Forming Detective Habits: livestock
O V E R V I E W
Recently, I’ve noticed a few of my Jersey White girls have awful dirty vent feathers. Now in my earlier years, I would have more than likely gone into a silent frenzy worrying about the worst case scenario, scrambling through any book I’d acquired because, what else other than the worst case could cause dirty behinds? However, now that it’s been quite a few years and I’ve found my rhythm with each species we keep here, I have developed a clue oriented mindset versus an end of the world, catastrophizing approach. For any empaths out there raising farm animals I am quite certain you can relate.
So there are a few things going on here in the above photo.
When we originally purchased our JW meat roosters, we also purchased 10-12 hens of the same breed, form the same hatchery. Several months down the road, we decided we like the JW breed and wanted to hold back a few for rebreeding and wanted to purchase a few more hens. I stopped at local feed store who carried them and picked up ten more. Now that they are full grown, I noticed massive differences between the first batch and the batch from the feed store. The hens purchased from the local feed are significantly smaller, have no top combs and are quite dirty. They do NOT roost on any of the roosting bars, despite having MANY ground level bars as we like to stager the heights for all of our breeds, leaving them to opt for sleeping in the nesting boxes. I will say that they are exceptional foragers, however that’s the extent of positive criticism I have for them.
Moving forward to noticing the hens with the disaster existing on their rear ends, I first noticed them when doing a nightly head count before shutting up the coop for the evening. My flashlight shown quickly as I passed them, and I leaned in for a closer look…
Now this is where we will talk about slowing down when it comes to owning animals. Instinctually, especially when you care a great deal about your animals, you will begin to allow the “what if’s” to take over and perhaps even jump on the internet to find your instant gratification answers in hopes of taming this feeling. However I assure you that whatever you type, the description will always bring up someone else’s horrific experience that will only leave you more confused and terrified.
Grabbing their tails, I noticed that the waist that was stuck to their feathers was 100% normal. It had no signs of vent gleet (a bacterial overgrowth that causes yellow secretion from the anus and loose stool that can create a blockage, similar to pasty butt in chicks). This stool was thick, with the normal colors of grey with a white center. This intrigued me, knowing there had to be an ulterior answer besides illness.
Even more interesting, they were in a roost at the time I noticed them.
The next day I did what any logical person would do and checked the watering troughs, anywhere I would see them foraging and their coop. This is when I noticed that they had been sleeping in one of the boxes. It was filled with poop. Later in the evening as they started pilling into their housing, I watched in silence. Sure enough they decided on the box until the other hens had found their preferred locations on the roosts before they came out to find their own. During that time, they are likely not only sitting in older wet waist, but adding to it. Now that it has dried there, each time they “go”, it becomes pasted to the dried, older inhabitance and continuously builds.
Given all of the negative marks on this batches character and appearance, we have decided to butcher them and keep only the original group. There are so many reasons to cull these types of animals from your operation whether you plan on breeding or not. Unfortunately, that in itself is a lengthy conversation.
If you are at all interested in reasons to be choosing with animals character on your land, please let me know in the comments.
