A look at chicken care including feet, lice/mites, food, weather concerns and more.
Chickens
How to avoid a yeast infection in chicken's crop
Our chicken Honey has (had) a recurring yeast infection in her crop because her crop was damaged because of starvation as a young bird so it's distended and liquid pools in it. This is a breeding ground for yeast infection. Although treated with very expensive Fluconazole (aka Diflucan), once the yeast infection went away, our vet recommended we give her treated water to keep the yeast infection from recurring. The recipe:
1 teaspoon of unfiltered organic apple cider vinegar per 1 quart (32 ounces) of water.
Our vet said this should be weak enough that she'll still drink the water without noticing something is in it, but be strong enough to keep infection at bay. She said this works with other animals, too.
Recurring lice
We asked the manager at Farm Sanctuary in California some questions about chicken lice, which keep coming back on our chickens. Below are our questions and her replies in red.
1. For chickens with lice, at the base of feather stems in the area of the lice, there often seem to be little clumps. Are these clumps lice eggs? yes
2. If they are lice eggs, is there anything that can be done to get ride of them, perhaps something to spray on them? I try to pinch them but don't want to pull out the feather. We cut the feather off at the base in order to remove the lice eggs and prevent them from hatching.
3. The chickens most susceptible to vent lice seem to be the ones whose butt feathers haven't grown back all the way so they get crusty poop back there on the new feathers. Are the lice attracted to the poop? We clean their butt feathers every week or two and dusting seems to keep the lice at bay, but they always come back. Any advice
on vent lice? The poop may give the lice a place to hide. What you may need to do is switch topical treatments since the lice do become immune to them over a period of time. We switch between Sevin dust and Permectrin dust. Also, if this is a reoccurring problem the barn may need a good cleaning. When we had a bad lice problem all of the bird areas were given a good cleaning – straw and straw bales removed and replaced, anything wood scrubbed then sprayed with whichever topical we were going to use on the birds – waiting until the area dried until the birds were moved back in. We then treated every bird weekly with the dust then used the spray. Treating with Ivomec injection once a week for three weeks will also help kill the adults, eggs, and new hatchlings. It took several weeks for the lice to totally go away, but they haven’t come back since – knock on wood! Also remember to treat everyone, not just those with the lice, since the lice will move from bird to bird.
Checklist of chicken health checks
We give each chicken a full health check every six weeks to make sure we catch anything serious before it gets too bad. (When certain bad things are found, we switch to "quick checks" every week until the problem is resolved.) Below is the checklist we use for chickens, plus other related fields in our electronic checklist. You can copy and paste it, or you can see a jpeg of our actual chicken health check form here. Afterward, we give notes with further explanation. This is our modified version from a checklist used by Farm Sanctuary.
1. Date, name, ID#, Band#
2. Weight this time, weight last time, special instructions for this check
3. Head and neck checks:
Eyes — Is there swelling or discharge?
Nostrils — Are they clogged?
Mouth — Are there sores?
Head — Are there sores?
Neck — Are there fight wounds or lice?
4. Back check — Are there back-mounting wounds?
5. Keel check — Are there any keel sores?
6. Wing check — Are there any cuts on the wings or lice?
7. Feet check:
Nails — Do they need trimming?
Feet — Do they have any swelling or sores?
Legs/ankles — Any joint swelling or heat?
Mites — Do they have scaly leg mites?
Leg band — Is the area around it red?
Limping?
8. Vent check — Is the area soiled, are there any lice, is the vent inelastic?
9. Highlights — What are the headlines for this bird from this health check?
10. What should be followed up on next time?
FURTHER EXPLANATION
The numbers below relate to the numbered items above. Only the items that seemed like they needed more explanation are included. If you have any questions that we failed to cover, feel free to email us or comment below.
1. The difference between ID# and Band# — The ID# is the number given the animal when he or she first arrives at the sanctuary. The first animal to arrive is #1, the 10th is #10, regardless of species. With some animals such as sheep and chickens, leg bands are necessary to tell them apart. Because we're such a small sanctuary, we don't use the ID# field except in our intake records. They serve no purpose for us during health checks. If we had hundreds of animals, it would be important. The band number is the number on the little plastic band around the chicken's leg.
