Chicken with a Prolapse and How to fix it!

  This is Kristine, a large fowl Cochin mix.....

As you can see, she has not been feeling very well. Her comb is pale, she is dirty, her tail is down and her undercarriage/butt fluff is caked with poo. 

I have noticed her being this way for about 2 weeks, but have been unable to catch her until yesterday. I promptly flipped her topsy tervey to check out her rump and came to find this.....

This is often called a Prolapse by mistake. Prolapse is a normal part of laying an egg. 

  The oviduct's shell gland, pushes an egg out of the cloaca. It does this by holding onto the egg and prolapsing or turning itself inside out to push the egg out of the vent but then goes back inside the hen. If this tissue stays outside the vent it is a very bad thing and is called Blowout. Or called eversion.

  There are a few ways to fix this but I have found that most people just "cull" the chicken. What I have read, most people use Vaseline or KY jelly to help with pushing it back into the hen. Another thing some use is Preparation H, because it helps with the swelling and makes it easier to push the tissue back in. 

  Also an "old wives tail" solution is honey, Yes, honey. 

Many of these things have worked for many people. But what I have see a lot of is that the blowout will reoccur a few times if not just stay out and that is when the hen needs to be culled. 

 Other things that are needed to help the blowout heal is to put the hen in a clean, dark place by herself and reduce the amount of feed to slow down or stop egg production so that the prolapse has less of a chance to happen again.

 I plan on using honey (because that is what I have) and trying this once or maybe twice if it happens again. But if it continues past that, I will be culling my poor girl.

  Have you had to deal with a blowout? If you have what method did you use and what was the out come?

Animals, Animals every where!

  AAaaahhhh, Breathing a sigh of relief the big holidays are over. I hope everyone had a fun, safe Christmas and New years. We all survived here, our wallets are a bit wounded but will heal with tender love and care and will gain weight after a few pay checks.
  Uh, well I guess not all of us survived the holidays, we went ahead and invited one of the turkey toms inside for Thanksgiving dinner and the other tom for Christmas dinner. They were good company and made those dinner so much better, those boys each had their day to be our guest of honor.  

  For Christmas I decided to get my wonderful husband a new puppy. I hopped on Craigslist and began my search. After a few days I found a family who's female Great Dane had pups with a Black Lab/German Shepherd mix male and I knew that this was the one. They were asking a real world price for a mutt not some high $ amount for what they had now deemed a designer breed with some stupid nonsense name of the combined breeds. Don't get me wrong I love all those dogs just as much as the pure breeds, but in no way dose it make sense to charge pure breed prices (witch includes shots, free first vet check, puppy packet, option to buy AKC papers for your dog, and an adoption contract with return clause and agreement not to breed said dog. If they are good breeders.) for a MUTT with no shots. Yes this includes Labradoodles, Yorkey Poos and many others.
  Ok I am done ranting (maybe). Here is the adorable lil pup we brought home...

  This is Ratchet at 6 weeks. As in the Transformer character, we have a thing for naming our dogs after Transformers and our cats after car dealers. 

This is him a few DAYS later, not a week or two but days later. This boy is growing fast.

Here he is about 4 days later with his best bud Barricade our English Mastiff. These two are the picture of friendship. Jazz did not quite care for him much at this point as Jazz is a 4 year old Great Dane, which if you know Danes means he is an old man, and old men don't care for them damn young ins (they tend to go after your toes and he hates that).

And here he is now. This was taken the day before yesterday.

These were taken the same day. He has now won over Jazz but Barricade is still his number one bud. One of the first things I teach my pups (besides sit, stay, and where to potty) is how to pose for my obsession with taking pictures.

  Speaking of my picture taking problem, the day those precious puppy pics were taken it was a beautiful sunny day (although very cold and icy). So I took advantage of the shimmering golden rays of warmth beaming down from the sky as blue as an ice burg and played paparazzi to my chickens. Get ready for a picture overload......

 This is Bonnie and Effie they are Exchequer Leghorns and lay small white eggs. They were brought here by a fellow BYCer whom had gone through a hard time, had to move and could no longer keep her 5 chickens. Sadly her Welsummer, Salma was killed before she could bring them to their new home. 

 In this one you see Sunny, my Buff Orpington and Gertrude (another of the 4 girls brought by the BYCer). This picture would have been better if one of the pigs had not come up and nudged my right arm. Damn pigs!

 Again Beautiful Gertrude. She has not begun laying for me yet but seems to be thinking about it as her comb is becoming more and more red.

 Handsome boy here. This is Seth ( I have wrongly called him Steve on occasion whoops). His prior family had bought what they were told were all pullets. One of the young girls in the family had dubbed this sweet lil chick hers. Well sadly it turned out to be a little cockerel who has turned into a great rooster.

 Man, by the look on this Easter Egger's face you would think that life has just handed her such a bad hand. But she is sweet and lays some big beautiful blue eggs.

(Left to right; Motor Mouth a Brown Leghorn, Fancy a Silver Laced Cochin, and Blue a Blue Andilution sp?.)

