3.6m Omlet Chicken Run for sale, Brand New in Boxes, Milton Keynes (MK19)

[groovydad]

Hi,

 

Today I took in some Minature Silkie 's, 20weeks old from a local breeder who breeds them in his back garden. They all seem happy and healthy and the new birds have settled well into my garden. I just have a few q's.

 

1. I asked the guy if they had been vaccinated for anything and he told me wormed yes but nothing else. Is there any vaccination/preventative I should be looking out for or doing at some point? What do other people do about vaccinating their chickens? I heard that silkies are prone to mareks disease and that most breeders would vaccinate at day old so obviously it's too late to do this now.

 

2....[edit]solved

 

3. Touch wood...so far no Red Mite but for future reference. I do use D'Earth once a week on my gingernuts/general spray around/dustbaths/feed but how often to do you all disinfect the run and use mite spray on the crevices etc? Weekly as per the instructions would get a little expensive.

 

4. Can I give the Silkies garlic powder and cider vinegar at 20 weeks? And how often should I be giving them? Periodically or every day?

 

Apologies for all the questiions, but I figured you'd all have been there and would have asked these same q's at some point. I've researched on the internet but there are as many conflicting answers as there are websites and books.

 

Oh decisions decisions.

 

Thanks,

 

Adam

Edited October 19, 2010 by Guest

[Chortle Chook]

I have four little Silkies. Two came from a very good source (Notcutts) and were vaccinated and two came from different places that I found on the Internet and are not vaccinated. The two non vaccinated birdies both recently fell ill. I should say that I keep their environment super clean (cleaned out daily) and warm but it seems that one may have been a carrier of a virus and despite a two month quarantine period introduced the virus in the first place. She did make tiny sneezy noises throught those 2 months but as I could not see an mucus, and as I was very new to it all I just thought that the sneezy noise was a little noise she made when alarmed. Anyway the two vaccinated chicks remained hale and hearty throughout.

 

I have seen this on the Newland Poultry site where I get my Garvo food (recommended on this forum)

 

"On advice from our poultry vets, we vaccinate our pure breed chicks as follows:

* Double vaccinated for Mareks.

* "Ooops, word censored!"ilis MA5/H120 Classical Infectious Bronchitis

* IB 4/91 Variant Infectious Bronchitis

* D78 Gumboro/Infectious Bursal disease.

This is a good general vaccination programme designed to cover the most common diseases you are likely to encounter in a backyard flock."

 

Both Doodle and Dill are OK now thanks to a nice vet also recommended on this forum, but I would like to get them vaccinated. I'm not sure, however how to go about this now that they are nolonger wee chicks.

[beach chick]

gosh, so many questions! I can only say that I have had silkies for a couple of years, mixed in with bigger (and even smaller) chooks and I've just let them get on with it. they seemed to cope with the weather just fine, of the 3 I've lost, 2 were got by the fox and 1 was a cockerel who has gone to a new home and is a daddy several times over!

[groovydad]

re: reescj2. Yes my problem exactly. They weren't vaccinated and now they are older is it too late?

I don't know of any local vets that 'do chickens' so I think i'll do what beach chick said and let them get on with it. I think we can be too precious sometimes. But they're so small and adorable right now, it's making me all parental.

 

In relation to the other q's, I've decided to cover the bottom of the run to keep it drier and easy to clean. I figure I'll be able to let them out to free range every other day in the winter so they'll get their scratching time in. Plus they have a dust bath.