Too Many Chickens!

Strange things are afoot in the coop. Some not so strange things as well. For example, it would seem that most of the chickens are molting. That makes sense, as the days have been getting much shorter, and that’s when nature decides that chickens will dump a bunch of feathers and then grow new ones. It looks like there have been pillow fights going on every night, but I’ve been through this before, so I know it’s actually molting. The tricky thing about molting when your chickens have been dealing with mites is trying to figure out what’s feather loss from molting, and what might be mites making a comeback. Last year I was never quite sure. The mites had really dug in. This year they may have been even worse, but I tried my new treatment of spraying them with a spinosad-based gardening liquid, and something has happened that makes me think it actually worked. Henny Penny is sprouting butt feathers.

Luckily her “down below” bits are covered, as this is a family show.

You might think this is no big deal. Chickens lose butt feathers, chickens regrow butt feathers. Circle of butt life. However, I should remind you, or tell you for the first time depending on how long you’ve been around, that Henny Penny has had a bald butt for over a year. It was pretty bad. She was the first to lose butt feathers last spring when the mites first arrived. The other chickens lost butt feathers too, but none quite as badly as Henny Penny. Then, when it seemed the mites had been vanquished, the other chickens grew their feathers back. Not so Henny Penny. I began to worry that there was actually something else wrong with her. There did seem to be some other ailments out there that led to bald butts, but she never fit the full profile. She went through last winter with a bare butt, and luckily didn’t get frostbite, but it was a pretty mild winter. I was always keeping an eye on her, but she seemed fine otherwise, and at some point or another I think I resigned myself to never solving this particular chicken mystery.

I write Sherlock Holmes chicken butt fan fiction sometimes.

Until a recent evening butt check. I sprayed them all with spinosad every week for a month this summer. I figured that ought to cover any mite life cycle. Then I had to just sit and wait. Feathers take a long time to grow back, so it’s always tough to know if a treatment is working. I’ve been so busy lately that I would check to make sure nothing was getting worse, but I didn’t have the time to work up another plan of attack, so my being preoccupied actually created enough time to for nature to run its course. I do believe the mites are gone, and I am basing this on the fact that Henny Penny has little feather nubs popping out of her formerly long-term area of baldness. At first I thought the dark spots were the mites themselves, as it’s been so long since there were feathers there that it seemed hard to imagine them ever coming back. But they’re there for sure. Each day they come in a little more. I wonder if it’s weird for her. Like when you wear shorts all summer and then you have to wear pants one day and it feels unnatural. Except this is all in the butt area.

Skinny pants are even harder to get used to.

Now the problem is that I’m so excited that her feathers are coming back, I’m totally worried that something is going to happen to destroy them again. I initially thought other chickens had been pecking them out. What if they decide to do that now? What if the mites mount a last ditch effort to reclaim their old territory? I gave everyone a bug spray top-up last weekend, and may go for a repeat dosing, just to be safe. I’d hate for things to look up, only to, er, bottom out again. But I’m now convinced that she just had a super bad case of mites that resisted all my previous treatments. For now, spinosad will be my go-to treatment, assuming we’ll have to deal with this again next year. I’m ready. The chickens are also ready, since they hate being sprayed so much, that if I keep the coop door open for too long, they suspect I’m up to something, and nervously make their way as far away from me as they can get. I tend to have this effect on people too.

(CREDITS: Theme music: Chicken In The Barnyard by Fireproof Babies, Music Bed: Rag Pickins by Fred Van Eps)

I’m still reading Kant for class, hence (he says hence a lot) no podcast this week. It feels like this book may never end, but I think it will. Someday. Maybe after I’m dead. But anyway, there is no shortage of ideas for podcasts, just mass shortages of time. Next week is a new week. I hope.

I’m not going to pretend that keeping chickens is the cheapest activity out there, but generally it could be worse. Once you get the coop sorted out, the rest is mainly small items like food and bedding. Those expenses, for me anyway, come once a month or so, and usually add up to about $20 for a bale of pine shavings and a bag of layer feed. I don’t have to pay for grooming or walking, like we might with a dog, and it’s certainly cheaper than say, owning a boat. Sure, I can’t cruise around a lake on a chicken, but I’m also not bleeding money. I can live without a boat.

