The Accidental Smallholder Forum
Livestock => Poultry & Waterfowl => Topic started by: BML on May 25, 2013, 08:31:01 am
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I did have three chickens that were about three years old but over the last year two died. The remaining one has stopped laying over a month ago and it has a very red rear end.
How long should it remain not laying before one could say that's the end of its laying life?
What could cause its red rear end and how should I deal with it?
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A red rear end could indicate a prolapse on the way - although I have only experienced that in young birds that have started laying too young. But one of our oldies has had a red rear end for months now - could it just be 'getting old'?
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one of ours came with a large red rear. The BHWT woman said 'she's fine, she just has a huge ass', so I assumed it was nothing to worry about.
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I would like to get another three chickens but worry that they may gang up on the existing bird and would welcome your advise.
It may be that the bird did start to lay to young which like any good research question proposes yet more questions such as:
Why do chickens start to lay to young?
Is it possible to stop chickens laying to young?
Can anything be done about a prolapse?
When the second of the three chickens died the remaining one seemed to go into mourning and stopped laying and I thought that it missed the company. Does that make sense?
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It may be that the bird did start to lay to young which like any good research question proposes yet more questions such as:
Why do chickens start to lay to young?
Is it possible to stop chickens laying to young?
Can anything be done about a prolapse?
We have ex-batts and they are forced into laying (I don't know how) plus they tend to be underweight compared to a healthy hen so can't cope with egg laying physically so well. Sometimes this leads to a prolapse - when we got our most recent lot from Little Hen Rescue, when we collected they noticed one with a red bottom and changed her, saying that she would probably get a prolapse. One of the others that we took subsequently did get a prolapse - we separated her from the others as the other hens will peck the red area and possibly kill her :'( , :'(we then treated her with preparation H and pushed it back in each day :-\ and bandaged her up at night to hold it in. We also took her off layer pellets to stop her laying. Within about a week the prolapse was fixed - we gradually added layers pellets back to her food and finally returned her to the others after about 3 weeks isolation. She is fine now and has grown a complete new set of feathers. :)
On another note - the old girl I wrote about this morning - we found her dead in the chicken house when we went to the field this evening. :'( Feel like I almost talked it up.
Donna
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When you say she's got a red rear end, do you mean the cloaca, or her rump? If the cloaca's red I would assume it's from blood pressure in the area, which could signal an oncoming prolapse. I've never dealt with a prolapse, I think if you're covering the rather wide range of nutritional bases you won't have that, I've heard it's related to or caused by a lack of healthy oils. A lot of pelletized feeds don't have any natural oils in unadulterated form. Sudden onset of laying large eggs would obviously threaten any hen, probably. Did your younger girls start laying with wind-eggs? I think that's a natural mechanism for working them up to laying full size eggs.
They're forced into laying by a variety of means including increasing/lessening hours of light/dark, the feed types, and of course they're bred to lay early and lay even if they're not actually up to it, so they exhaust themselves and don't live as long and comfortably as most other chooks. They tend to be feed-inefficient, production layers and broilers do, for example one production bird can need three chicken's feeds per day, while not actually producing that quantity in egg or meat. The breed's inefficient digestive system accounts for a lot of wastage. To counter that they bred their bodies extra small and the egg size extra big so the feed is more likely to go to the eggs rather than the bird's flesh. I think such heavy production birds will be phased out in future, they're a false economy, like cows whose udders drag on the floor.
When the second of the three chickens died the remaining one seemed to go into mourning and stopped laying and I thought that it missed the company. Does that make sense?
Yes, they do stop laying sometimes if something distressing occurs. Chickens aren't meant to be solo.