Another One Down

Y'all. I'm getting so frustrated.

I have another girl under the weather, with the same symptoms as the last one who ultimately starved to death. I can't find a single person in my area willing to troubleshoot with me without charging me a $60 vet fee, and I can only get so far with my chicken books.

I'm hoping a little isolation and TLC will bring her back around. Everything I can find describing her symptoms leads me to believe there's nothing I can really do to fix her up... she's either going to pull through on her own or die. Lovely, right?

I have learned two very important chicken-keeping lessons from all this: 1) I will never buy a flock of chickens of all the same breed again, and 2) I will never buy chicks from Tractor Supply Co again.

Everything I can find that seems to even come close to explaining what's been going on with these sick girls goes back to the parent bird or the hatchery, and it also seems like there's a breed connection when it comes to the transmission of whatever they could have. (Kinda the same idea like if you planted all the same variety of tomato and then got hit with a blight- they're all going down because you didn't diversify with other varieties that might resist the problem.)

I need more blight-resistant chickens, y'all, but I'm not adding to this flock until I get to the bottom of this weirdness... which may take a while yet.

In the meantime I'll be popping out into the garage periodically today to tempt our newest sickie chickie with treats and check on her progress. I'm hoping it's just a little cold... but we shall see.