I’m glad it’s not just my girls who look all scraggly still and have very pale combs!! No egg’s for several weeks now! I tried making them a warm mash from their chook pellets on a cold day but they didn’t want it!!!
I also don’t know if it’s them going through their food at about 4 times the rate or if something else is eating it but it’s being eaten abotu 4 times as fast!!
Could be botulism- kills hens that were 100% healthy the day before. Have a look around for somewhere water has collected and gone stagnant or old food scraps they didn’t finish or lawn clippings that went slimy.
BV,, sorry to hear you had that happen. 🙁 . Having 2 go at once seems so odd :shrug: .I hope that it’s nothing awful with all of them. The weather here is just Yuck, so cold and so much rain, but i guess up north you wouldn’t have the cold wind like down here 😉
Bandicoot Valley post=343402 wrote: I’ve had two young hens die in two days. Very sudden, I didn’t spot any looking unwell. No idea why. Hoping it’s nothing major… 🙁 :ohmy:
Don’t think there’s any stagnant water in their yard at all. It’s on a hill so it doesn’t sit anywhere. Only thing I could think of today (spent a lot of time with them all today to watch them & see if any are off colour. One of my Welsummer hens is a bit down, but I can’t pick anything else & she’s not really looking too bad, it could just be because her new tail feathers haven’t grown enough so she looks a little more down at the tail than her usual long upward feathers. Oh, yeah, only thing I could think of, and I’m a little embarrased about it because it’s probably my own stupidity if I’m right but I took a couple of tomato plants into their yard the other day. They still had heaps of cherry tomatoes on them which the chooks love, but if they’ve eaten the leaves of the plant, can that kill them?
BV-they’d need to consume copious amounts of tomato leaves to make themselves sick/kill them and with the number of chooks you have vs the amount of tomato plants you put in-the likelihood of them eating enough is slim. Mine grew up on tomato plants!
I’m surprised you have a broody hen this time of year though. I have some eggs in my new incubator. Looking for some fertile pure Aracauna eggs if you have any more 😉
That’s awful Ravyk. My chickens have always been quite alert at night. When I tried to sneak some day-olds under my broodies last season, they gave me an almighty peck! What a terrible shame 🙁
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