My Flock Update & Possible Marek's Disease?

Chapters

• 0:00 Welcome And Weather Check
• 0:38 Health Scare And Suspected Marek’s
• 3:13 Vet-Backed Research Over Social Media
• 5:15 Why It Likely Wasn’t Marek’s
• 6:41 Feed Mites And Nutrition Loss
• 8:16 Cleaning Gear And Silo Maintenance
• 9:10 No Avian Vets Nearby
• 9:33 Flock Update And Leghorn Lay Timing
• 11:20 Grow-Out Pen Integration Strategy
• 13:11 Moving Pullets Into The Big Coop
• 14:33 Winter Setup Without Heat

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:02

Are we ready, Papa? Hello friends, and welcome to Chicken Every Day. I'm hoping for you, the Backyard Chicken and Thursdays in my mind. Your host is my couple Gary, Gary Ballery of Sin Lama Backyard Chickens. Here we have fun mushrooming ideas and learning how to care for our couple feathered friends. Check out our videos at Sin Lama at C-E-N-L-A Backyard Chickens on YouTube, TikTok, and Facebook. So without further ado, let's start today's show. I was back.

SPEAKER_01: 0:32

Good morning everyone. Gary with SinLob Backyard Chickens here and the Chickens Everyday Podcast. And it is mid-December on a gloomy, overcast, misty rain day here in central Louisiana. We've had some temperatures down in the 20s today. It's back up in the 50s, which is much, much nicer for us, obviously. And I wanted to give you guys an update on the flock, the young pullets, and the even younger pullets now, and let you know how things are going. And at the same time, you know, if you're listening to the podcast, you can you can go see the video version on YouTube and TikTok. But I am going to be showing, you know, some of the backyard where the chickens are running around talking about some of the things over here. But unfortunately, uh recently uh I lost two birds about a week and a half apart, a New Hampshire red and a Rhode Island red. And their symptoms were very much like Merrick's disease. Uh they couldn't balance, they couldn't walk, they actually would use their wings a little bit to help get around. Oddly enough, their appetite was quite good. I did what I usually do. I separated them, I made sure that they were nice and warm, gave them plenty of feed, I scrambled some eggs so they would get some good proteins. I did some research and I want to I want to kind of warn you guys when you do your research, I don't recommend getting on a chicken channel on social media and saying, oh, what's wrong with my chickens? Here I here I here's what I have going on. You will get so many varied things about it, and and and most of these people all are well-intentioned, you know, but they're not vets, and and they're not scientists that specialize in this. I try to look up things with with vets, uh like Dr. Rebecca, I think Pearlman, uh, who is on Coffee with the Chicken Ladies uh quite often. I looked up some information on the University of Pennsylvania. Uh Mr. Jeff uh I I can't remember his last name right now, but he's the president of your trail company. He's amazing when it comes to chicken biology, chicken nutrition. So, you know, when you start looking up things, try to get as much professional advice as you absolutely can. It will save you tons of heartache. Um, but these two birds, like I said, they they had the symptoms of Merrick's disease. I don't honestly think that it was. Now, but the symptoms were what you normally see, you know, with the balance of the wings, what have you. Uh in the end, they were just extremely lethargic, uh, couldn't really even hold themselves up as much as I hate to say it, but I don't like to see my girls suffering, so I did the most humane thing that I could, and that was to euthanize these these birds, and I hated to do it. Uh, especially Lily, my uh New Hampshire Red, she'd been with me a long time. She was kind of like the flock leader out here, and she was the kind of girl, she didn't have to be mean, and everybody knew she was the boss, so that was kind of neat uh with her for that. But the reasons I'm not thinking it's merric disease from the research that I've I've looked at. Number one, uh, they're older birds, and merricks is usually something that's going to hit younger birds, although it can go to older ones. I'm not saying that it can't, and I'm not a veterinarian, please understand that. Number two, these birds were vaccinated from the hatchery as young chicks, uh, which generally means if they do get merics later, symptoms are quite mild. These symptoms were were fairly strong. Number three, I have chicked or chickens, grown hens out here that I've hatched that have never been vaccinated. And since mericks is supposed to be extremely contagious, these chickens never got it. And it's been a month since uh since my last chicken, and nobody else has had any kind of symptoms or anything. And number four, uh, three of the birds that I have are 16-year-old leg horn pullets. And if you look around and you and do your research, leghorns are one of the birds that can be subject to getting marriage. And none of these birds, nobody else has had any issues, so I'm not sure what's going on. Another thing that you you can find is it could be a nutrition issue, a vitamin deficiency that can cause that, and it can. But if you look, my girls pasture range every day. I buy the most expensive feed that I can from from the from the local feed store around here. Uh, I give them supplements, uh, I you know, I give them scraps, you know, so I know that they're getting a buried amount of feed. Another thing that I've looked up in that it could have been was what they call avian leucosis, uh, which kind of can mimic Merrick's disease, but more I looked into it, the less that I felt like that that was what the issue was. Uh, and finally, I found that I had some feed that I had uh feed mites in my feed. And feed mites themselves don't hurt your chickens, they can eat them, you know, they're not going to hurt the birds, but what they do, they eat all the nutritional parts of your chicken feed. And now your your birds, while they're maybe getting their belly full, they're not getting the nutrition that they should be because of the mites. And the only way you can get rid of them, you can freeze your feed, you know, for three days at a time, uh, or you can just throw it away, which is what I ended up doing. And then I completely washed out uh my food containers for them, and uh my big girls that they eat out of the uh feed silo, and I'll show you that right here. And it's a coop works feed silo. The good thing about this thing is it is all plastic and metal, so you can take it out, completely clean it, you know, to make sure that you don't have any more issues with it. So it's a mystery. I don't know why I lost these sweet animals, but I did. Uh, I don't have access to a vet over here. I've checked everywhere in our parish in Louisiana we have parishes instead of counties. I've checked all the parishes over here, I've checked every adjoining parish, and nobody does birds. So