Thursday, November 25, 2021

Two chicken deaths in a week - Lulu and then Mapp

They have lived to a good age - 8 years I think. No sign of any problems, then on 21st November, I find poor Lulu, my white bantam silkie, passed away. Then yesterday, 24th, Mapp a lemon booted Sabelpoot popped her little sabelpoot clogs.

I still have Lucia (lemon Booted sabelpoot), Porshe, (porcelain booted sabelpoot) and my two young bantam silkies Buffy and Cordelia.

It seems to me that my chickens last much longer when I cut down on the wet treats, and give them daily corn treats and maize. 

Tuesday, August 31, 2021

RIP Willow

 After the previous post, I took Willow to the vet for the first time. We thought she had an impacted crop. The vet, Chris, was the only one who could operate and he juggled things around to make space on Friday. So I had to keep her going for four days...which I did with nutridrops and corn which she would still eat. He also asked for a poo sample which I collected and drove over the next day. Very expensive to analyse.

Friday came around and she was looking better and her crop had reduced in size. I'd also been dropping olive oil in her beak and massaging her crop. Another visit to Chris told me that her poo sample was clear. No parasites or other problems. I took her away from the vet again, this time with a 7 day course of antibiotics that I had to administer 3 times a day. That was a trial. I was trying to keep them evenly spaced. I had set up the bench in the shed as a little treatment room and would stand Willow on that as I crushed her tablet and mixed it was water to syringe it down her throat. I would go out late at night for the last dose, but she didn't seem to mind. By Friday she seemed a little better, she even seemed to eat some normal food. 

Sadly she deteriorated again, so I took her to see another vet - by this time Chris had gone on holiday. I got a preparation that would speed up her gut in the hope that she would start processing food. By now she was so weak she kept falling over. I had her in the tunnel run, and she had fallen over so I had to crawl in on my front with a towel, put her on the towel, then reverse out dragging her on the towel.

Long story short, after much expense and three vet visits, we got to Sunday before Bank holiday monday and she went downhill fast. I determined to take her to the vet to be put to sleep the next day, but she died in her little hospital box in the shed overnight. RIP Willow 30-8-21

Friday, August 6, 2021

Broody Buffy, broody Cordelia, poorly Willow

My three new chickens settled in well after the early scare with Cordelia. Thank goodness for Nutridrops, now renamed Poultry Power by Nettex.  Took a few days, but she eventually recovered. I initially put them in with my five existing girls, but the booted sabelpoots bullied Cordelia mercilessly - sometimes you could not see her for three teeny chickens on her back pulling her feathers out - so I moved the three of them into the green eglu with the tunnel run on the other side of the garden. 

Within a very few days, Buffy became broody and has been broody ever since! This is going on for 3 months. Last week Cordelia joined her in broodyness, so poor Willow was outside on her own.

I noticed about 3 days ago that Willow was inside the eglu during the day with the other two, although she was not broody. I realised something was up and since yesterday have been treating her with Nutridrops. She has got very thin and has green runny poos - very green and runny and sticking to her feathers. I've not washed it off yet because I don't want to stress her, but she is definitely not herself.

Her comb etc is still nice and red, and she does walk, but prefers to just sit around. I had her out on my lap today and was able to tempt her with a little sweetcorn so am hoping that the Poultry Power drops are doing the trick. I've locked all three out of the eglu to encourage them to eat and drink. Buffy and Cordelia may have done so, but within a very short time, the three of them sit in an unhappy chickeny pile by the shut door of the eglu waiting for me to let them in again. 

And of course - no eggs!

Sadly, also, the inevitable came to pass and Velvet died on 10th July. She had been going downhill for about 3 weeks, unable to hop up onto a wooden sleeper, so I knew the end was coming. I didn't have many photos of her so made sure to take a few, and she died 3 days later, so I'm pleased I did.



Monday, July 5, 2021

It is proposed that anyone able to do so should ignore government restrictions from now on

Enough's enough?

After days of propaganda and doom-laden warnings from Sage scientists - some of whom have openly stated they want to keep masks and other social restrictions forever - it seems we are set for an extension to the restrictions: ..more
It is proposed that anyone able to do so should ignore government restrictions from now on

The above question was posed on a discussion group that I am a member of. 

