Dealing with Marek's

Marek's is a horrible and annoying disease.  Traditional Marek's causes paralysis, tumors, and lesions, but there are different strains, some with different symptoms and mortality rates.  Once you have it, not only do you loose a number of chickens, but you must accept that 1) your surviving hens are carriers and 2) you have the virus in your soil where it can live for months, sometimes years.

I recently had to put down an eighteen-month-old hen.  She had diarrhea and wasn't eating.  I separated her and treated her for coccidiosis, a disease that causes green diarrhea, but she didn't get better.  After a week and a half, I put her down and took her to the Utah State University Veterinary diagnostic clinic.  They quickly called me back and told me cocci, a very bad case.  I felt bad and was surprised the Corid didn't treat it since I had done everything correctly.  When I got the written report a week later, it had a second diagnosis.  Cocci killed her, but she had Marek's as well, contributing to her death.  Some forms of Marek's suppress the immune system making hens very vulnerable to cocci.  She hadn't been vaccinated since I hatched her myself.

I felt some relief, putting her down had been the right choice, but now what?  Did I have to put down my other hens too?  After reading on-line, I came to the conclusion that it wouldn't help all that much.  They were acting fine, so were probably resistant, but I had to consider them carriers.  This meant I couldn't sell them next year as I had planned.  Any chicken I brought on to my property could not leave.  I would need to process them or allow them to die natural deaths.

I'm still dealing with what to do about new chicks.  Here are some of my thoughts:

1. All chicks I buy need to be vaccinated. They also have to be kept away from my older chickens for at least two weeks for the vaccine to make them resistant.  This also means I can't use a broody to raise them.
2. I cannot get silkies like I had planned.  Bantam chicks can't be vaccinated.  Also, Silkies are very susceptible to Marek's
3. I could try hatching chicks from resistant lines.  Marek's is not spread through the egg.  There is a petting zoo / farm near us that sells hatching eggs.  I could get eggs from there because I'm pretty sure those chickens are exposed to all kinds of stuff, and if they're still alive then they must have some resistance.
4. I had put some of the used bedding in my garden to use as compost.  I will remove as much as I can and not do that anymore to prevent build up of pathogens.
5. In the spring, I will clean out the coop thoroughly with oxine or vikron-s before I get new chicks and again before I add the new hens in.  Bleach is not effective against Marek's.
6. I'm wondering about putting down cement pavers in the run so it would be easier to clean and disinfect.

Fortunately, I have all winter to figure out what to do. 

Giving a broody chicks (grafting)

In chicken forums, there are two opinions on giving a broody chicks either from an incubator or from the feedstore:  1) do it during the day, so you can watch as needed 2) do it at night.  I've given a broody chicks two times now.  I think either way works, but with two caveats: 1) do it when it is cooler (either the morning or evening) 2) keep an eye on things.

In my experience, a broody doesn't notice much.  I can add chicks and she just sits there.  My broody is a nice girl, though.  If your broody is mean, night might be best so she doesn't attack.  I put the chicks under her wings.

Yesterday when I tried giving my broody chicks, I had a problem.  The chicks didn't know she was there mom, and it was warm enough in the coop that they didn't need to stay under her.  They ran around exploring instead of sitting under her like good little chicks.  I had to keep tucking the chicks under.  Eventually, everyone got the memo and this morning momma took them all off the nest to eat.  So broody is broken and operation add-a-chick was successful.

There's something white coming out of my hen's vent

aka something weird coming out of my hen's butt

I found one of my hens with something weird coming out of her vent.  It turned out to be the outside of a soft shelled egg that had broken.

I am not an expert, but here's what I did for my hen (my hen is fairly tame):

1) I gave her a warm bath for about 10 minutes (I learned later it should be closer to 20).  She liked the bath and just sat there.

1) I donned a glove and put ky jelly on a finger. I gently put the finger in my chicken's vent.  Supposedly you want to feel in and up about 2 inches.  I didn't feel anything, so I figured the egg was gone and there wasn't another one stuck.  If I had felt something, I would have given her half a tums mixed in yogurt and another warm bath.

2) I put Preperation H on the glove finger and gently rubbed it on the inside of her vent.  Straining can make things swell and hard to pass eggs.

3) I blow dried her so she wasn't wet.

4) I mixed half a tums with some yogurt and fed it to her.  Soft shell eggs are harder to pass.  I wanted to get her extra calcium so she could get some egg shells on those eggs.  I also mixed in a drop of poli-vi-sol (no iron) to get her some extra vitamin D to help with calcium uptake.  I also switched my layers off of all flock and put them on a regular layer pellet with 20% protein.