Tends to work better with ducks, if you can get your hands on one.

Of course, there is always the issue of vet costs. For the most part, the chickens seem in good health, save for the mites and occasionally vent gleet, both of which I can treat on my own. Up until now, the only times I had to take a chicken to the vet was when Suzy Creamcheese Senior had a prolapsed vent, and when Boss Chicken’s legs gave out on her. I know my limits, and seek out the pros when needed. But a lot of ailments can be DIY projects. Sometimes messy and gross DIY projects, but that’s the price of savings.

Cost of rubber gloves not included in cost of savings.

Which brings us to the Great Bumblefoot Scare of 2016. During one of my evening chicken inspections, I noticed that one of the Mandrell sisters had a weird growth between her toes about the size of a peanut. Not sure what else to do at that moment, I reached out and poked it. It was pretty hard, also like a peanut. It didn’t seem to hurt her, but no one really likes being poked, so I stepped away from the chicken and took to the internet. I was worried that it was either a tumor, or something horrible to do with mites, but my search for “weird growth on chicken foot” brought up loads of pages about bumblefoot. Bumblefoot is when a chicken gets a cut on her foot, and the cut gets infected. They’re always scratching around in the dirt, so the likelihood of hitting something sharp is pretty high. So then I began to read about how to cure bumblefoot. For some reason, I had it in my head that rubbing some Bag Balm on the problem foot would do the trick, but I seem to be wrong about that. Everything I found pointed to the need to puncture and drain the abscess, or, if you were lucky, you might be able to squeeze out the gunk inside the growth, since there’s usually a cut at the bottom. I’m not very squeamish, but I didn’t like the sound of this. Then I read one of the step-by-step DIY bumblefoot surgery pages. I’ve had to ask my wife to hold a chicken while I stick my finger up its butt on a number of occasions. I was always pretty sure that that was the limit of her willingness to help with gross things. To ask her to hold a chicken while I cut open its foot and squeezed out nastiness was going to be too much. Actually, it was going to be too much for both of us. A scared, bloody chicken is not what you want to be around. The surgery also took a lot of time, and one page encouraged taking breaks to rest every so often. All I knew was that if we took a break, we would never be able to pick up that chicken again. I saw doom around every corner, until I read a line about how one person always does it herself because she doesn’t have a chicken vet nearby. Then it hit me. I had a chicken vet nearby! I was ready to hand this one off.

Not the chicken vet. Do not hand off your chickens to this guy. Abort mission! Abort mission!

The next morning I called and made an appointment. “What’s the chicken’s name?” they asked.

“Uh, well, she’s one of The Mandrell Sisters,” I said.

“We need a first name,” they said.

“Ok, um, let’s go with Lurlene,” I said. The appointment was now set, and I finally solved the mystery of which Sister was Lurlene. Until I actually arrived at the vet for the appointment, and found they had written down Murlene. So there’s still no Lurlene, I guess.

And you thought cats hated to ride in the crate.

At the vet, we noticed that Murlene had peanut growths on both feet. The vet did a close inspection, and thought there might be a puncture hole, thereby officially making this bumblefoot, though having it on both feet was a little unusual. She took Murlene out back, and five minutes later, they both returned. “Well, it wasn’t bumblefoot,” she said. It turns out that Murlene has loose foot skin, and each peanut was just packed full of dirt and crud. The vet soaked her feet in some water, and then just pulled the crud out with some tweezers. I was sent home with Murlene and a bottle of betadine to soak her feet in daily. I was also, if able, to soak her feet in epsom salt water daily to try to tighten up the crud area. Amazingly, she put up with this. Once I got her situated in the bowl of liquid, she just stayed put and cooed. I guess a good foot soak does wonders.

Like a day at the spa.

On the plus side, I didn’t do any unnecessary surgery. On the down side, a $3 chicken cost me $100 at the vet. That’s a bad return on investment, but I think I came out ahead by not unintentionally maiming Murlene by pursuing the wrong treatment. I’ll take the bright side on this one.

