One of the things I appreciate about online communities is the aspect of sharing and helping other chicken keepers avoid some of the pitfalls and employing best practices to ensure the best care for our flocks.
Sometimes the advice seems complicated or maybe doesn’t seem relevant at a particular time, so I thought I’d post a few quick and easy tips that you can easily remember or refer back to here.
R.E.S.T. (Bitchin’ Chickens)
I’ve written a couple of posts about acronyms that are tools to help you deal with various chicken keeping issues: FLAWS (flock management) and PERRLA (assessing eye issues).
Here’s a simple one that can be used in a number of applications: treating for heat stress, shock, injury, dehydration or when isolating a bird in the infirmary for assessment or treatment.
R.E.S.T
Remove from the flock to a quiet darkened location
Scrambled Eggs are the go-to for getting birds to eat when sick or injured
Temperature-controlled location (not too hot or cold)
Always Wear Gloves (Chelsea Sadler)
I poked my knuckle with some brand new hardware cloth on my brooder. I cleaned it really well afterwards and everything was fine until four days later. I woke up in extreme pain and couldn’t bend my knuckle. It didn’t look too bad, but it kept swelling so I went to urgent care. Three hours later, it had doubled in size and I spiked a fever. I ended up in the hospital for four days with sepsis and cellulitis. If I hadn’t gone to the hospital when I did I might have lost all function in my hand.
It’s been over a week and it’s gone back to normal size, but I still have extreme pain in my hand, arm, and shoulder. I never even imagined that would happen on just a little piece of hardware cloth, so I’ll be wearing gloves from now on and I’ll be fully clothed because that was scary. I feel like this was a freak incident, but I know if I had seen a post like this I would have taken a little extra precaution. I get poked and scratched all the time and think nothing of it, but this time it was something!
How To Stop A Bleeding Wound (Jessica Westmoreland)
We gave our rooster to a very nice family as we couldn’t keep him in our neighbourhood. I knew that this would shuffle the pecking order, but I had no idea that one of my girls would be injured. She had her comb badly pecked, losing a piece of it. It was bleeding profusely. I had Kwik Stop (styptic powder) and all the supplies to care for it, but couldn’t get the bleeding to stop.
I finally found an all creature emergency vet about an hour away and my husband and I rushed her there while I was crying and dumping corn starch/Kwik Stop on the wound to stanch the blood flow. The vet dealt with it by applying pressure to the wound for five minutes until it started to clot.
It was the worst few hours of my chicken keeping life, as we love our Princess Lay-a so much. My advice is to use Kwik Stop in conjunction with sustained pressure on the site.
Magnetic Sweeper (Bitchin’ Chickens)
Recently I was working with my friend Tracy to install my automatic coop door and she dropped a screw on the ground. Before any of my birds had the chance to peck at and ingest it, I used my magnetic sweeper to retrieve it. I was surprised when I picked up more than the original screw and decided to cover a slightly larger area. In just a short while the tally was 21 screws, nails and metal bits and a few old twist ties – all invisible to the naked eye.
Except for the twist ties, it wasn’t stuff that I have dropped or contributed to the soil but is old hardware from the previous owners. This tool is invaluable to remove metal pieces out of your burn pile if you use the ashes for your flocks’ dust bath; to pick up fallen screws and nails around your worksite or just clear any area where you chickens have access and might come across potentially dangerous metal objects that could lead to toxic poisoning.
You Get What You Pay For (Terry Sheets)
The photo on the left is a cheap watering thing. The one on the right is a quality waterer.
Let me start by saying we’re rookies. We picked up eight hens and I almost killed them all. I had filled the ‘flock party’ waterer the night before and went to work at 5am. When I got home around 7pm I checked on the ladies. That junk waterer was empty (no cracks). It was hot as hell out! I filled buckets and the chickens drank like sailors. After testing the junk, it just leaked. I picked up two quality waterers. Now I swap out a fresh one for the other one each night.
Mission accomplished! Point of the story: don’t buy cheap shit.
Thanks to everyone who shared their stories and photos. Featured image credit: istockphoto
If you’ve got a tip you’d like to share drop me a line via the ‘contact’ button on my home page.
Bitchin' Chickens 
Guess I’ll get a magnetic sweeper!
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They are super useful for lots of reasons
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