My response to this question would vary depending upon when it was asked. When cases were increasing across the country, and hospital ICUs were filling up with COVID patients, I would be more inclined to disagree. However now (beginning of July) the situation is different. The SAGE advisers have been proven wrong yet again in their dire predictions based on models fed with inaccurate data. The reality is that COVID is accounting for something like 10 deaths per week, and some of those may well be from other causes but with COVID mentioned somewhere on the death certificate. Cases are going up, but with the level of testing the country is doing, this is hardly surprising. The tests were never designed to be used on symptom-less people so the accuracy of some of the results is questionable. On top of this, we have the Government minister, Matt Hancock, who, as secretary of state for health, has been very influential in imposing gruelling lockdowns on the masses whilst ignoring social distancing rules in order to have an affair with his aide. We have Michael Gove, another proponent of lockdowns in the inner government circle, returning from a trip and getting pinged by track and trace. Normal people have to isolate for 10 days, but if you are a member of Government, you can take part in a hastily devised 'pilot scheme' where you simply need to test yourself daily for a few days but provided you test negative, you can continue with your normal life. We have the leaders at the G7 summit posing for socially distanced official photos then ignoring the rules at the beach barbecue, and the thousands of UEFA VIPs and fans allowed to bypass quarantine rules so that the big matches could be run at Wembley.


Whilst the ruling elites are happily disregarding the rules they have put in place for the rest of us, they have extended the so-called 'freedom day' by 4 weeks. Four more weeks of young couples being obliged to limit their wedding guest list to 30 with no dancing allowed. Funerals suffer in the same way. Our children are being sent home from school en masse if one child in their 'bubble' tests positive, and that bubble in some schools is an entire year group. The latest figure I read was 375,000 children, mostly healthy and mostly at minimal risk from Covid, isolating at home with disruption not only to their schooling but also their mental health.


The contrast between the freedoms that the governing elites and their associates are allowed, and the restrictions on liberty that they continue to impose on the compliant population is increasing. The latest date for our 'release' is 19th July, but I struggle to believe that this too won't slip. Maybe we will be allowed some freedoms, but some constraints will stay in place.


That is not good enough. The vaccination program has proven its worth. The people need their civil liberties returned to them. We need to stop this two tier approach where the government impose restrictions that they clearly do not believe in and are happy to flout. If the only way is mass disobedience, then that is what we need to do. 

Monday, June 21, 2021

The Government's campaign of fear continues

I've forgotten how long we have been in this state. We lost Christmas, it got cancelled with about 5 days notice by the government. We have been in lockdown since January with a tortuously slow roadmap out that was supposed to end in Freedom Day today. 

Not so.

Boris went on air last Monday, 19th June, to say that because the indian variant cases were growing, we had to delay until 19th July. There have been many Lockdown Sceptics pieces written about how the data were presented in such as way as to make it look worse than it is. For example, the following graph shows how a higher percentage of young people are being admitted to hospital now than during previous waves (because the elderly and vulnerable have been vaccinated). It makes it look like we have a crisis. What it does not mention is that young people recover faster and that admissions are balanced by people leaving hospital having recovered. 



However, if you use the actual number of covid inpatients, rather than the percentage, the graph looks like this:

They are giving the impression that the NHS is in danger of being overwhelmed. In fact, there are many hospitals with not a single COVID inpatient. The following pi chart illustrates that there 99.2% of hospital beds do NOT contain COVID patients.


I have just listened, over lunch, to the BBC 1 O'clock news. That was a mistake. The spent a good 5 minutes interviewing Margaret Keenan, the 90 year old who was the first woman outside of a trial to receive a vaccine, and the nurse who gave it to her. Surely there must be some actual news to cover? This was clearly a propaganda exercise, but why now. What are the nudge unit trying to achieve? Next there was a piece on long covid, with two people who had been working to recover over the past year, and lots of shots of them in hospital, heart rending stories of their struggles to breath etc. Shortly afterwards, there was a screen full of pictures of young children and yet another 5 minute piece on children who are suffering with long covid. There is plenty of news out there that could be featured, but instead we are fed a diet of gloom and doom, presumably softening us up for some new announcement of delay to the restoration of our human rights. The recently released book "A State of Fear" by Laura Dodson is insightful about the abusive methods used by our own government on us. The techniques are so obvious - yet they still seem to work with the vast majority of the population. My opinion of the intellectual ability of vast majority of the population has, I'm afraid, plummeted.

