Keeping Your Chickens Healthy Part II

Cuts and Peck Injury

Chicken flocks have a pecking order and let's face it there can be bullies within the flock. At some point your chickens will suffer from cuts and pecks done by other flock members.

Cuts and peck marks can appear on chickens for several reasons. Stress, not enough space, establishing a pecking order etc.!

Usually these wounds will heal on their own if the attacks can be stopped. Isolating the culprit is the best option. It might also be necessary to temporarily isolate the injured bird. This is because the other chickens might also begin to peck at the injury and prevent it from healing.

Foot Injuries

Foot injuries in chickens are usually not serious. View them as something akin to a sprained ankle in people. The best way to deal with these injuries is through prevention. Be sure you are not forcing your chickens to fly or hop down from height such as a roosting branch that is too high.

If an open wound appears on chickens foot it is important to keep their walking environment clean to help prevent an infection. So if this occurs you might want to be extra vigilant with cleaning the chicken coop of poop.

Foot injuries can be treated a dab of alcohol and even adding a bandage. Isolation from other chickens is an option in severe cases.

Pasty vent

Pasty vent is a problem usually found with stressed chicks. Pasty vent is when the chicks dropping accumulate on the chicks butt. This can result in death but is easy to remedy by simply wet and clean the chicks butt and all is well.

Egg Issues

If otherwise healthy chickens are having issue with laying eggs such as soft eggs or your flock just isn't producing like it should and age isn't the issue then the problem is likely due to a vitamin deficiency. This can be corrected by try to correct this issue by adding more protein and calcium to the entire flocks diet. Again, prevention is better than cure. If something like egg binding occurs without a modern vet handy the chicken is most likely going to die. Egg binding is when the egg gets stuck between a hen's cloaca and uterus.

Proceed to Chicken Doctor Part I