Crap

Someone has bloody poop dammit. Almost two years without an illness and I open the door to the henhouse and it looks like an old man with a GI bleed in there. Ugh. 


I did a little research and turns out it can be either a mild situation or something that could kill them in as little as a week. I truly think it is just intestinal shedding which chickens do from time to time, but just to be safe we are treating them for coccidiosis, a nasty infection. They all seem fine and are eating and foraging as normal, so I'm not too worried. We are treating them with Sulmet which is put in their water for 6 days(thanks Claire for going to the feed store for me and picking it up).  The only crappy thing about the treatment is that we cannot eat the eggs for ten 10 days and I feel super guilty about having to throw them out. 


To prevent illnesses like this, I usually overhaul the coop twice a year. Clean it well, bleach it, and change out the deep bedding. This time, just to be safe I changed out the self stick tile vinyl I placed in the henhouse. I would recommend this if you are looking for a floor for your own henhouse. It's only $1 a square foot and is easy to change out every so often. I also repainted the whole house and changed out the roosts just to be safe. 


Today Rougie was mad at me for taking out the nesting boxes for a moment. She wanted to lay an egg and was not having any of this remodeling. Before I realized it she was trying to lay an egg in my paint tray. Seriously killing me. 

And Bridget was so excited about the floors she could hardly stand it(notice, she was all up in the paint as well).