Broody or ill :-( ? Please help

[saltyseadog]

My favourite girl is behaving oddly at the moment. For the past three days I have had to turf her off the nest repeatedly - she is now sitting in the cube on the roost bars looking rather sullen. She is eating and drinking, but spends most of the time in the house, and showed no interest in free ranging last night (v.odd as she is my boldest girl).

She was wormed with Flubenvet last week, and was also dusted with mite powder (haven't seen any mites), so I don't think parasites are the cause. Her comb still seems pinky, and her eyes look bright.

I'm hoping that it's the warm weather that has sent her broody. She did lay yesterday.

Any ideas? I want to take her to the vets if she's ill.

I'm glad normal laying service has resumed for you. Dore is still not laying (lazy girl), neither is Gwen - who went semi-broody last week. Only good old Nessa is coming up with the goods at the moment - tsk.

I need to take them to the vets this week, which will be fun (!). Two of them have scaly leg mites, so I need to get some Ivermectin. This will have to be a subterfuge visit that goes under dh's radar as £30 vets bill for our non-layers will get him grumbling .

Normal laying service . Snurk. With hens you can discuss all sorts of things that would be in real life.

You could always get more chickens - then more would be laying.

I need to get frontline for the cats and apply it. Swap?

Arf arf.

Ahh I have not told you about my chicken maths . I have three ex batts arriving next weekend (to live separately from my bully girls). Hopefully they will make egg numbers up, but knowing my luck they will be useless on the egg production front.

Hmmmmm...no thanks to the frontlining cat swap. My past experiences of frontlining cats are not good ones and involve copious amounts of towels, blankets and cat treats...and patience. Thank god my dogs are completely obliging whenever I get the FL out.

Oh and Dore has laid today. Hurrah!

Oh hurrah. Clever Dore - special egg with soldiers for dh perhaps?

Looking forwards to hearing about exbatts experience, do you have stuff to feed them up on?

Mine, as you saw above, are posh girls. We'll home ex batts when my ds2 is less fragile about stuff!

I will be so upset if they die within a few weeks of being with us...fingers crossed they're reasonably robust. I will report back and will try and get some pics of them to post. Will be like the 'haves' and 'have nots' - the brahmas and orpies in their ridonculously expensive cube and the ex batts in their secondhand ark - poor loves.

Poor girls today have had to contend with low flying fighter jets, howling winds and lashing rain. They are not happy chooks.

That's always a concern, but they will have had a lovely end of life time.

Did you see the private lives of chickens on tv last night?

No I missed that - what channel was it on? I might be able to see it via the t'interpipe.

I'm having a bad chicken week. I took Pamela to the vets to seek confirmation as to whether or not she has scaly leg mite or not. She does, and has been given ivermectin, however the vet is not convinced that this will clear it up as it's a low dose. The higher dose says don't ever eat eggs from this chicken again! I have everything crossed that it works OK. On top of all this Gwen is starting to moult. I am slightly suspicious that I have been sold some dud 'POL' ladies by the poultry club breeder. Whilst brahmas are slow to mature (reach POL at 6m +) it's rather odd that one is starting to moult now? Plus scaly leg mites are supposed to affect older birds.....

Mamma Mia! Anyway, they are happy pootling around the garden at present. Dore and Nessa look set to make a bid for house entry - they have worked out that that is where the hoowoman comes from with her treats .

I think it'll be on iplayer.

Try vaseline on the scaly legs to soften the old scales. You can then give them a brush with an old toothbrush if it doesn't make you boak too much. I think there's some info on omlet about dipping the legs in meths or something similar - don't count that as gospel as I don't want you to have spontaneously combusting chickens to add to your woes.

Mine have taken to roosting on the mezzanine, creating huge piles of night poo which are attracting the flies. Off down the garden with a shovel - this will not impress our hen sitter who is covering whilst we're in the sea.

I've vaselined Pamela's legs, I will try and gently grab Gwen tonight and do her legs. It's such a pain - Dore and Nessa are doing me proud on the egg production front and I'm having to chick everything! Meh.

I got my e-mail about the ex-batts last night. We pick them up late Saturday afternoon, I'm so excited!

Have you got any pics of your mezzanine? I'm really intrigued. I'd love to add one into my Cube if it gives them a little more space/ interest. Yukkola at the flies though. I keep meaning to buy some citronella spray to douse the Cube in.

I'll have a look and add to profile. It's basically two bits of wood across the cube with a set of roosting bars going across them.

Good luck with the beauty treatments.

ok done, hope that the spotlight with torch enables you to get the gist of the 'works'!

Sorry to interupt. It's surgical spirit for scaly leg - it kills the mites.Give her legs a scrub with a tooth/nailbrush, then vaseline.

fabbo porridge, that was hovering in my shattered brain somewhere. tyvm! Do look at my posh mezzanine on my photies! My mate has about 50 hens and loves the vaseline method as a preparatory thing as it softens the scales - apparently.

This convo is fastly becoming the equivalent of washing edna pepperpot's scoury bum with an old nappy on a Sunday morning.

In my youth I imagined Sunday mornings spent with hot coffee, hot croissants and hot man. Mind you, life is good with hens!

at hot coffee, hot croissants and hot man..

I like your mezzanine very much (and I want to come to your house for a sing song on the piano - what fun!). This weekend I will be vair busy with chicken house engineering, as I dh needs to set-up the electric fencing for the ex-batts.

Pamela will be getting the full works - vaseline, surgical spirit and scaly mite spray. Die mites die! (thanks porridge for the surgical spirit suggestion).