2. Our vet recommended comparing weights regularly (we actually weigh once a week) to be alerted to problems before they become bad. At a big sanctuary with dozens of birds, weekly weighing would be impossible. But it's not a hassle for us so we do it. Comparing weights at least every six weeks is done at Farm Sanctuary. As for "special things to do this week", we just copy the "what to do next time" field from the previous health check and paste it in here.
Giving pills or liquids to a chicken
At our vet this weekend, we learned something very important about giving pills or liquids orally to a chicken. She said that the wind pipe opening is right at the base of a chicken's tongue so if you give a pill or a syringe full of liquid (water, medicine, nutrients), it's best to do it off to the side of the mouth.
She said that healthy birds are good at closing their wind pipe automatically when you try to put something in their mouths so it's not as big a worry with them. But with sick birds, they often don't have control of their wind pipes so even if you do everything right, you can end up putting stuff down the wrong pipe.
How to stop a blood feather from bleeding
Blood feathers are feathers that are growing back so they have blood pumping into the feather's stem. You can see the blood very obviously at the feather's base and going up an inch or so. When one of these breaks — usually from the chicken smacking it into something, say, when flying off a perch — it bleeds and bleeds and bleeds. When a chicken gets blood on her, the other chickens can peck at it and make things much worse so you want to stop it. Here are some tips we learned from our vet, a bird specialist.
Put a blood coagulant powder on/in the broken feather tip. Even cornstarch will work; it's a thickener, after all. Then keep pressure on it by pressing your thumb down on the tip, similar to how you'd apply pressure to a regular wound. You may need to keep the pressure on for 15 or even 20 minutes. Keep the pressure on and lift your thumb up to check and if it's still bleeding, put on a little more powder and press your thumb back down on the tip. Keep doing this till it stops, holding down for longer and longer periods of time as necessary.
But what do you do if you can't hold down pressure on the feather tip for that long, for instance if there's another emergency or more than one injured animal? Put the bleeding chicken(s) in a dark, quiet room — not one with a washing machine banging in the next room. In the dark quiet, the chicken can't see and will calm down and basically go to sleep. Her blood pressure will drop, causing the bleeding to slow and coagulate faster.
The photo below shows blood feathers. The darkness where the stem meets the skin is blood. Then at the top of the stem, you can see nascent feathers poking out. It's a cool process. In the middle of the image is a broken blood feather.
Worms
Worms get inside chickens. Even if you treat them, they get it. And if you treat them too much, the worms can get resistant. They're pretty gross, too. You'll see them in poop, looking like short pieces of angel hair pasta. Even if you don't see worms, it's a good idea to get regular fecal checks.
Liquid or pills: The choice between liquid and pills will probably depend on the size of the flock. Pills are generally best because you can control the dosage and make sure it's right for each specific bird. With liquid, you put the medicine in their water and hope the affected birds drink enough. The pills and liquid worm medicine are available at feed shops or online. The pills we get are one per four pounds. Since we weigh our birds every week, it's easy to know the exact dose. We cut the pills to be the amount we need.
Administering antibiotics to chickens
Baytril shots vs. oral: Because of circumstances beyond our control, we had to take Winona to a vet we don't particularly like. He handled her roughly and without much respect. You could tell he thought a chicken's life didn't have much value. But he did the duty he was paid for. One thing he did was give us a vial of the antibiotic Baytril and told us to give two subcutaneous (under the skin) shots a day for a week. This was a big mistake. It gave Winona bruises all over her abdomen at the injection sites and caused a big lump to form. We thought these things might be our fault because we weren't that savvy at giving shots. But we decided to get a second opinion on Winona because we disliked the vet so much, and we went to the vet we absolutely love for our dogs — and she happens to be a bird specialist. She knew just how to handle Winona in order to minimize stress, and she said that she would never prescribe Baytril shots because it's too caustic for their thin skin. She gave us liquid Baytril, which we squirted in her mouth and things went much better and she healed quickly.
Baytril is also available in pill form, which is easy to drop into a chicken's mouth. But they probably have to be cut up to be appropriate for your chicken's weight.
