AUSTRALIAN POULTRY FORUM™

Oh Pheobe that's great news

Oh so glad its not Marek's & your baby is responding to the vitamins.

I was googling wry neck & saw that people gave their chooks vitamins to try & help them as I was hoping it was only wry neck & not any dreaded disease/parasite.

Good you already had that liquid seaweed on hand

Keep us up to date with how you girl is going.

Cheers
Chicka-Dee

Hi Parvo,

I live on a sheep farm, so my chooks can free range large areas of pasture and nearby native tree plantations to access a wide range of herbage, worms, insects, and other bugs they enjoy eating. They love to explore and scratch and roam about. Every now and again, they are given access to our compost bed where we put our garden weeds and vegetable scraps. But this is a limited luxury, because they just about turn it completely over in search of the worms we wish to keep.

I supplement my hens and roosters with Peter’s Free Range Poultry Mix. It is made from a selection of grains, and is free of artificial colours, flavours, and animal by-products. It also includes a mineral and vitamin premix, which the label says includes Vitamin A, B2, B12, D3, E, K3, Folic and Pantothenic acids, Niacin, as well as added Copper, Iodine, Iron, Manganese, Selenium, Zinc, and anti-oxidant.

When I let my hens out in the morning, I broadcast some of this poultry grain mix for them to eat along with a little shell grit. I broadcast the grain in a wide arc to minimize pecking order problems to ensure that all hens get some of this grain mix before they free range. I do not feed them any pellets. Nor have they had any medications. Indeed, because of my egg production, I keep them chemically free of medications, herbicides, and insecticides.

Most of my chooks come back to their pens during the day to lay where there is a supply of fresh water. They do not receive any extra feed until late afternoon, which is when I again feed them this grain mix in their night pens so that I can separate pullets from hens, and shut them up from the many foxes that are attracted by my chooks.

In hindsight, I realize that the little pullet with the wry neck may not have been getting enough poultry grain mix to eat because of the pecking orders in the morning outside in the open, and at night in her pen. I wish I had watched her more closely. She certainly does not have obvious signs of having been bullied by other hens. Nor have I seen her being pecked, but she may have just kept the peace and hung back on the edge without me noticing any thing unusual.

Phoebe

Hi Carol NZ,

Thank you for the informative attachment on “Understanding Vitamins for Poultry.”

It is very helpful to have such clear descriptions and pictures of the symptoms of vitamin deficiencies.

It was also good to see the symptoms of Marek’s disease.

My little pullet is now up and about but she tends to be wry necked in the mornings and evenings. Sometimes she looks normal, but then has relapses like in the picture I attached earlier. However, she is now eating grain and drinking by herself, but I am still giving her electrolytes and liquid seaweed three times a day. I will continue to do this for the two weeks duration you recommend.

I hope other APF readers will find your attachment as interesting and helpful as I did.

With sincere thanks, Phoebe

Many thanks Chicka-dee for your kind thoughts and best wishes.

See my reply to Carol NZ for an update on my little pullet.

Phoebe.

That is a good read and yes thanks for finding it and posting I also found it very helpful

Here is an update on my stiff necked pullet.

I fed the pullet vitamins for the two weeks recommended. Then I stopped feeding the vitamins. The day after I stopped, she quickly recovered. She could hold her head upright and was able to move around. However, the skin on her face started to peel off. On a really cold day, she would huddle up. When it warmed up, she was up and about again and behaved normally. However, she was much more pinker in the face, and stopped growing. By then, her sisters were laying, and were much bigger than she. 


After a few weeks of being very active and not huddling up during cold weather, she was suddenly sick again. Three days later her comb went purple, and she sadly died a few minutes later.

Several weeks later, her eldest sister was progressively unable to walk, and soon stopped laying. She developed very similar symptoms to her sister. Dad put her down.

Did they both have a form of Marek’s disease?

What about my main rooster who now cannot hold his head up and sits with his head almost touching the ground - does he also have a form of Marek’s disease? See my post Drooping Head Rooster: Marek's Disease?

Phoebe