(CREDITS: Theme music: Chicken In The Barnyard by Fireproof Babies, Music Bed: Peak Beak by Doctor Turtle)

Peak Beak by Doctor Turtle is licensed under a Attribution-NonCommercial License. No changes made, other than looping it.

Well, a sick kid and work ramping up has conspired against tales of chickenry. However, this photo should prove there is plenty to talk about. Perhaps next week. Enjoy the crushing heat wave.

Everyone likes going for drives in the summer, right?

Well, I was working on an animation for two weeks straight, and while I’m done, I didn’t finish in time to do a podcast for this week. But I’m now in the clear! Until my next class starts.

In the meantime, behold the egg shaped like a creamer potato. This was in the nesting bucket last night. Not sure who’s responsible, or what they’re up to, but it sure was a surprise.

You say eggtato, I say eggtato . . .

In the last week I had to direct two scenes, one of which I videotaped, and am currently editing, and write a paper. This was all for one class. My other class’ work was all due today, and I just handed it in. Oh, and I work full time. Suffice to say, I was too busy to talk chicken. However, to give you an example of the amount of work involved in my video, here’s a small sample of what I’ve been doing. I have to draw each frame individually, and it takes about an hour to cover not quite a minute of footage. It may be another long weekend, but look at the results!

My two summer classes are in full swing, and as a result, there is no podcast this week. I have stories to tell, but no time to tell them. I intend to remedy this over the long weekend, and by the power of Boss Chicken, I should have excitement for you next week. In the meantime, enjoy the fireworks (if you are somewhere that has them).

Burning the midnight chicken oil.

If you come here regularly, you know that I was out of town for a week recently. This is the longest I have gone away since I got chickens (and, come to think of it, the longest I have gone away for much longer than that). I’ve gotten used to being o.k. with leaving the chickens in the hands of someone else for a weekend, or even a long weekend. It took some work getting there, but I did it. I can be a bit of a control freak, and since the chickens are my pets, I worry. For a long weekend, I know I can fill up the feeder, and they’re good until I get back. Basically, all someone needs to do is fill their waterer and cover their poops. They can go without their morning yogurt for two days (I usually leave them some on the Friday morning we leave), and so while I realize they’re not getting doted on the way they’re used to, it’s a short blip in the history of the universe and they’ll get through it.

Things that make you go blip.

Going away for a week, now that’s something else. Food will need to be replenished. Yogurt will need to be offered, lest vent gleet sneak one past the goalie. For that same reason, I feel it’s necessary to request apple cider vinegar in their water. Missing two days of that is acceptable, if barely. A week seems like asking for trouble. I’ve constructed the coop in such a way that the food and water fits under it nicely. The food hangs from a hook, the waterer sits on some bricks, so it’s level. However, the feeder is heavy when full, and you have to use a long pole with a hook on the end to get it hanging again after you fill it. I have a hard time with this, and I’ve been doing it for years. The water is somewhat easier, but I realize that I have long monkey arms, which make it easier for me to reach under there and get the water on the bricks. Other people who have cared for the chickens in the past have been unable or unwilling (or just forgot) to do this. The rest of the ground isn’t very flat, and the chickens are ding dongs, and they’ll knock it over if it’s anywhere else. So then I worry that they won’t get enough water in the summer heat. It’s probably not rational, but this is how my mind works.

Well, it’s not spilled milk, so it’s o.k. to cry, I guess.

