Archive for July, 2009

Adding more chickens to an existing flock…

Tuesday, July 7th, 2009

Soon after introducing the first 2 (Goldline) chickens we decided a total of four chickens would be just the right number for us. Once you start keeping chickens you start to realise just how many local suppliers there are of both chickens and feed etc. that I had not even noticed beofre and sure enough only 2 miles away was a local breeder that had quite a few different breeds of chicken for sale.

We arranged to pop over and collect 2 White sussex point of lay hens. As a total newcomer to keeping chickens I had not even thought about vaccination when I collected the first 2 but I soon relaised that it is important to make sure that your supplier follows a strict vaccination program to make sure you are buying good healthy stock, our supplier uses the following program..

Age              Disease                                     Advised vaccine                    Route of administration   
   
Day 1            Mareks                                         Hatchery Injection                Injection  

Day 3-5       Salmonella enteriditis             Gallivac Se                                 Drinking water  

Day 17-19  Salmonella enteriditis             Gallivac Se                                 Drinking water 
 
Day 25         Infectious Bursal Disease      Intervet – Gumboro D78      Drinking Water  
 
Week 8         Avian Rhinotracheitis            Merial Nemovac                       Spray

Week 10            “Inactivated ND/IB/
                           Egg Drop Syndrome”            Intervet IBMulti+ND+EDS    Injection   

Week 13          Avian Encephalomyelitis   Lohmann Avipro AE               Drinking Water   

Week 14 to      “Inactivated ND/IB/
transfer             Egg Drop Syndrome”          Intervet IBMulti+ND+EDS    Injection   

I checked with the supplier of our first 2 chickens and they told me that thay were vaccinated but could not give this level of detail so we will have to wait and see what happens.

Bringing them home…. 
I wish we had gone to collect them a little earlier as by the time we got home it was late afternoon and there was very little time to shut them in the chicken house to acclimatise so when it started to get dark the two goldlines roosted in the house good as gold and the white sussex were nowhere to be seen.

As it was getting dark we looked high and low and eventually found both of them roosting in two different trees. Over the next few evenings  we went through the ritual of searching the trees to find them a putting them in the hen house. After about 5 days they got the idea and have roosted in the chicken house ever since but if I decide to introduce any more to the flock they will spend 2-3 house shut in the house before I let them out just to make sure I don’t have to go through all that hassle again.

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Wing Clipping?

Tuesday, July 7th, 2009

I originally had hoped that I would not have to clip my chickens wings but after numerous attempts to stop them flying over the fence I gave in and clipped them. My fence is 4 feet high and a couple of the chickens did fly over for the first 2-3 weeks but eventually this got less and less except for just one of them which got in the habit of flying over pretty much every day. As installing a taller fence would have been costly and not really practical clipping the chickens wings was the only answer.

 

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Broody hen

Saturday, July 11th, 2009

For the last week or so one of the hens has become broody and is constantly sitting on a nest. I have read a few things about ways you can stop them being broody one of which is to place a bucket or cardbaord box over them for 24 hours. Although I am sure this would not harm the chicken I decided it was not an approach I would like to take.

To try and encourage then hen to snap out of its broody frame of mind I have split the nesting boxes into 3 sperate comparments rather than on large box. This was more for the other hens to esure the broody hen did not put them off. I remove the broody hen every day from the nesting box and try to keep her out as long as posible but as soon as she gets the chance to go back she does. Not sure if this approach will work we will just have to wait and see. If anyone knows a better way of dealing with this please let me know.

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Broody no more…

Saturday, July 25th, 2009

I finally managed to stop the hen being broody. Well to be honest I don’t know if it stopped naturally or it was what I did that stopped it.

For about three weeks I had been taking the broody hen out of the nesting box in the morning and putting her the other side of the fence for most of the day so she could not go back in. But of course every evening when I let her back in she raced straight back into the house and sat broody once again.

I assume that every evening this was undoing any good i was doing during the day so after about three weeks i decided to modify the house to add a lock out panel for the nesting boxes every evening.

After 2 days and 2 nights of doing this she is back to her normal self so I think it might have done the trick but as I said earlier maybe she would have snapped out of it anyway. When it happens again I will get a better idea of it’s effectiveness.

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