5) I stuck her in the (dry) bath tub (too lazy to get out the dog crate) for about an hour to keep an eye on her.  She seemed to be acting normal.

6) I didn't keep her separate from the flock, but now I wish I had.  It would have been easier to tell if she pooping normally.  It also would have been easier to tell if she was still laying soft shelled eggs.  (The next day, she laid another soft shelled egg in the run and all the other chickens ate it.  I really don't want my other chickens learning eggs are full of egg.)

Mama Heating Pad attempt

So on backyardchickens.com, there is a thread about using a heating pad on a frame to brood chicks instead of a heat lamp.  I wanted to try it out.  I had two chicks die on this method, one I think was sick, the other was my fault.  Here's what I learned:

1. This post was very useful: http://www.backyardchickens.com/t/956958/mama-heating-pad-in-the-brooder-picture-heavy-update/2960#post_16594470
2. The heating pad needs to be inside the frame
3. I used a scrap of hardware cloth to make the frame.
4. The back of the frame should be 2 inches and the front 4".  I ran into problems with the plastic box (don't know what it's called) that attaches the cord to the heating pad.  It's actually pretty big.  
5. I ended up with my frame 5" and 3".  This was an issue because the chicks need to be able to touch their backs to the pad while laying down.  I put a folded up hand towel inside.
6. If you take a pillow case and cut it in half horizontally, half will cover the heating pad and half can be used to cover the wire enclosure.
7. I used 3/4" wide elastic to make giant "rubber bands" to hold the pillowcase around the wire frame and heating pad.  I used bungee cords to hold the heating pad to the wire frame.

Hatching eggs from Thanksgiving Point

This February, I got chick crazy.  I was just ready to have chicks, but my incubator hatch last time wasn't very good.  I didn't want to try again with any kind of expensive or special eggs.  Fortunately, Thanksgiving Point Farm Country sells hatching eggs for $.50 each.  I got a dozen, 6 leghorn, 6 brown egg layer (later determined to be buff orpingtons), and 1 mystery bantam egg.

What I learned this hatch: I really need a better thermometer.  I tried with one of the probe meat thermometers from Wal-mart, but it just wasn't reliable enough.  It had this cool feature where it would beep at a certain temperature, so I set it to beep if the incubator got too hot.  It would decide it was hot randomly and beep while the other thermometers showed no temperature spike.

Egg turners are awesome.  I got an egg turner and had much better results than I had without it.

Results: 10 eggs went into lock down.  I had 6 chicks hatch: 2 leghorn, 3 buff orpingtons, and a mystery feather footed bantam.  One of the orpingtons hatched on day 18.  I was convinced I had run my incubator too hot and killed all the other eggs.  Fortunately, on Saturday and Sunday I had more eggs hatch.

How long after the first egg with the other eggs hatch? Well in my case, more than 24 hours.

Small prebuilt coops - reality and work arounds

We've all seen them around, those cute little chicken coops.  A covered run, easy access they promise.  How nice it would be, just buy one and put it together.  This past spring, the lure of a small prebuilt coop proved too much for me.  I wanted a bantam coop to hold two or three bantams and did not want to spend the next month or two building it like I had my big coop.  I ended up buying a new coop, very cute, already assembled from the local equivalent of craig's list.  Here's what I learned:

 Preparation

• The hardware on the prebuilt coop was not adequate.  While the nesting box had a lock, the doors didn't.  To prevent raccoons and other predators from gaining access, I added those, along with latches to keep the roof and droppings tray from being opened.  I like to use the catches from the leashes I bought from the dollar store.  They are cheap and easy to use.
• More ventilation was needed.  It had one little screened window.  I used a drill and key hole saw to cut a hole in the other side of the coop and covered it with hardware cloth to provide more ventilation.
• Updating the roosts. The roosts were lower than the egg boxes.  Moved one of the roosts up 12".
• Restaining.  I performed the water bead test on the coop.  Put a drop of water on the coop.  If it soaks in, it isn't waterproof.  I bought some stain from a local hardware store and repainted it.
• Adding additional run space.  The hens and chicks looked a little crowded, so I added some additional space by building an extension under the external egg box.  This gave them an extra 2 square feet of space.