I wrote up a list of the things I do for the chickens for my wife, so she would know exactly what to do while I was gone. It didn’t seem like too much, but it did start to worry me about asking a lot, since she would also have to take care of the cats and be a solo parent during this time as well. So then I completely shuffled the order in which things can be done to make it easier. Morning now only required a water check, and food for Boss Chicken (who is 1000x easier to feed than the flock, since she’s in a rabbit hutch). After work was now when most of what I do at 5am can get done. Chips on the poops, some scratch, yogurt, collect the eggs. Get it all done as soon as you get home, then all that’s left is to refill the waterer after the birds have gone to sleep. Refill the waterer after dark, and add some apple cider vinegar to it. And then put it on the bricks, or then you have to recheck it in the morning to make sure all the water didn’t leak out overnight because it wasn’t level. This wasn’t going as I had planned. The waterer is always a problem, and then I just bailed on the feeder altogether. “The feeder will get them to Monday, at least,” I said. “After that, just fill the container I use to refill the feeder, and dump it on the ground in the run.” It seemed undignified, but they are chickens. They enjoy eating things off the ground. This would be fun for them too. Who doesn’t like fun? I knew the chickens would be fine, and I had to accept that there were other ways of doing things, but these were my ways, and the chickens have survived throughout my doing them, so that’s reason enough to keep it up. My superstitious nature was really taking a drubbing. That’s fine. I think it needs to be drubbed. We’ll all come out of this stronger, right? It’s only a week, right? Right?

Just the man for the job.

(CREDITS: Theme music: Chicken In The Barnyard by Fireproof Babies, Music Bed: Textraño by Colectivo Etéreo, universe image by the Hubble Space Telescope)

In spite of everything I do to treat the mites, the damage they’re doing to the chickens’ feathers seems to be getting worse. Steve and John are losing feathers on their backs at a rapid pace. I’ve been powdering them weekly with the “poultry powder,” but I don’t seem to be getting results. I decided it was time to reset the clock, as it were, by completely cleaning the coop and taking it from there. If I could wipe out anything that was living off the chickens, then maybe I could begin to get the things living on the chickens.

Maybe I overdo the powder a little.

I’ve been a practitioner of the “deep litter” technique from the start of this chicken experiment. Basically, you cover all poop with wood chips, and once a week scoop out the worst of it under the roost, but leave the rest. This creates a sort of compost pile right there in the coop, and that helps keep it a little warmer in the winter. It seemed like a good idea when I read about it, but given my annual mite problems, I’ve begun to wonder if it wasn’t somehow contributing to these problems, by creating a large habitat for invisible bugs. Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t, but it was time for the annual clean out anyway, so I went at it. Usually I dump all the chips, spray the inside of the coop and any of the “furniture” with white vinegar to disinfect it, and then add fresh chips, leaving behind the faint scent of salad. This year, I had to take it a little further. Since I had read about using dishwashing detergent to kill mites, I went in with a bucket of soapy water and a rag first, and wiped everything down, making sure to get it into any cracks. Then I dried that off, and sprayed the vinegar. Then I wiped off the excess vinegar, and sprayed everything again with Poultry Protector. At this point, I figured I had covered all my bases.

It gets deep.

The biggest surprise was how much diatomaceous earth was in the bedding. There seemed to be a good layer of it under all the chips, so I was amazed that any insect could live in there at all. So either what’s bothering the chickens is getting on them out in the run, or it’s something completely impervious to DE. Hard to say, but the DE may not be cutting it, at least at the level we’re working on here.

It’s entirely possible they protect themselves in tiny space probes.

I sprayed the Poultry Protector all over the run and outside of the coop as well. The bottle says to get the whole area, so that’s what I did. Of course, it’s not a very big bottle, so I had used most of it by the time I had finished spraying the run, but felt like I had enough to get the birds as well. Supposedly this stuff doesn’t actually kill the mites, but instead keeps them from reproducing. So they may live for a while, but it sounds like they’ll eventually die out. I’m pretty sure not reproducing is why there aren’t any more Shakers, so this should do it, even if it takes a little longer.

If the mites just held a dance like this, they’d be easier to spot. (Those are Shakers, btw. This image is relevant!)

The same night I did the big cleanout, I went into the coop, and instead of dusting the chickens (which I had done the night before), I sprayed each of them in their bald areas with the Poultry Protector. It turns out chickens do not like being sprayed with stuff. They did their usual act of running into the corner of the coop and trying to get behind each other, but this time they seemed much angrier than usual. Luckily I could spray them from farther away, and it went much faster than powdering, so I was done before they revolted. I still have a little spray left, and I’ll use it next time I change out the chips, and this time I’ll be changing them all out, not just the ones under the roost. I think it may be time to try a different approach to coop maintenance and see what works. If I still find that I’m having feather loss, it may be time to try the “flea drop” method, which, unsurprisingly, is controversial on the internet. Basically, you dab some popular flea and tick liquid on the chickens and this does the trick, even though it’s not approved for chickens, and you have to chuck your eggs for a while. This feels like a nuclear option, so I’ll keep dusting a little longer, and see where it gets me, beyond covered in poison dust, of course.