Bumblefoot — prevention and cure
Bumblefoot is fairly common in chickens, and it's a name sometimes given to any foot problem. We're referring to it as when chickens get swollen, pus-filled scabs on the bottoms of their feet. It's painful to walk on, and the infection can spread and require toes or even legs to be amputated.
The cause: Bumblefoot often just happens because chickens fly off their roosts and land on a hard surface, distressing their feet. It can also happen from chronic life on hard floors or wire floors.
Diagnosing: If the pad is very swollen, hot, taunt, etc. then there is probably an active infection going on and a vet can surgically open them. Some chickens will have old bumblefoot scabs that are hard but aren't causing them any problems; after these scabs fall off, the chicken may be left with larger, soft, flabby pads. This is fine. We do a whole-body check every six weeks on the chickens, which includes looking at their feet. If they have a new scab on their foot pads, then we usually just treat them ourselves. We haven't had any so infected that they've required vet care. Use your best judgment.
Prevention: We put extra straw around their roost in their coop as well as some easy-to-clean carpet remnants by the coop door, where they especially like to land and where straw quickly gets pushed aside.
Treatment: Farm Sanctuary packs their feet with an medication called Quartermaster for cattle that's only available by prescription. We didn't have access to this so we made up our own treatment, which worked great, and when we told our vet what we did, she gave it the thumb's up. We sprayed the scab with hydrogen peroxide, packed in a little triple-antibiotic ointment, put gauze over the scab area and wrapped it with vet tape (see picture at right).
The triple-antibiotic is available at any grocery store; you just squeeze some on the scab.
As for the gauze, one problem is that it causes the chicken to walk awkwardly. So our wonderful vet instructed us to cut a little hole in the gauze for the lump to sit in so that the chicken's foot sits more flatly on the ground.
Be sure to have the gauze COMPLETELY engulfed by the wrap. Gauze loves to soak up any wetness like a sponge, and if the gauze gets wet, you need to change it.
We did this treatment with fresh wrap and gauze twice a week, and Ally's sores were gone in two weeks.
Taking off the scabs and squeezing out pus: It can speed healing to open up the scab and squeeze out the pus inside. (You do this before putting on the hydrogen peroxide.) The problem here is that in a chicken pen, it's easy for outside bacteria to get inside the foot if you break it open. We used tweezers to pull off parts of the scab until there was a little opening that allowed us to squeeze out the thick, sticky pus. This worked for us, perhaps because we were diligent about disinfecting the area and changing the dressing twice a week. Our vet suggested another way of doing this that we have not tried yet. She said we could soak the chicken's feet for 10 to 20 minutes in water with a little Betadine in it until the scab peels off easily.
Wrapping just to be safe: Chickens sometimes get light scabs on their feet that could turn into bumblefoot. You can put a little gauze on them and wrap the foot to take the pressure off the scab. What we do, though, is we first keep an eye on the foot with a weekly check. If it starts to get worse, we'll wrap it. Usually they seem to heal on their own, especially if you put a little extra straw on the coop floor. Since our chickens spend all day running around on dirt and night perching on a roost, their feet don't face much hardness so bumblefoot has pretty much been eradicated here.
Missing feathers means crusty bums
If you take in chickens who have lost feathers, one consequence is that a lack of butt feathers means their poop will often stick to the area around their vent, from which eggs, poop and pee all exit.
Those with crusty butts need regular cleaning. We just use a spray bottle of water and a towel. (Heavy duty "shop" paper towels work well, too.)
If the poop has been there a while, it'll be hard. In such cases, sometimes it's better to crush it gently in your fingers so it flakes off.
Be gentle with both techniques because if it's really crusted, it's easy to accidentally pull out feathers.
We probably go overboard by weighing the chickens every week to keep an eye out for any weight changes that might signal problems. So while we're weighing them, we check the butts of the few problem girls.
Once the butt feathers finally grow out, the crust problems generally cease.
Chickens: what to feed them
Farm Sanctuary, from whom we've gotten much advice, originally had a recipe of corn, oats and sunflower seeds with a dash of grit that they fed their chickens. They found this didn't work well because the chickens just picked out what they want. So the California branch switched to a crumble (Manna pro commercial layer 16), which is basically little pellets made from mashed-up ingredients.
