Poultry lice

Whilst I have seen lice on chickens before, I can honestly say I have been very luck and none of my hens have ever suffered from them......until last Friday.

I was monitoring my little gold lace Wyandotte as I could see she was loosing some feathers from her back end.  She has always been a tricky one to catch. Her sister is a lot easier to get hold of, so unfortunately she hand not had a good health check for a l little while other than from a distance.

She was eating, drinking, seemed happy enough other than the loss of feathers. I put it down to an unusual late moult.

Today as she bent down to feed, putting what should be a fluffy backside in the air, I noticed a very bare and red patch of skin.  So with wellies on, I decided today was the day to catch her.

It did not take long, perhaps because she knew she needed help.

First place I check whenever I check my hens over is the vent, and it was clear mites were active, eggs had been laid at he base of the remaining feathers and I could see two or there lice roaming around.  I could not get a photo, but have found a particularly good photo on the Internet, so you can see what I discovered.

I decided to gave her a bath to clean off as many of the eggs as possible, and bought an anti mite spray from the local pet shop.  It's the one used for small birds and rabbits. Lower strength than what is normally recommended (1% invecticim).  Chicken vet is a great website to get info on this product and recommended you talk to your vet before using as there is an egg withdrawal period.

I'm going to treat her for 3 weeks, and not use any eggs from the wyandottes for a month.

Quail & hatching update

I have been working on a website for my little poultry adventure.  I would love some feed back on the temporary site at www.andrewspurebreedpoultry.co.uk  There will of course be more information in the full site but at least there is a basis to work from.

If you have read my blog before you will probably know I am little obsessed with chickens and have been keeping them in my back garden for four years.  I have recently ventured into the world of quail keeping.  The Japanese quail arrived on Sunday 3rd February.  9 females and 2 male.

They seem to have settled well into their coop/ aviary.  Although I am surprised how startled they are when I walk up to them.  As explained in the books I have read, they fly directly upwards when scared and usually smack their head off the ceiling of the coop.  Fortunately it is a plastic tray about their head, so I hope it will cause little damage to them.  It does however concern me they do it so frequently, and I think it would be useful if someone could design or breed into the quail some form of helmet device!

They are lovely little birds and have produced 8 eggs already in less than 2 days, however temperatures have dropped and the winds have picked up, so I expect egg production to be limited in the next few days.

My recent attempt at hatching silver laced Wyandottes was a failure.  2 of the eggs were fertile but died at around 16-18 days I think.  I think the humidity may have been too high.  Something I will be keeping a close eye on when I set my next batch of eggs in the next week or so.

Keep tuned in to find out what I will be hatching next using a dry incubating method. ;-)

Thanks for reading