[Luce747]

what vaccinations do you all give to your chickens/ poultry if any?

we are wanting to start getting some poultry health products together after losing our turkey hen to what we 'think' may have been coccidiosis

we were considering colloidal silver, apple cider vinegar or herban and also need to treat chicks as we have started breeding but seem to be losing quite a lot of varying ages.

at the moment we use nothing in the way of medicine except we use medicated chick crumb

some of our poultry live with goats, rabbits and guinea pigs so we are concerned about treating the water as they may well drink some too

any advice very welcome

thanks!

[southwestpoultry]

Good Afternoon Luce,

If you are registered with a vet for your animals it is worth getting a litre bottle of Baycox to treat coccidiosis, we have lost a couple of birds but were too late administering the Baycox.Now whenever we see a bird whatever age looking lathargic we put the Baycox in their water and it has done wonders for birds who looked like they were really bad.
As you possibly know they can be fine one day and at deaths door the next, so far we have saved 3 adult hens using the above procedure, we were told that adults would have built up enough of their own immunity to coccidiosis but we have found that this is sometimes not the case, also there are many new strains which seem to effect adults as well as growers.

We now feed medicated food right up to when they get breeder pellets/layer pellets, so medicated chick crumb and medicated growers too, the brand we use down here in Somerset is C.C Moore which is reasonably priced.

We also have some VermX Organic worming pellets which is mixed with the food when they are down which seems to be really good, cider vinegar goes in the water monthly and the majority of the flock get flubavet every six months.

We have heard excellent reports of Herban and are considering getting a bottle as spare just in case the other things do not work, obviously the advantage with Herban is that it is 100 percent natural and organic.

We hope this is of help to you.

Kind Regards
Robert & Sarah.

South West Poultry.

[Luce747]

thank you very much

can you recommend anything we could routinely give to new chicks to improve their survival rates?

[southwestpoultry]

Your most welcome !
We have recently changed our layer pellets to a breeder pellet as a couple of fellow breeders recommend them as they are higher in protein which improves the quality of the egg,embryo and chick we have just hatched some Rhode Island Red chicks whose parents were fed purely breeder pellets and they are very strong and active.
So it looks like it works but sometimes it can all be down to genetics.

Regards
Robert & Sarah.

[Luce747]

Yes. It is amazing how many variables there are with artificially raising chicks in particular. From conception to incubation to environmental once hatched.

A real headache!!

[Bioman]

I only started breeding my own this year (only a few!)

I couldn't get hold of medicated chick crumb or pellets, yet I have had 100% survival rates.

I contacted a local poultry breeder who hatches 1500 chicks a month, and asked if he had any spare vaccinations he did, I vaccinated them against Mareks disease. Talking to the guy, Marek's vaccination can improve survival rates by 20%.

The moral of the story is contact your local big breeders of chickens and ask it doesn't hurt! I got £20 of vaccinations for free as it was just going to be binned otherwise!

Hope this helps