You want a pellet that's 16 to 20 percent protein. Feathers are made from protein. So if your birds have been abused or neglected and are missing feathers (a common occurrence on factory farms), then you especially want a high protein content to help them regrow their feathers. Scratch is mostly corn, which isn't high in protein and they fill up on it like kids eating cake and ignore the nutritious stuff, so it's good to keep the scratch to a minimum.
For variety and added nutrition, Farm Sanctuary gives chopped up produce to their chickens, as well as mashed up hard-boiled eggs with the shells, up to one a day for each chicken but usually less. We do this, too. The eggs are high in protein, which is good. But, especially with layer hens who have been breed to produce far more eggs than is natural, the shells are needed to replace the huge amount of calcium they're using to create them in the first place. If calcium isn't supplemented for these high-producing layer hens, their bones weaken and they have trouble walking.
Farm Sanctuary also adds a bit of wheat germ oil that's vitamin fortified, for extra calories and fat. We don't do this because our chickens didn't come from commercial farms; those chickens have trouble keeping on weight.
One thing to help really skinny chickens is to not only give them egg but to also give them Exact (which is formula for baby birds) plus water.
What we feed our chickens: Our chickens get a crumble pellet. They pretty much get as much as they want to eat because they aren't in much danger of getting too fat, unlike turkeys. They get the crumble pellet spread around four trays so everybody gets access first thing in the morning and then about an hour before bedtime. We mix a little scratch in with the crumble. Also in the morning, they get chopped-up lettuce (they prefer romaine hearts), chopped-uptomatoes, mashed hard-boiled eggs with the shells, and cooked pinto beans (we crockpot them to keep the cost down). When in season, they get grapes, cut in half, too. Watermelon is a treat they love in the summer; we just set out a half or quarter and they peck it down to the rind.
Chickens: keeping them cool
When the temperature rises, here are a few ways to help keep your birds happy and cool. Info to come.
Chickens: keeping them warm and other winter topics
Chickens can and do get excessively cold during the winter. You want to make sure they have shelter from the weather and wind. You want to make sure they have a place to sleep that's off the bare ground. You want to make sure they have plenty of straw for bedding on the coop floor and in their nesting boxes. And you want to make sure they have plenty of food and access to unfrozen water. Here's some more information about specific winter-related topics.
Signs of cold: If when you come in the coop in the morning, the chickens are shivering or don't seem to be thriving, it's likely too cold for them. If you add a heat source (see below) and you see evidence that they huddle under it, that's a sign it was too cold and you were right to add the heat source. Also, if you've got chickens who aren't in great shape and/or are missing substantial feathers, as happens in rescue situations, you'll likely want to provide some heat
Heat option if not miserably cold: In the High Sierra where we're located, it only gets in the single digits for a few days each winter so the cold isn't too bad. But we still needed something. We got something called a Hound Heater that's for dog houses. It's basically a lightbulb in a vented metal box. It's attached on the coop wall with a cord running outside to an outlet and a Thermocube. The cube is just a little prong adapter that switches on when it gets below 32 degrees and stays on until it reaches 45 degrees.
Heat option in really cold climates: Brooder lights are helpful. You want to use ceramic heating elements, not light bulbs in them, though. They're kind of expensive, but they work well, according to Farm Sanctuary in New York.
Vaseline on combs? I asked Susie at the New York Farm Sanctuary, which gets really cold, if she's ever heard of using Vaseline on the combs to prevent frostbite. The way I read her response is that it might work, but that providing a heat source is the best course of action. Here's her reply: "This [Vaseline] can work but not always — and frostbite does occur, especially with older birds, and if they have circulation issues. Also birds with really large combs are more prone to it. We get so many birds who have lost feet, toes, combs, etc. brought to us after a hard winter."
Insulating the coop? Insulating your chicken coop is helpful but can lead to rodent issues. Rodents like to live in insulated barn walls, and rats can and will kill a chicken. So make sure you rodent-proof the coop as well.
Frozen water: We aren't too fancy at our place. We give the chickens fresh water that we lug in jugs from our house each day and night. They need unfrozen water. One thing that's been recommended to us and that we're looking at for next year, if we can afford it, is one or two water dispensers with a heating element underneath that needs to be plugged into a socket. They are available many places, but the specific ones recommended to us were these Brower Co. units.
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