Recent content by Winchikn

Definitely her eggs - she's the only blue egg layer! Maybe she is trying to entice me home. I spent a ridiculous amount of time hanging out with my chickens when they were 'little' and have two that got pretty attached. They will fight over sitting in my lap or being held, even though I don't...

I know - it's really got to be a coincidence but she literally hops in the nesting box the day after I leave. So cheeky 😄 And priceless, no doubt. I got eggs out of almost every one of my flock of 5 year olds the last two days. I can't believe what good layers they still are!

Funny story ... I have a 5 year old Easter Egger hen who is my favourite chicken (don't tell the others). She's a snuggler, who will fly into my arms and rest there contentedly as long as I'll let her. She was laying intermittently last year, took a nice long break over the winter following...

Another month later, this hen is still acting like a pretty healthy little chicken and laying on and off (and most of the rest of my little flock has come back into lay - amazing given they are aging and clearly battled some kind of viruses last year!). Her eggs always have an elliptical...

An update 2 months later… This little hen stopped showing neurological symptoms and - I hate to count my chickens, as it were - but she seems to have recovered and came back into lay just before Christmas! One other hen who was hit quite hard with respiratory symptoms during molt this fall...

Thank you so much. I started a new Mareks post and linked this one there, but forgot to link that one here: https://www.backyardchickens.com/threads/suspected-mareks.1604321/#post-27310976 My apologies for the duplication. I'm not very skilled with these forums. I had found the 'great big'...

Thank you, again. This was a gift to read and lifted my heart. One of the biggest reliefs is the reiteration that if I've had no birds in and I have Mareks, it means that others around here likely do as well, so I can stop the running film in my head that involves either never having people come...

Thank you very much. I don't want to cull until symptoms indicate it's the best choice, so we will take things one step at a time. I am feeling overwhelmed by the logistics and cost of the necropsy process but I know it is what we should do to get the answers that we need. I have dewormed the...

Hello - I think I'm dealing with Mareks and need advice. I was dealing with crop and reproductive issues and lost 3 hens in spring/summer. Things had been calm and quiet for a few months until my flock went into molt and some issues started showing up. I'm not very experienced with online...

Bless you. I needed a virtual hug from someone who understands. They really are tragic pets and I am so sorry for your ongoing issues. We will walk the path that needs walking. Hard to let go of my dreams of letting the whole flock age out with me on the farm. Sometimes things just don't go...

An extremely sad follow up to what I thought was a happy ending to this story... When I took this hen to the vet several weeks ago, the vet felt her crop and said it didn't feel impacted and that there must something else going on. I told her I had lost three hens this spring, to what I thought...

Yes! I had to wait for my hubby to get home for a second set of hands. I ordered some Valbazen from the US but I think it got turned around at the border so I'm stuck with Safeguard, which is such a large amount for some of my bigger chickens. But we'll get the all done in the next week or so...

You are too kind. I really think that the 5 days of Safeguard did the trick for this hen after all the other interventions (poor thing). Whatever parasites she had must have been more than the piperzine could handle. She's had an empty crop every morning since Friday and I've just wanted to...

So we finished 5 days of Safeguard on Oct 24 and saw no improvement during the course of that treatment. Figuring this hen was in her final days (she was a bit puffed up and slightly lethargic after the days of epsom salts followed by Safeguard), I wanted to treat her and the rest of the flock...

Crop was very hard and full this morning. We tried to get a flush in but it was coming back up so I let her run around for a bit and we managed to get one in a bit later in the day when things had loosened up. Energy and appetite are still good at 3 weeks today of her crop not emptying...