that's just unfortunate. In better news, you know, the rest of the flock is good. Um, my leghorns, wherever they are, they're running around here somewhere, are now 16, 17 weeks old. So, as a leg horn, I'm kind of expecting them to lay almost any day now. They lay pretty white eggs, they're great, they're very prolific and they're laying. And the reason that I had them is because we do have the Honesty egg stand, and my customers were like eggs, and these girls are taking a pretty good break here in the winter and not really laying that well. But because of the time of year that it is, they may not start laying at 16, 18 weeks, you know. They may wait a while. I I just don't know. Uh, but I have some pretty good confidence in them. Uh, after that, the younger birds, pullets now, are 12 weeks old. And if you've been following me uh on them, uh they've been in the grow out pen, which you see the big girls are kind of hanging out, they love the grow out pin just as well. But I bring the grow-out pen out with these things when they're three around three weeks old, and they really get used to being part of the flock. And when they're about six weeks old, I start letting them run around out here in the yard. And at three weeks, between three weeks and six or seven weeks, however, however, I feel confident about it. What this does is it gives the flock time to get very used to these birds being around, and they actually kind of become part of the flock by doing so. And then I just start letting them turn loose in the yard, and you get the usual flock dynamics. The hens will kind of show their authority over them because pecking order is a real thing, but they're so used to them they're not going to attack them and kill them. At least I've never had that experience with letting them get used to them. And now it's about time to introduce them into the uh big coop. So this week I will be removing this grow-out pin that you see right here, and I'll be putting the uh young pullets in the coop over there at night. Now, I'll probably have to do this for a couple of nights, maybe not. The leg horns went right to it with no problem, uh, and we'll see how these other ones do, but it's time for them to start going in there. They're about two-thirds the size of a grown hen, so it shouldn't be that big of a deal. And like I say, they all run around together every day out here in the yard. The only difference is is I lock them, lock the pullets up at nighttime in here. So that should be kind of cool to see that dynamic dynamics. What I do with this thing, uh, every time I get through with it for the winter or whatever time of year it is, I'll bring it in my shop, I'll clean it up, and then I'll repaint or repair anything that needs repairing. You can see I've got a little bit of chipping paint right here and right here, so I'll finish chipping all that stuff off, repair any parts that need it, and repaint things. And this thing last years, I've also got a couple of fans in here for whenever it's very hot summer. You can get to this thing in all kinds of ways. Uh, the front of it opens up the roof itself, will open up. So, yeah, there's all kinds of ways to do this. Now it's winter time, so we have concerns about making sure that your chicken stay warm and comfortable. I do not use supplemental heat here in Louisiana. You know, we've had temperatures that get down in the single digits before, but really, if your coop is designed well and you have good fluffy birds, you're not really going to have a problem with that. And I have not seen that. The scary part about if you use supplemental heat and your animals get used to it, there they physically get used to having that supplemental heat. You lose power for a couple of days. These birds are not acclimated, uh, they can actually die from the shock of that sudden cold. So it's kind of good, you know, to let them get used to it. And that nature does a wonderful job. I have a lot of doors and openings in my coop that I close during the winter, but the top of it stays vented. There's room up there for vents because we want odors to go out. Uh, since the since the coop faces the north, I put a screen up to block some of the wind for them sometime, and that helps protect the birds as well. Uh, you know, we got lots of next boxes. I got four right there. I've got four more uh on the outside that we check. I use run chicken doors, as you guys know. I really like these run chicken doors, uh, they're great, they're reliable. Uh clean them up and keep going. Since I'm the the high-tech rednik, as my friends always say, I also have blink cameras. I have one there. I've got another one up on the coop, and I've got uh the indoor blink camera that actually rotates around you know with my phone inside the coop that I can look look at all the birds, but for winter time, uh they get under here under the roof when they want to. It was really, really funny on those days when it got down to 20 degrees. I was concerned about the young ones. Uh, in the first day of 20 degrees, I had supplemental heat in the grow out pen, and I came out here at daylight, and they were all outside and underneath the pen. They weren't even worried about it, and it was 20 friggin' or 21 degrees out here, so they had feathered out really well and and we're and we're staying warm. So I removed the heat because I want them back to acclimate to the cold as best they can, but Louisiana's just not terrible about it. So this coming week I will be moving the birds, putting them in there. Uh hopefully everything will stay good. I don't really anticipate any problems since they all get along quite well. Oh well, the three leg horns decide to show up, and you can kind of see some of the other girls. Uh that's Barney, Buff Orpington. They are the pullets that are gonna start joining the big group before too long. So, yeah, everybody's looking good. Everybody seems to be happy. You know, while I've got y'all's attention here, we might as well go see if we got any eggs in the egg box. Y'all just think you're gonna get a snack, don't you? Okay, no hens in there. I got a couple there, a couple there, and one there. So not too many. Five eggs, but it's it is the time of year. So, guys, thank y'all for listening so much to see what's going on with my flock right now. Uh wintertime setting in over here in Louisiana. And like I've always said, or said for a few months now, uh, if you enjoy the channel and you want to get on here and chat with me, send me an email, chickenseveryday at yahoo.com. And I'll get you on the show and we can have a really good time. Uh it's it's just a lot of fun. So if you have a good love for these wonderful animals and you want to get on the show and try it out, let me know. See you guys soon. Bye bye.

SPEAKER_00: 14:38

That's all we have time for today. I really hope you enjoyed listening to the podcast. Be sure to watch our videos. So, on behalf of my papa Gary and me, Sylvie, thanks for listening.