rachels.haven's Journal

[rachels.haven]

Against depopulating the whole flock. Instead only those infected, survivors to breed from -- immunity factor.

I'd be in favor of depopulating depending on if survivors become carriers-typhoid mary's. A lot of poultry diseases go that way. IDK if they are willing to talk about if bird flu does.

 

[rachels.haven]

Disbudding day for all but the 2 tiniest tiny tot ND's. Tonight I go to bed worrying and hoping I didn't fry anyone's brain.

I've been coaxing along Emmi's buck that she got physical with. I put him on antibiotics for his swollen legs-my baked ones that got hot on the way over, but they seem to be working (figured if they didn't work and killed him at least he'd be dead). The swelling has gone down but it appears one of his knees the bones are not attached to eachother, he still has zero muscle, and his front leg joints and rear pasterns appear fused. I got him pooping. His belly is still getting unnaturally large and then shrinking down. Thin hair, almost like it's either falling out or not growing new. Emmi is only sort of interested in him and lets him nurse on the stand. The infection seems to be being staved off. He has necrotic spots on his legs so I'm not sure how long infection will stay away. His brother that perished after birth, his whole body was floppy like this kid's leg. I didn't check for dead spots. Emmi's cotyledons were decaying in one spot on the placenta.

This kid keeps biting at his legs and belly and is not getting much better. I think I need to take him to get put down-front legs fairly unusable, back legs, only one usable, abnormal body composition, refusal to recover. He is growing. That's weird.

His sisters appear normal activity-wise but are also short on muscle.

The vet mentioned cache valley being here when he came to unstuck the 4 ND kids that were coming all at once (did I write about that? Oh geeze, that was just the beginning of the malpositions). I suspect cache valley and worry about the surviving doelings. Heck, I worry about all the kids that were hard deliveries and are feeling boney at this point.

I also kind of wonder if Beaul's fertility was affected by this. His does did not take except for one.

Anyway, tomorrow I'm going to see if I can get a hold of the vet during normal business hours. Pooey.
(reproduction of anything: not for the faint at heart)