Chicken Cure!

We took Pipsqueak, the market chicken with a vision problem (insert joke here), to the vet a few days ago.  The vet put some chicken droppings under the microscope to see if she could identify what we were dealing with in our flock. BINGO! Coccidiosis! This is a parasite that does nasty things to a chickens insides. So after a $30 fecal test and a $12 medicine picked up at the feed store, our chickens are on the road to recovery.  Having lost 4 birds and being told that Pipsqueak probably wouldn't make it through the night, I am so relieved to have everyone healthy again. Pipsqueak is doing fabulous! She answers to her name and follows me around the yard. She is kind of a flaky bird, not it the absent-minded sort of way, she has dandruff or whatever chickens get. I am guessing it's because she doesn't know how to take dust baths since she can't see what the other birds are doing.

Pipsqueak

The goats...the goats are great. They are put up into the back yard every day to mow. It is taking them a long time to get the yard trimmed up really well. We might have to break out the weedeater. If there weren't so many rocks we could use the mower, but I just don't feel like replacing any windows right now.

Clementine likes to jump onto the barbecue by the back door. Cute now, but when she is full grown-- we will need a new barbecue.  We picked up a bag of diatomaceous earth for chickens and goats. This bag of fossilized diatoms is supposed to help get lice and mites off of the animals. We plan on making a dust bag out of an old pillowcase to dust the goats. The chickens will get a top of the line pit for dust baths. We picked up a bag of play sand to mix with the DE. We are planning on digging a hole about the size of a small plastic wading pool to put it all in. Hope all of the chickens are as excited about this as I am!