A Chicken Post

 

Its been a long, long time since I have done a chicken post. I always mean to write one but then something else comes up. I wanted to show you something I got early in the summer that has been a life saver for my chickens.

I was loosing about a chicken a week. I was getting pretty discouraged. I had gone through every chicken book I have and looked online. My chickens had these symptoms. They just stop eating and just stand and drink and then they starve to death and die. Over and over again. I had thirty hens and now I am down to seventeen. I was reading one day and there was this little sentence that talked about how chickens need Lacto Bacillus. I didn't even know if they had a product like that, I had spent so much time at Tractor Supply looking at stuff for chickens but I had never seen anything like that. Ron happened to be going that day and he found locked up in one of the cases. I don't even remember ever seeing it either.

I had a hen who was going to be the next one to die. I thought a day or two at the most. She was my first young hen to exhibit these signs. You just mix it in the water and that's it. 1/3 of a teaspoon to a gallon of water.

I did it and my sick hen just stood and drank and drank. She was so sick I didn't expect her to get better because that is one of the signs of the sickness they just drink and drink.
About a hour later I went on the check her. She was eating like she had been starving, she just stood and ate and ate. I watched her a bit. I came back in because she even looked brighter in her eyes.

That evening when I went back out to put them to bed. She looked like a new chicken. She had lost that pain in her face and the next morning she was eating again and all of the other chickens had not been their ole happy selves, they were drinking too and today, almost September, I haven't lost a single hen in two months.

She has always been a quiet hen. Now she is my shadow. Where ever I am I will look around and she will be standing there watching me. She never sang much but now she sings quietly all of the time. One day, I was out watching my chickens. Ron came out to see what I was doing. He asked me how my hens were now. I was telling him how much healthier they were now. I said, " See that hen right there, you can't believe how pale she was and now she has color  in her face and look how happy she is." Then it dawned on me as he looked around with sort of a blank look on his face, that they all look the same to him, but he was trying to be a good sport about it. Of course, I had to laugh and say, " Oh I am sorry."  Point out the one to him that was not a pale face anymore.

I love that wherever I am they will be with me quietly scratching in the dirt or pretending they aren't watching me. I love when I am working in the garden or the flowerbeds they all lay down and sleep. When it gets a bit cooler and I take my sewing outside and sit, they all come close and want to chatter or take dust baths.

Last night though, when I went out to check on them I couldn't see a single hen in the yard. I could hear a hen in the hen house screaming. I knew something was up and Ron said, " Oh my gosh, will you look at that hawk!!!" Sure enough a Red Tail hawk was perched on the door of my chicken coop. I suppose reading recipes out loud. I ran and yelled and he gracefully flew up into the tree above my chicken coop, I am sure laughing all of the way. My poor, poor hens were so afraid. They were as far under the nest boxes against the wall as they could get. I talked and talked to them to get them calmed down.

Miss Broody

You know what that means right? September is here. The hawks are returning to their winter hunting ground. Which also means, no more chickens alone in the yard unless I am out there. Poor girls. We have ten thousand doves around and that hawk always wants chicken.

I can talk about chickens all day. I know that since I like to keep around thirty, next year will have to be a new chick year. That is a very nice thought to think about chicks being in my future.
Have a lovely day,
~Kim~

The ruler of the hen house

“Self-pity is the hens' besetting sin," remarked Mr. Payton. "Foolish fowl. How they came to achieve anything as perfect as the egg I do not know! I cannot fathom.”
― Elizabeth Enright, Gone-Away Lake