Homestead Update

Checked on the chickens today. Here's some updates from my last post.

On day one (of understanding what was happening), I put some things in their water. In a half gallon waterer, I usually put "a couple glugs" of apple cider vinegar. In addition, I put some Gatorade (probably not the best idea), some yarrow tincture, and some turkeytail tincture.

The next day, I added the normal acv, and a whole bulb of garlic, cut in thirds. That's the new standard practice.

(That's TB. One of the littles. Judging by the tail feathers and certain activities she's been participating in with her sisters, she's a boy.)

Blondie and Blue, our lovely Easter eggers that we brought in most recently are the ones that brought it in. By the time I knew what was going on, they'd been here for a couple days already, and everyone was exposed.

Two days ago, the whole flock had "the smell." The smell is the first symptom of Coryza, being the scent of the infection. Later symptoms are head scratching, sneezing/coughing, difficulty breathing, and nasal and ocular discharge. The smell is similar to a bad sinus infection. Not a happy smell.

Blondie, our pretty black and gold laced EE was the only one to ever show discharge, though I did observe Clyde scratching his head and sneezing a couple of times.

Today, I was able to get ahold of five birds: the littles, Blondie, and Donna. Of those five, Blondie was the only one with the smell. Her discharge appears to have cleared out though. I couldn't manage to get my mitts on Bonnie, Clyde, and Blue in a way that was unstressful to them. Or me.

I have yet to start putting oregano in their feed. I'll be selling some of those recent steem donations to fund that incidental cost, and I'll be buying seeds too so I won't have to continually bring in that product. The goal here is to minimize those inputs.

Anyways. Just wanted to get in a small encouraging update on the Coryza situation here at Foxfire Homestead. I'm hoping to pick up some wood chips soon. Idk how I'll use them though, so maybe I'll wait on that...

I've also been looking at information on our squash. I found a couple sources on North Georgia Candy Roasters, and will be processing them accordingly. When the stem dries, I'll remove the fruit from the vine and leave the fruit in the sunniest part of the yard to cure for about a week. Then I'll lightly rub Olive oil on them and store them in a single layer on a shelf or something. They should store for 4-6 months. Thanks @bpangie for selling me these seeds, they've really sparked a cool and exciting learning process.

On that note, the squash had developed some pretty hardcore powdery mildew on a couple of the vines in the shadiest part of the forest. That is also the area where the sprinkler hits the heaviest. @bobydimitrov told me that squash don't like being watered, so those conditions sound pretty ripe for mildew. Well, I poured some kefir from my cheese making onto the roots of those vines yesterday, and today less than half the mildew remains. So that's a fun and useful but of information. That fermented milk liquid must be pretty beneficial to the plants.

So much to learn. Or relearn. Someone already knew all this before, so I'm just spreading and passing it along as I'm able.

Thanks for reading all that! It turned into more of a general suburban homestead update than just a chicken update, huh? Anyways.

May health abound,

Nate.

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