(CREDITS: Theme music: Chicken In The Barnyard by Fireproof Babies, Music Bed: Lu Lu by National Promenade Band)

Well, it seems to be that time of year again. I was poking around through the archives, and it seems that last May I was wondering if my chickens had vent gleet or mites, and then I looked at my posts this May and here I am wondering the exact same thing. Given last year’s experience, I’m just going to assume we’ve got mites. And I don’t really need to assume, because I know the importance of chicken butt inspections, and I’m seeing feather loss in that area, and that’s the evil calling card of the mite. They seem to be the obnoxious summer renter of the chicken butt resort town.

Always with the Hawaiian shirts.

The question then becomes what to do? Since this is becoming an annual thing, am I doing something wrong? Or is this just the cost of doing chicken business? Even if it is, how do I get rid of them? What seemed to work last year, despite my reservations, was the “poultry powder” stuff that’s got poison in it. I have been out there with that stuff two weekends in a row, and am currently in the “see what happens” period. As I learned last year, it takes so long for feathers to grow back, it’s hard to know what’s working. So I went in with the biggest gun I had, and am waiting for the smoke to clear. Somewhat literally – this stuff is nasty, and it takes some doing to apply it without poisoning yourself in a giant cloud of it. I go out in a hoodie with the hood up, one of those face masks you use if paint fumes bother you, and rubber gloves. I climb into the coop and powder every bird, which can be tricky since after one or two get done, the others get the memo and try to hide behind each other in the corner. Then, as I am covered in poison, I immediately go into the bathroom, throw all my clothes into the washing machine, and take a shower. It does worry me that I protect my own breathing holes, but can’t do anything for the chickens’. They don’t make little beaky respirators, so this is how it has to go. There’s ventilation in the coop, and I don’t throw it in their faces, but I feel pretty bad about the whole situation. Not as bad as I would if I let them be eaten alive by mites, though, so this is what it comes to.

When your nostrils are up top, things get tricky.

I’ve been doing more research to try to find a better way. Some people swear by hosing the coop and the birds down with dishwashing detergent, while others say this strips the protective oils off their feathers. Some people say tea tree oil is all natural and will kill all the bugs, others say it will also kill the birds. Some people say Product X will do it, and then provide an affiliate link to that product, which costs $150 for a tiny amount. This all is reminding me of how it is I came to use diatomaceous earth (which some people also malign) and the poultry powder. After spending far too much time reading internet arguments, these seemed to be the least contentious cures. And for now, they’re the ones I already have.

It goes a little like this sometimes.

I did come across a couple new methods that sound promising, and less messy and/or problematic. I don’t like to drop name brands (unless these brands want to pay me to do so, please see the “contact” link on this page if this is the case), but these seem to be pretty specific things. One is called “Poultry Protector.” It’s a spray, and I’m pretty sure I’ve seen it at our local feed store. You spray the coop and the butts, and that’s allegedly that. It’s cheap enough that it’s worth a shot. The other is something called “Red Stop Solution.” You put it in their water, and it somehow makes the chickens’ blood unattractive to mites, but will not mess up (by which I mean poison) their eggs. It’s a little pricey, but just putting it in the waterer seems less traumatic for everyone involved. It might be worth the cost to save whatever dignity I have left, assuming there is any. I’m not convinced about the mechanism of action, so it’s on my “maybe” list. I’ll continue to monitor the butt situation and bring in new tools as required. I beat the mites once before, I hope to do it again.

Winston Churchill fought his own battles against mites.

(CREDITS: Theme music: Chicken In The Barnyard by Fireproof Babies, Music Bed: Twenty-fourth of May, mazurka, by the Band of the House, Fred Figner, Rio de Janeiro)