and into the chicken or whatever poultry. Always point the tube to the chickens right side. The food or liquid will go straight into it's crop. Otherwise you risk drowning it.
There where larger pipettes on ebay as well and they are still very cheap. The only bad thing is they come from China so they take a while. Unless anybody don't want to buy from China there are some shipped from the US. I look for the cheap stuff.
Ok, somebody else's turn. I check everyday several times a day for new posts that I may be able to help somebody with or have a comment of some sort. I'll get a pic posted of how I wrap a chick to feed it in case anybody needs a visual.
I'll get it started.
I'm working on my Porcelain silkie pen. I bought 6 chicks hoping to get a few girls for my roo. If any of the boys turn out better than my current roo he may get replaced. I'll see about that one later. One of the chicks that is looking more lavender than porcelain got sick and nearly died on me. I started it on Sulmet and had to tube feed it for 2 weeks. It just started eating on it's own tonight thank goodness. Once it got well from what I think was a form of cocci I put a chick in with it that is smallest to copy from to get the porcelain one to eat on it's own. It finally worked. Took 4 days, stubborn little thing.
I have 3 developing eggs from my paints I got from Travis back in the spring. I hope to get some girls from them. A boy that has lots of spots would be good too. The paint pullet laid 4 eggs then stopped laying so I got 3 out of the 4 due to hatch on Halloween.
I've got a bunch of guinea keets growing out and will have to move to a larger pen probably in the dead of winter. I have 24 I think.
I lost my lavender orp hen to a snake bite that later got into the house and I caught it in a mouse sticky trap in my kitchen. I walked in there one morning to see the sticky trap upside down in the floor with what looked like a coiled up rope stuck to it but I had a feeling it wasn't. I turned on the light to see my worst nightmare. A cotton mouth in the house. After I recovered from freaking out I got a pair of the long handled limb trimmers and picked it up and put it in a bucket to take it outside. I kept my kitchen light on for months after that. I have a terrible fear of snakes. Seeing one outside is one thing but having one in the house is a completely different story.
Gavin didn't get a deer this weekend. He's so hyper he couldn't sit still long enough. We got alot of good pics on the game cam of lots of doe and one good sized buck. Along with a bobcat taking a bathroom break, a fox and a skunk and an armadillo and lots and lots of coons. With all the howling we hear I'm surprised there where no coyote. The person that lived here before us swore that Bigfood lived in the woods behind this house. We haven't seen him either. I want Bobby to put the game cam in the yard facing the garden so I can find out what the dog barks at all night long. I'm guessing deer eating from whats left of the garden. I know there are rabbits living in the brush, it could be that too. She drives me crazy with all the barking.
Let me see, what else......... I traded all my quail for 3 bags of feed. I was tired of having to buy so much feed. They all would have been processed by this month but the cost of feeding them compared to the amount of meat just wasn't worth it.
Egg sales is down but not stopped. I did have to use my last resort tactic and put them on ebay. Freckles still isn't breeding. Somebody suggested that I try artificial insemination because he has such beautiful feathering. I've never done it but have seen how it's done. I saw it done with turkeys on Dirty Jobs. I think I'll use an eye dropper instead of their method. It's just one chicken not a commercial turkey barn.
I purchased a large amount of pipettes for the use of tube feeding chicks. They won't arrive till sometimes next month but if anybody needs any in a hurry ask your local vet. Thats how I got some when I had to have some in a hurry. They just gave me some. The ones I bought where very cheap. They are .5ml in size and a bag of 100 of them for $1.89 on ebay. It's the easiest way to tube feed chicks if you have the need for it. I've lost too many chicks because they wouldn't eat due to an illness and I couldn't get them to eat.
I ground up chick feed to a powder then soaked a couple of teaspoons in the sulmet water till it thickened up enough to go into the pipette. If your giving something else for medicine for whatever the ilness is you can use that water instead. I did snip off the end o the pipette so the opening was larger. Depending on the size of chick on how much you prepare. As the crop fills up you can feel when it's full and time to stop. They fight the tube so this is what I did to contain it.
What I did is I wrapped it in a kitchen towel so only it's head poked out and folded the back of the towel over the chicks back so it couldn't back away. This way it was trapped. I pried it's beak open and put the tube down it's throat on it's right side and squeezed it in real fast but not to fast.
make sure the area your feeding it at doesn't have anything not washable around. The chick will shake it's head and get drops of feed on stuff. I kept a baby wipe handy so I could clean the beak off to avoid that issue. And most likely if you have to hand feed one it's gonna have poop issues from whatever is wrong with it in the first place. The baby wipes are handy for this also. When your done feeding your chick use baby wipes to clean it's fanny because most likely it's gonna be nasty. Don't bathe a sick chick. You'll make matters worse. Wait till it's not sick anymore and use a blow dryer to dry it afterwards. To avoid it getting a chill even if you have a heat lamp on it, it can still get a chill.
Well, I guess I'm all out of whats going on poultry wise around here and I hope the info on tube feeding may help if somebody gets any sick chicks. The tube feeding can also be done on adult chickens as well but I would use a larger pipette. aquarium tubing works as well. You just have to figure out how to get the feed into the tube and into the chicken or whatever poultry. Always point the tube to the chickens right side. The food or liquid will go straight into it's crop. Otherwise you risk drowning it.
There where larger pipettes on ebay as well and they are still very cheap. The only bad thing is they come from China so they take a while. Unless anybody don't want to buy from China there are some shipped from the US. I look for the cheap stuff.
Ok, somebody else's turn. I check everyday several times a day for new posts that I may be able to help somebody with or have a comment of some sort. I'll get a pic posted of how I wrap a chick to feed it in case anybody needs a visual.