oh dear, well we went off to see the local chicken expert to get all the hens checked out - we came home with none. As novices, we did everything wrong - we got the chickens off a local bloke who issued a heartfelt plea on gumtree. 18 months old, he said! As it turned out, the youngest was over 2 and the oldest was over 4! also, one had a prolapse, 2 had mange....and. although we are not passing the buck here, it looks as though we got them in that state. Sadly, it seems that chickenkeeping is something of a fashion but there is a bit of a dearth of info - for example, 3 books we read had NOTHING to say regarding humane culling. The words were ' when you replace your chickens' etc. Moreoever, even our expert missed the mange on his first inspection, only going back when he noticed her splayed legs.
The vet, ours at least, was less than useless, telling us frankly that he did not 'do'chickens and we would not have been able to afford it even if he did - his costs are atronomical. Anyway, we are not totally discouraged. We will be cleaning and disinfecting the run and coup a couple of times and after a month or so, we will get some more from a proper chicken dealer - well, from Tom, of Jessie's hens, to be precise. Not only was he helpful and knowledgeable, he took the time to show me where to put my hands, what to look for, how to clip the wings, check the crop and so on. If we had not found him, we would have soldiered on and this summer, the chickens could have got flystrike and been in pain and probably died a sad and horrible death.. So yep, I am thinking that when we venture into livestock ventures, we have to ensure that we have help on hand, face to face if possible as nipping off to the vet is not always an option. Oh yeah, never get chickens off the internet!