Three old biddies (they are not really old 1.5yr old) standing out side of the run looking in. What are they staring at so intently and seem to be gossiping about? Non other than......

 Big Daddy Red, my Road Island Red rooster. Why you ask are they swooning over him???????

 Because he is just one big hunk-O-rooster!

 Yet to be named and of unknown parentage, this up and coming rooster has amazing color. He came from yet another BYC friend. I had bought several eggs from her to hatch for specific egg laying colors. I had a 99% hatch as they were hatched by two broodies at the time, Kristine a Black Cochin mix and Fancy. Sadly all but this boy and three pullets did not survive hawks, other predators or apparently  drowning in the pig water at the age of 6 weeks old.  

 Here are two of the three pullets. Also unnamed but almost at POL (Point Of Lay)

 Maggie, a Gold Laced Wyandotte. She is a hefty girl, the last of the 4 from another BYC home. Not yet laying but in good time she will.

 Frolicking!

  After I figure out how to make a page for ya'll to send in pictures I hope you will do just that. I love seeing happy chickens.

  I really can't wait for spring and summer weather. Longer days brings not only more eggs but more warm time outside with camera in hand.
   

So many things in the works.

  When it comes to sitting down and blogging, I really want to do it. I have a few blogs that I follow myself and wish I could be half as good as them. Now yes, I tend to be busy for a few hours a day what with 5 farm kids, three farm dogs (yes we added one for the holidays), the pigs and many MANY chickens. But all those chores are done in the morning and evening, during the day when all the kids are at school my brain goes blank and either I don't remember that I was going to blog or I can't think of what to write.
  So no more saying that I will be doing this more often, but I will be trying to. Ha Ha we will see how this works.
  As far as the blog site it's self, I am really trying to get it looking nice but I don't quite know how to. Slowly I have figured out a few things but not as many as I would like to.

  Other things that are soon to change..... We are looking for a new home/farm!
 Hopefully we will find larger property for the animals and a larger house for the kids. I am so very excited for this and yet it is one of the hardest things to do. Find a house that has what you want, check! Put high $ offer on house, check! Be out bid and heart broken then have to find a new house to love.....check. Man what a roller coaster. But I will keep my hopes up and fingers crossed that the perfect house is waiting for us and that is why we have lost all the good ones along the way.

  Do you own your home or are you hunting for your first one? Did the right house just jump up and say "Hi, I am the house you wanna buy."

I am here and alive! There have been so many things going on this summer that I did not have the time or energy to hop on here and do my thing. But I promise I will be on more now that the kids are in school.

One of the things we have been busy with is all the chicks! I have had 7 hens go broody this summer and of those 7, three have gone broody twice. There are about 25 chicks running around of all kinds of breeds that I will be so excited to have laying next spring. Most are mixed breeds right from my flock.

This is Fancy, she is a Silver Laced Wyandotte with feathered legs. I bought 14 eggs from a friend on Back Yard Chickens. I divided them up between two broody hens Fancy and Kristine who is a Black Cochin. Both of these ladies hatched out their chicks but found out that the chicks all responded to Fancy more than Kristine. After about 2 weeks Kristine gave up and let Fancy take over the care of all 14 babies. Sadly I am down to only 9 of these chicks now, most of them had been taken by some smaller predators while we were gone for a weekend on vacation. The latest one to have passed was my daughter Rylaya's favorite that loved to be held. That chick had tried drinking out of the pig watering tub and seems to have fallen in and not been able to get out.  Out of the 14 I have one Blue Laced Red Wyandotte and the rest are EE's and Olive Eggers.
Now both moms have moved on and begun laying again (Kristine might be going broody again)

For some reason my pictures of Kristine and her chicks would not load, but I have many many pics of Fancy with her chicks.

Are any of my fellow chicken peeps raising chicks through the winter to have them start laying next spring? And what breeds are you raising?

Break out new arrival equals a few sick chickens!

 A couple of weeks ago I got a call from the Bothell Feed Center. Now this was a particular nice day, the sun was beaming and the breeze was scarse. Not a great day for an animal to be traped outside in a box. That being said, the great people at the Feed center informed me that they had come across a rooster of some sort out in thier parking lot, packaged in a dark green tote and a wire mesh lid. They had no idea how long this poor guy had been out there. But he also had a note taped to the box with him that read; "My name is Charley, please help me find a new home". Well I ran right over to collect said rooster, see some of the workers there have chickens but are eather not aloud to have a rooster or do not want one. I had no problem having him untill I could find him a home.

But first I wanted to quarentine him as we had no clue were he came from. Regardless it is always a good idea to quarentine a new addition untill you know they are not sick from the previouse home or even because the stress of travel to a new home and new exposures can weeken their system temperarely and they can become sick. A good amount of time to keep them seperate is 2-3 weeks.

 I put him into his temperary encloser were he could see the flock but not come into contact with them. Apparently he had other plans. The next morning when I went out to check on everyone he was our frolicking with the ladies. I made the decistion to let him be out with everyone, which I have come to realize was a bad idea. I now have a few girls that have come down with a respitory issue. With the generouse help from some very knolegable people on the Where am I? Where are you? Washington thread of http://www.backyardchickens.com/ I now know what I need to correct this problem and am on my way back to healthy chickens.