Access

The coop I bought had four access points: a door to the run, a door to the coop, the lid to the external nesting box, and the roof that opened.  The roof that opened was not as useful as I had thought.  It was hard to reach the bottom of the coop.  There was only a single door to access the run.  This meant if a chicken went under the coop, there wasn't any good way to reach it.  I took out one of the hardware cloth panels under the coop and added another door.

Another thing I realized is to reach into the run required me to kneel down.  This meant I often ended up with little chicken presents on my pants since they like to hang out near the coop when free ranging.  This also meant while cleaning I was on my hands and knees.  I finally bought a pair of knee pads for gardening to help with this problem.

The small doors also made it difficult to access the run when wearing a heavy coat in fall and winter.  The coat kept getting me caught in the door way.

Dealing with food and water.  

Those pictures of happy chickens in these coops rarely show food or water.  I made a feeder out of 3" pvc pipe parts.  I didn't need to glue the pieces together, I just used duck tape.  I put it in the coop to keep it dry and used a wire and some eye screws to keep it from getting knocked over.

For water, I added chick nipple waterer I had purchased at the farm supply store.  

Summer turned to fall.  The temperatures started dropping below freezing.  The water started freezing.  Because I was going to need someone else to watch my chickens sometimes, the "carry out hot water" approach wasn't going to work.  

I tried two different solutions. I tried a heated dog dish.  The water didn't freeze, however, when I tried to get the bowl in or out of the coop, I often spilled it, which meant tons of wet bedding.  The second solution was a three gallon horizontal nipple waterer with a stock tank heater in it.  I was able to get it in and out without spilling, but it took up more room.

Cleaning

I did not find the slide out tray to be very useful.  The metal it was coated with made it very slippery for the chickens to walk on, so I added in pine shavings.  When I tried to get the tray out, the bedding tended to fall out into the run.  I discovered I had a small dust pan that fit right through the door, so I just used that to scoop out bedding when it needed to be changed.

The pop door

The pop door was a horizontal sliding one.  Bedding liked to get caught in the track and prevent it from closing.  I was often down on my knees picking pine shavings out of the track so the door could close completely. My plan was to put a paint stick across the doorway inside the coop to keep the bedding in.  I haven't gotten around to it.  This pop door also doesn't lock.  I decided since the run was locked, that was good enough.  I think something could be put through the push handle to lock it.

Weather

Something I quickly learned was the run was not as weather proof as I had hoped.  Because the run is only a little over two feet wide, rain and snow can blow the entire way across it.  In a light rain, it's ok and things stay reasonably dry, but add in a few gusts of wind and all the pine shavings in the run are soaked.  I found this out the hard way, culminating in me having to blow dry three shivering, snowy silkies.

Small coop as a brooder

I had two different bantams hatching eggs.  I put one in the nesting box and the other in a cardboard box in the run under the coop.  Having a broody in that nesting box was ideal.  I had easy access to her and later, her chicks.

The final transformation

With winter on us, I finally decided this small coop wasn't good for the snowy winters we get where I live.  It was great for a bantam hen and her chicks.  It was great as a grow out pen.  It did not work well as a permanent home.  I sold half my bantams and moved the rest into my other coop, until next year when I use this coop to hatch more chicks.

More hatching...and chicken math

I have shipped silkie and frizzle eggs under a bantam cochin broody set to hatch August 28.  

This is actually a convoluted story involving chicken math.  I thought my cochin and my silkie were going broody at the same time.  I wanted to see if the cochin is a good broody because my silkie's only redeeming characteristic is her maternal instinct.  If the cochin was just as good, I could rehome the silkie and get a more congenial hen.  So I thought, I'll give the cochin some eggs and have the silkie as back up.  

I couldn't find any local eggs, so I ordered some from papa's poultry.  As soon as I ordered eggs and moved the cochin out of the coop, of course the silkie decided she wasn't broody anymore.  I put the shipped eggs under the cochin, but got nervous, "what if she quits on day 16 or something", so I bought a hovabator incubator.  

Then a week later, a fellow BYCer offered me some different silkie and frizzle eggs.  "What good is an empty incubator? I have to make sure it works,"  I thought, so I put some of those eggs in the incubator with two left over which I kept around.  Three days after the incubator eggs started, my silkie went broody, so I put the last eggs under her.  

I started with 9 shipped eggs under the cochin, 2 shipped eggs (a week old by this time) and 10 local eggs in the bator, and 2 eggs under the silkie. 

After candling, I have 6 shipped eggs under the cochin, 6 local eggs in the incubator, and 2 eggs under the silkie.  I have my fingers crossed that I will end up with a few chicks.