Friday on the Backyard Farm #56

Friday on the Backyard Farm #56

Time has really flown by! The last one of these posts was back in January! Every time I thought about sitting down to type up what was going on, I thought it could wait until the next week. Well, here we are in June. 🤣

For the last several months my office has been a revolving door of either sick or injured chickens and ducks. We’ve never had so many in a short period of time. It will usually be one injury and then a few months of nothing.

One of the chicks our chicken Cheese had raised got hit by a car. Thankfully, it wasn’t the kid’s favorite chicken that they named Seghetti (why? I don’t know 😅). Then we had a second chicken get hit. Neither chicken survived.

We had a couple of chickens disappear. One chicken and duck we had for about 7 years vanished on the same day. Just last week a fox came running out of the forest chasing chickens so I’m sure it was either that one or a different fox that has been snatching the chickens.

Any chickens with injuries that came in were sprayed with veterycin spray! I love that stuff. I highly recommend everybody to get it. Check out here for what we do for injuries.

Since April we have been dealing with a duck having a prolapse vent. A prolapse vent is when the oviduct comes out of the body. It looks like a large ball hanging out of the butt. We were close to getting it back in but she broke out of her confinement outside and a rooster got her and made the prolapse vent big again 😵. We had to start over with it and now it’s to the point of being small again but not as small as it once was. Hopefully it will shrink a little more and then we can push it back in. Crazy thing is, she has laid 2 eggs since it happened.

We did get the duck a diaper to wear to cover the prolapse vent and she ripped it off. I guess she didn’t like the floral print 🤣. About time I got my phone to take a picture it was gone.

We had one chicken with half of his face, eye, and wattle swollen. The wattle fell off and the swelling let up on the face and eye. We put the rooster back outside. Several days later I find him hunched over in the coop lethargic and not moving. He had to come back in for a few more weeks.

There’s been other chickens but those are the most notable ones. Thankfully we had a lot cured but a couple died. Momma D our duck has not been walking well at all. I’m feeding her niacin poultry booster, peas, and tuna to help her along.

However, there was a broody hen that kept getting into Momma D’s enclosure that would attack her! In Momma D’s pen we also had a chicken that wasn’t walking and a duck that would keep her head down. The broody hen kept getting into the pen and would only go after Momma D. I had to lock that chicken up in time out. 🙄 The broody hen finally stopped getting into the enclosure. Who knew we would have to referee chickens and ducks? But we do 🤣.

I had started vegetable seeds in February and they sprouted. Unfortunately, cat ate some of the plants. Then chickens ate the rest. None of them survived. I think I might buy plants this year but it’s already the middle of June 😨. We threw away the green house cover. It was so torn even though I had mended it, it wouldn’t stay on the structure, it kept blowing off, ripping more in the progress. We had several thunder storms when this happened.

Then I still have something going into the garden and ripping up the weed covering. 😩 I’ve been trying to keep it down so we can plant plants in there without weeding. We have had deer and turkey show up. I’m blaming the deer, not my sweet goats. I don’t think they have gone in there because we have it blocked off and they can’t jump that high but deer can.

Most recent event was early this morning. We had an owl attacking one of the chickens! We have never seen or dealt with an owl. We hear them occasionally far off but have never seen them. Unless the owl took some of the other chickens that have gone missing and not the fox? 🤔

There were feathers everywhere. The chicken was dazed and bloodied up. I thought she had lost an eye but after cleaning her face I saw that both eyes were fine. She ate and drank then has been quiet until she laid an egg. I thought she was about to die because of her fast breathing but instead popped out an egg. Got attacked by an owl and can still deliver breakfast.  Amazing!

We had gotten 2 sets of chicks this year! Our first was in April which where black sex linked and red sex linked chickens. In may we got starlite and rhode island chicks.

When we got the black sexed link chicks there was an even smaller chick in brooder at the store and I asked for that one. It’s definitely a different breed. You can’t tell with the picture below but there is another pictured I posted.

The chicks are all outside now! The black and red sex linked chicks have grown a lot! The newer ones are right behind them.

We’ve had some other things going on, mainly work and school related. Just life. Hopefully I can post more! Thanks for reading. Please subscribe if you haven’t already and check out our youtube channel, I have been posting short videos from time to time!