 Here is a picture of the culpret who got me chickens sick:

One of these days I will tell you a bit about this interesting little guy, but that is a story for another day!

Do you always quarentien your new chickens or just throw them in and hope for the best?

On a side note, I am sorry for my bad spelling. I tried useing the spell check, but don't think it worked as there were not highlighted words. There is no possible way I spelled everything correctly, not even a chance! 

It's been a while!

  April was the last time I posted, and there have been many changes sense then. Good and bad, but we have survived and are thriving and will continue to do so.

  All my kids will be out of school this coming Wednesday!

  Well as far as chickens go, we are defiantly up a few from the last time I posted.
I don't have the exact numbers in front of me but as far as adults I now have about 25 Hens and one temp rooster.
  Then, well then there are the chicks and pullets..... Lets see there are 3 that are 15 weeks old, two pullets and one roo (that is my up and coming roo for my flock) 7 Silkies that are about 7 weeks old, one mixed girl from my flock that is also 7 weeks, 2 hen raised mix chicks that are 9 weeks old, 6 chicks that are about 13 weeks old, and 3 bantam unknown breeds from the feed store that are about 3 weeks old. Not to mention that I have two hens that went broody (these are my 4th and 5th hens that have gone broody) and I bought 15 eggs to divide between them. So one had 7 and one had 8.... Well one still has 7 but my other girl STOLE eggs from the other nest boxes, my last count under her was 11 eggs. I moved them into the broody area right away so that she could not "collect" any more! Those eggs were set on Monday the 18th. Today is day 4 and hatch day should be about July 8th (one of my dear daughters birthday, Rylaya)

 Well I think that is all for now, but hopefully I will have time tomorrow to post some pictures!

I know it has been a while, let me catch you up!

 I know it has unfortunately been a while sense I last posted. I tried to a few weeks ago but my computer tends to be a POS and after I had typed up a Very long blog and pushed post it would not load and did not save! Needless to say I was beyond mad and it sort of chased me away from blogging for a bit.
( as I type this I am hoping it does not happen again)
 So happenings sense then......
Well the 25 eggs that I was incubating got down to a small number of just six eggs for lock down. Sadly through out days 19 and 20 of incubation all remaining 6 died. 5 of them were fully developed.
That was very frustrating adding that to my first hatch with 31 eggs that went though a huge temp spike and I had to discard all of them.
But I am hopping things work out better this time around. Fist of all, I have a beautiful black Cochin mix that has gone broody (meaning she wants to sit and hatch eggs) and boy has she been a champ so far! The day that I planned on moving her into a separate safe area to lay peacefully she had stepped out of her box to stretch and eat a bit while allowing another hen to lay in her box. Now normally I stand guard while the "other" hen was laying in her box so that I could remove the new egg before Momma came back in that way I did not have to disturb her later on. Well this time I did not and when I came in to check on Momma and make sure she was back on her nest, I found her in the box right next door with out her eggs. Then I noticed that one of Mamma's eggs had been broken by the "other" laying hen and she got yolk all over all the Mamma's eggs (just not her own damn egg of course) So I had to discard all 5 of those eggs as most likely they would have been contaminated and would not hatch. I immediately cleaned up her box and gave her 6 more eggs, she watched as I did this and hopped right on over as soon as I began to walk away.
 I then went to work getting her broody room ready! Because she hunkered down so quickly onto her new eggs I just went ahead and moved her right then and there. ( Best time to move them is at night when they are sleeping and not really paying attention.) Momma had not problem with the move.
 Decided to candle the eggs a few days ago and found that 2 were not developing so I removed them. The rest are due to hatch around our youngest son's birthday April 27th. My excitement levels are so high right now I can't stand it. To be able to watch a momma hen hatch and raise her own young is going to be GREAT!

Also, I finally decided it was time to try my hand at incubating again. I put 30 eggs in my bater on April 17th at 10 am.(Hopping this time an even number will be more lucky for me) So far so good, temp is steady around 100 and I also bought an automatic egg turner so I only have to open the bater to candle my eggs. Really have my fingers crossed this time.

More Baby news, Hanna Bean is due to deliver next month around the 12th of May. I have already got her birthing pen put together in my "barn", although right now it houses my 5 7week old pullets whom will be going into a large dog crate at the end of this week and be put into the coop so the girls can all get used to them.

This birthing pen so to speak will also be used for many other things, like..... Brooding my baby chicks (such as now), separating sick chickens from the flock, quarantine for new hens that arrive from time to time, and if not being used at the time I will put all broody hens in there with nest boxes on the ground for babies to get in and out until ready to go into the coop with their momma.

And now for the grand finale, seeing as we are already on the large subject of babies....... We have come to find out that we are adding one more to our home! I am about 6 week prego!!!!! Yes people if you have counted that will be a total of 6 children in our home. As for your next question, after this one I am done.

I will try to post the progress of chicks and kids (goat babies) as we go along.
Hope everyone has a wonderful weekend. Whoot Whoot tomorrow is Friday!