Saturday, June 19, 2021

Sold Eglu Cube on Ebay

With my two flocks amalgamated, I've not used the Eglu Cube since about 2018 so it was just cluttering up the place. I decided to sell it on eBay. It was bought by a lovely lady called Hannah who came and collected it and erected it that same day. She was waiting for some ex-batts and yesterday emailed me today to say she had picked them up, and sent me photos of the new girls in my old Eglu Cube. It is so nice seeing it put to use again, especially for some rescues.




 

Wednesday, April 7, 2021

New Chickens

Collected the new girls on Saturday. When I got them out of their box, they were a bit hot and bothered. Particularly the buff silkie seemed very upset and just sat down and didn't walk around. The other two appeared fine.
The girls upon arrival

Easter Sunday morning was a bit of a crisis. The buff silkie (Buffy) was fine, as was the pencilled Wyandotte (Willow) but the Cuckoo silkie (Cordelia) was just sitting in the nest box and wouldn't move. I picked her up and placed her in the run and set the trails camera going to record what they were doing. Willow was pecking her quite a bit and she looked very sad so I took her out and put her on her own in in the outside open run with the green eglu, next to the WIR.

She mostly sat hunched unless I went in and scattered seeds, then she'd scratch about in a desultory way. I sat watching her for some time as the weather was fairly good. I gave her water periodically using a syringe. 

I got my Nettex Nutri-drops only to discover that their best-before date was July 2018! I started a thread on the Omlet forums for advice. One said probably OK, just maybe not as effective. Another said she had found that after first dose of Nutri-drops her hens went downhill and died. I decided to go out first thing Monday to try to buy some new drops from the farm shop. Another chicken keeper suggested I contact the breeder. I ordered some Poultry Power (used to be Nutri-drops) from Amazon - delivery between 8th and 12th April!!!! 

Cordelia in the outside run
I contacted Meadowview chickens using their online chat, and Charlotte replied very fast and was very helpful. Apparently they are on crumb, and I'd given them pellets. I decided to get some crumb from the farm shop on Monday to encourage them to eat as I'd not actually seen any of them eating from the Omlet Grub feeder. Charlotte said she'd happily take her back, but by now I just wanted the little hen to recover!

Sunday night, Cordelia spent the night alone in her eglu. 
Spent most of the time sitting, tail-down

Monday morning she was still lethargic. I was very worried and posted an update on the Omlet forums. Advice was she was probably stressed as Silkies are prone to stress (and apparently sensitive to cold which I didn't know). I was advised to keep her warm so I brought her into the house in a cardboard box. Bought some layers mash from the farm shop, but they didn't stock Poultry Power (replacement for Nutri-drops). I put mash, corn, porridge and water in with her, none of which she seemed interested in. 

I continued giving her water with a syringe. 

By Monday evening (Bank holiday Monday) I was really worried. I cracked and gave her the past best-before date Nettex Nutri-drops. She immediately seemed to perk up and showed some interest in the corn in her box. I could see a difference in minutes. After an hour or so, I put her in the eglu with the other two to sleep. 

On Tuesday morning(6th April) - Buffy and Willow emerged from the eglu but Cordelia stayed in roosting. I took her out and gave her water and Nutri-drops. I put her back in the coop and she emerged of her own accord and scratched around with the others. Those Nutri-drops are amazing, even when out-of-date.

Throughout Tuesday I checked her periodically during the day. I gave her water. If I put her out in the run she would scratch for a bit. All three chickens tended to go back in the eglu as it was bitterly cold, windy and, at points, snowing!

All three hens pottering about

On Tuesday evening I gave her more water and another dose of Nutri-drops and bed for the night in the eglu with the others. 

Wednesday morning I gave her more water and Nutri-drops with a syringe and popped her at the end of the run. She and the other two scratched around. I gave them corn and sweet corn. They seemed happy.

Wednesday afternoon - checked them again. They all seem very happy. Enjoying treats and drinking from the old fashioned drinker. I'm sure I saw Cordelia eating some layers mash I'd put on the ground to encourage her. 3 days is the minimum Nutri-drop dosage, so as this is day 3, I plan to stop. Fingers crossed that disaster has been averted! All three new chickens are behaving like normal hens.

Having spent time sat watching them in the eglu, I realised how bitterly cold the wind is as it whistles up the slope. I've wrapped three layers of protection around the run to keep the wind out, and I plan to move the run up to a higher level, though when I stood there it felt just as windy. However it would be easier to erect a fence panel or two to give some protection from the wind. Maybe it won't be necessary. Once they've settled in, I plan to move them in with the other girls and only use the spare eglu when I want to move them out for a couple of days to give the WIR a thorough clean and disinfect.