Jay Green

Well...not really. For good livestock management, one has to cull as a type of natural selection in order to have healthy stock and to maintain health within the flock. If you never cull/kill one, you can eventually compromise the health of all the others by letting sickly birds remain in the flock. In domestic animal husbandry, the farmer is the predator, of sorts, and is responsible for creating the "survival of the fittest" paradigm for the good of the species he is running on his land.

It sounds lovely to just let flocks of this or that bird stroll around your lands doing beneficial things, but that's just one part of good stewardship of the animal and land. There is another part that is necessary to all good management of animals and that is killing the weaker animals so you don't keep disease and parasite carriers within the flock. It's for the good of the whole that some may have to be sacrificed.

That is, if you care about the good of the whole flock. Therein lies the part about true compassion, both for the weaker animals and for those that are compromised by their presence. If you wait to kill them when they are really sick and suffering, you've let them down. If you wait until their weak immune systems expose the whole flock to disease or parasites, you've opened up more birds to suffering and it results in having to kill birds that wouldn't have had to be killed if the job was done right in the first place.

gordo kury wrote:

Jay Green wrote:Eventually, you will have to kill an animal if you raise animals. Particularly a prey animal. To end suffering from injury or illness of some kind there will be a time to kill. If you cannot do this, it's not advisable to have them...unless of course you have someone who can do it for you who is on call 24/7.

If you are vegetarian because you have a heart for the animal, but you cannot provide mercy when they need it, it kind of cancels out the reason you are not eating them, isn't it?

you misunderstood me terribly, if the animal need mercy you can count on me to do it.

if I raise chickens I will need to cull some of them or sell them if I need to keep them from over populate my land, and I don't want to do that, so I am thinking in raising peacocks and sell them as ornamental birds as a way to solve this dilemma.

Maybe it was this kind of phrasing that confused me...it seems as if you are looking for a way to never kill a chicken, by using peafowl instead...but that doesn't mean you'll never have to kill a peafowl, so it left me wondering if you thought this would be the case.

Valerie Acquard wrote:

Dale Hodgins wrote:These are horny ducks, they aren't rapists. I don't think that word should be kicked around loosley or for comical effect.

While I agree that rape should not be kicked around loosley, and I did strangely find this funny. I think that in this case rape is the right word. I say this because rape means non consent or the use of force. And I'm sure that poor little duck would not consent to being killed in such a fashion. No living thing would. So it is the right term. I'm trying to channel Stefan Molyneux here.

I would have to disagree with this. The ducks were mating and it's an instinct, not an act of violence. It's natural instinct and it's up to the flock owner to prevent such events from taking place. Not many matings in the wild are by consent of the female...many of them run and run and must be subdued before mating can proceed. That's just the way it goes and shouldn't be made into something dirty or bad by the observing humans..I think anthropomorphizing the situation can cause a lot of mistakes in animal husbandry from inexperienced humans.

Rape is a crime of violence, not a natural instinct, and has no place being referenced in the case of animal matings.

With a messy bottom and crop stasis, I'm wondering if he didn't have candida albicans...or thrush, as it's commonly known. Some call it sour crop and it can extend throughout the entire digestive tract and looks like gleet on the other end. Did you happen to look in his mouth for lesions?

There are a few treatments that you can keep in your arsenal that can help if your flock gets mites but I can tell you that we kept chickens for over 30 yrs before seeing a mite and only then because we got chickens from a place of poor husbandry. When I got them I had to find something that could help them that was in the realm of natural, so here are a few things you can try:

Castor oil and NuStock for leg/scale mites, wounds, worms, fungal infections: Both are effective with just one treatment, in most cases. Both are comprised of all natural ingredients that are not harmful and only beneficial. Of the two, I am impressed with both...but the castor oil also can be used for deworming, if you so desire, as well as an antibacterial and antifungal treatment for wounds. I've never had to deworm a flock in all my many years, so that's just an option if you need it. The Nustock is good for wounds, fungal skin infections, hot spots on dogs, rain rot on horses, mange, etc. and is comprised of sulfur, pine tar and mineral oil only.

Dusting for lice and mites: Wood ashes help, sulfur dust can be found in any garden department and can be used to treat roosts, bedding and nesting material, as well as the birds and is effective as well. Some use lime for dusting the birds and bedding, as well as walls and roosts. If none of these work and you have a persistent case, Pyrethrin is a natural substance derived from the chrysanthemum flower that is very good for this. Do not confuse it with Permethrin, which is a chemical preparation that is more harmful to the environment, the insects and the animals in your care...not a good one to try, in other words. I don't use DE because of it's ability to harm beneficial insects as well, though I know many throw DE around like it's money, I never recommend it.

Worms: Castor oil is safe for humans and animals alike and has been used for centuries for this. Raw pumpkin seeds contain cucurbitin, a chemical that can paralyze the worms until they detach and are flushed out of the bowel along with the feces. Ginger root is another natural antihelmintic, as is garlic. Simple soap in the water acts as a surfactant and helps to dissolve the oils that protect the skin of worms, allowing them to be killed by the digestive acids and enzymes in the bowels. Black walnut hulls, while still green, are used for deworming. Charred wood has been used for this as well and one can flake off the char and add it to the feed mix....for other livestock, just place it in their pens and they will gnaw the charred bits off the wood.

The best treatment of all is to use preventative measures such as providing good dusting opportunities all year round, clean soils underfoot by providing free range, well managed deep litter in the coop to encourage beneficial microbes underfoot and predator bugs that prey on mite larvae, feeding and watering indoors where vectors such as wild birds, rodents, etc. cannot access feed and water. Treat roosts and nesting boxes if your area is prone to this problem, but not the bedding and the bird unless you actually HAVE a problem. Feeding fermented feeds or adding mother vinegar to the water can create a hostile environment in the bowel of chickens that can help prevent worm infestations but will not deworm a bird already infested.

One very important tool that no one ever mentions and that is yearly culling for health, performance, conditioning and appearance and feed thrift. Culling for these traits can naturally eliminate the birds that carry parasite loads due to poor immune system function and old age, while also preventing problems like egg bound, internal laying, prolapse, etc.

Avian biologists claim that 90% of the flock's parasites are being carried by 5% of the flock, so by eliminating those 5% of birds in a yearly cull by targeting the traits of a bird carrying heavy loads of parasites, one can keep problems like this down to animals who thrive well with an acceptable load of parasites and also breed for more of the same.

There are other all natural treatments for these things if one wants to dig, but these are the most commonly found and some of which I've actually used and can attest to their efficacy.

Eventually, you will have to kill an animal if you raise animals. Particularly a prey animal. To end suffering from injury or illness of some kind there will be a time to kill. If you cannot do this, it's not advisable to have them...unless of course you have someone who can do it for you who is on call 24/7.

If you are vegetarian because you have a heart for the animal, but you cannot provide mercy when they need it, it kind of cancels out the reason you are not eating them, isn't it?

Anything in his gizzard such as a nail, piece of fencing, etc. Sometimes hardware disease can cause that. Did you look in the small intestine for signs of worm infestation?

Very pretty! We've harvested a couple of piebalds along the way while bowhunting over the years...always makes a nice hide for tanning and saving.

Here's the info I found when contemplating feeding the acorns to the chooks. The wild turkeys eat them like candy around here, so you can take these study results with a load of "acceptable risk" in mind but I passed on gathering and feeding them to the birds and let them decide for themselves if they were food that was necessary to their free range diet. Not sure that I've ever seen one of my chickens eat one, but I'm sure it happens now and again.

Cornell University’s Dept of Animal Science states: “Generally, tannins induce a negative response when consumed. These effects can be instantaneous like astringency or a bitter or unpleasant taste or can have a delayed response related to antinutritional/toxic effects … Tannins negatively affect an animal’s feed intake, feed digestibility, and efficiency of production. These effects vary depending on the content and type of tannin ingested and on the animal’s tolerance, which in turn is dependent on characteristics such as type of digestive tract, feeding behavior, body size, and detoxification mechanisms.”

Their studies have shown the following information worth noting:

Animals fed diets with a level of tannins under 5% experience

depressed growth rates,
low protein utilization,
damage to the mucosal lining of the digestive tract,
alteration in the excretion of certain cations, and
increased excretion of proteins and essential amino acids.

In poultry, small quantities of tannins in the diet cause adverse effects

levels from 0.5 to 2.0% can cause depression in growth and egg production,
levels from 3 to 7% can cause death.